Chaia first began selling its vegetarian tacos stuffed with creamy kale and potato or braised mushrooms and feta at the White House farmers’ market as a way to showcase local produce. Over the past decade, it’s expanded to storefronts in Georgetown and Chinatown, but remained steadfastly meat-free. Until now. Chaia recently introduced its first menu item with animal protein: a chicken taco.
“It was a scary thing. It took us a long time to think about doing this,” says co-founder Suzanne Simon. “But the addition of chicken does not make our menu any less vegan- or vegetarian-friendly than it currently is—which is 98 percent. But what it does do is it invites more people to the table.”
Simon—who is herself a vegetarian—notes that when she and her business partner Bettina Stern launched Chaia in 2013, the Obamas were in the White House promoting healthy eating, plant-based proteins were becoming mainstream, and author Michael Pollan was in the zeitgeist promoting a vegetable-centric diet.
But the business has changed. Operating costs are up. Competition has increased. Protein is in. And younger diners aren’t so interested in food identity labels like “vegetarian” or “vegan” so much as they are eating in a way that makes them feel good.
“If everyone is loving their protein and there actually is a way for us to introduce something that people want within what what we believe in, why wouldn’t we do that?,” Simon says.
The taco itself was created in collaboration with former Cranes and Arrels chef Pepe Moncayo. Simon says she stumbled upon a taco pop-up that Moncayo was doing at Cranes before it closed. She was impressed by the tacos and ended up reaching out to Moncayo to pitch him on a collab.
The resulting taco is comprised of braised shredded chicken, roasted achiote-spiced carrots, pickled cucumber, lime, and a creamy-green aji verde sauce made of tahini, scallions, cilantro, and garlic. Simon says they use “slow-grown, heritage-breed” birds from Joyce Farms in North Carolina. She adds that you can also opt to drop the meat and still get a taco that holds up on its own merits.
Chaia is tracking how the taco does over an eight-week period to determine whether it stays on the menu permanently. Simon says it’s too soon to say whether they will add more proteins in the future.
So far, there have been a few haters who’ve written in saying, “I’m vegan and I can’t believe you’re now serving meat.” But overall, Simon says the response has been far more positive.
“It’s so easy for it to just be about chicken, and it’s not. It’s like really about business and making decisions and following what consumers want,” Simon says. “Sometimes restaurants fail because they have a hard time changing or they’re scared to try something new. And this is part of that for us. We need to evolve too.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind DC’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
