More and more Americans are trying to eat less meat, but we struggle to do so.

Too often, our plant-based options are subtractive, meat dishes without the meat. Increasingly, vegan options are substitutive, meat dishes with plant-based analogs. Unfortunately, these alternatives don’t yet taste as good as the originals. Occasionally, vegan options are traditional, cultural foods that never included meat, like chana masala and peanut butter and jelly. Yet, these foods are still vastly outnumbered by the non-vegan options out there.

This is broken. Our meat tastes great but is killing the planet. Our plant-based food doesn’t have wide enough appeal.

If vegan eating is to go mainstream, we must move beyond our current options. There was a time before pizza; a time before sushi; a time before sriracha. And we’re currently in a time before incredible vegan options that have yet to exist.

We believe that we can create new foods. One way is through cultural exchange – new ingredients meeting local tastes. Broken Cuisine is our attempt to do that: to introduce Western cooks to the incredible world of Chinese tofus, to work together to fix our broken American cuisine.