“Delicious stealthy healthy omni-, carni-, vegan & vegetarian cuisine, sustainable, organic, flexitarian”
Hugo’s has always aimed high…carefully and lovingly creating the recipe for an eatery that is inclusive of everyone. Close your eyes and imagine… people of all dietary lifestyles sitting together peacefully, joyfully, actually ordering great, healthy food, right off the menu without requesting endless changes or substitutions! Hugo’s is, thankfully, that place! OK, you want Cuban steak, and you want Pasta Mama, and I want Asian tofu stir-fry–let’s go to Hugo’s!
As their website explains, Terry Kaplan, the founder of Hugo’s, had a vision of “producing original and wonderful foods” in an environment where “co-workers would experience support, respect and well-being.” Fostering an emphasis on a loving environment, Terry’s first group of employees called themselves “Hugonauts.” In the beginning, the space in West Hollywood was an actual butcher shop called “Hugo’s” which evolved over 30 years into the visionary restaurant that it is today. Their history is fascinating reading and can be found on the Hugo’s web page.
Having studied the varied, original menu and eaten at Hugo’s many times, the uniqueness of the eatery spurred my interest to dig deeper. I read the eloquently written “Brief History of Hugo’s” and “Hugo’s for Healthy Living” on the website and this sparked some questions. I posed my questions to the CEO of Hugo’s Restaurants, Tom Kaplan, who very graciously answered them with such energy, you can feel the verve in his responses!
Question: When did you start introducing organic items, and vegan and vegetarian items? What was the impetus? Were you ahead of the trend?
TK Answer: Hugo’s started introducing organic items in the early 1980’s at our first location in West Hollywood. At the time, we were a high-end butcher shop/gourmet market/restaurant with a big open kitchen where we made just about everything from scratch. The dishes we made were to accompany the meats that my dad, Terry Kaplan, prepared, and they were mostly vegetarian. Normal restaurant distributors didn’t have all the ingredients we desired so we began to purchase items from health food distributors who had exotic and organic, grains, legumes, and other grocery items. We were one of the first “gourmet” markets in Southern California, and were creating dishes that you couldn’t find anywhere else. Because of the extensive vegetarian dishes we had, we started attracting health conscious people. One of the lines of groceries we carried was Yogi Tea (what our chai’s are based on), as the founder came in to dine and shop often. He introduced us to Kundalini Yoga and the teachings of Yogi Bhajan, some of which included healing foods using Ayurvedic concepts. We believe that many of our staff were attracted to us because of the healing nature of what we do, and they introduced us to veganism, particularly our Sustainability Director, Dale Jaffe, who joined us as a manager when we opened in Studio City, and who is now also on the menu committee. Because we’ve always made most everything from scratch, it was not only fun to change recipes to being vegan, but was also a fun challenge for our chef, Nabor Diaz Prado. I’d say we were way ahead of the curve, doing this long before vegan restaurants became popular. And because we aren’t just vegan in our approach, we’ve been able to introduce many more people to plant-based diets over the years.
Q: How do you stay on top of new food and ingredient ideas circulating out in the world and how do you decide whether to offer something trendy on the menu?
See the more fascinating answers from Hugo's CEO Tom Kaplan at:
http://veganamericanprincess.com/hugos-restaurant-q-a-with-ceo-tom-kaplan/#sthash.hTdGu2RB.dpuf
Ellen Francis
Vegan American Princess
www.veganamericanprincess.com
Twitter @ellenfrancisLA
Instagram #veganamericanprincessLA
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