no meat in it – it frees you up to do more interesting things. With a burger, you’ve got the taste of beef, and beef should be what a burger tastes like – whereas with a vegan burger that’s not trying to be beef… what could you put in it?” Still working full-time as a designer, experimental Alfy ran a series of pop-ups on his office’s roof terrace on Hills Road in September 2017 – all of which sold out, proving that Cambridge was ready and waiting for his approach to vegan cuisine. An extremely popular residency at the subterranean bar 2648 followed, and investors got in touch. “At that point it was still something that I’d been playing around with, but it all changed after the pop-ups,” recalls Alfy. Rather than jumping on the increasingly popular bandwagon for ‘dirty vegan’ food, Alfy sought out a healthier way of creating crispiness. “I’d always wanted to use air fryers. People say that making a vegan burger to taste like meat is stupid – valid – but what’s just as stupid is, ‘Oh, I’m eating vegan, so I’ll put everything in the deep fat fryer’. You go vegan, go more plant-based, so you feel better – and then you end up eating out and everything tastes of dirty oil – you’ve gone back to square one.” He’s quick to defend DoppleGanger against accusations of unhealthiness. “Just because it’s a burger, and it looks a bit dirty... You’ve just seen the mushrooms being roasted. Nothing in
what we make is ‘dirty’.” DoppleGanger’s bank of air fryers use a fraction of the amount of oil required to deep fry, surrounding food with a blast of hot air to crisp the surface and start those delicious Maillard reactions. He’s also lightning-fast to correct anyone who thinks that opting for vegetables instead of animal proteins has a positive effect on the business’s bottom line. “That’s a misconception,” he says. “Some people assume that my costs are really low, but the chefs I’ve got in now – in a normal kitchen they could get in at 9am, and prep for lunch, but our staff costs are higher, because you have to do a lot more to a vegetable to get it to taste decent. Time is the cost.” He explains: “Say that mushroom – say that was a bit of lamb: you’d just have to bone it out, and it’s a bit of lamb. With the mushroom, you have to peel ten cloves of garlic, make a paste, chop and roast them for an hour – it’s a lot more labour intensive. I’m not laughing to the bank here: I wish I were! I pay all my staff the living wage and above, too.” Along with investment, Alfy’s benefactors introduced him to a business coach, who’s been slowly adding to the young entrepreneur’s skill set. His approach to management has seen the vast majority of staff stick around, relishing the challenge of opening diners’ eyes to the possibilities offered by veganism. “I tell the chefs: your cooking
“You have to do a lot more to a vegetable to get it to taste decent”
84
J U N E 2 0 1 9
C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K
Powered by FlippingBook