Dirt Candy's Amanda Cohen Opens Lekka, A Plant-Based Burger Joint In Tribeca

At its core, the brand new Lekka Burger, which opened last week near the western end of Warren Street, is a classic lunch counter with a plant-based focus. Inside they're serving up five types of burgers, a few options for fries and sides, soft serve and milkshakes for dessert. Simple, comfortable, satisfying.

Lekka comes from the renowned Dirt Candy chef Amanda Cohen, and everything on the menu here is 100% vegan. And since Cohen's partner in the venture is humanitarian Andrea Kerzer (who is involved with Lalela, among many other things), everything about Lekka has a level of both social and ecological consciousness that you'd be hard-pressed to find at any other restaurant in town.

In other words, there's a lot going on here, but let’s start with the food. The foundation of Lekka Burger is obviously the burger, and at a press lunch on opening day I got to eat two of them: the Lekka Cheeseburger, a gloriously messy affair topped in traditional fashion with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, mustard, mayo, ketchup, and, less traditionally, a butter-bean-based cheese sauce; and the Masala Burger which comes loaded with chutney, cabbage slaw, and pappadum for a nice crunch. Both were excellent, packing lots of flavor and really delivering on that "taking a big bite out of a juicy burger" experience.

Cohen is keeping her plant-based patty process a secret for now, but it involves mushrooms, beans, gluten-free grains, oils, and other basic ingredients she says you likely have in your kitchen at home. The burgers taste good, they "feel" good, and are structurally sound enough to be cooked to varying degrees of doneness. The buns are a house-made milkbread, and do their job admirably. And Cohen never met a sauce she didn't want to make herself, so most everything in that department are her original creations as well.

The Lekka Fries are fantastic, nailing that perfect crisp/fluffy ratio, crinkle-cut to better hold any or all of the sauces you might want poured on top. I tried the "Messy" version—latticed with hatch chili sauce, vegan mayo, and that butter-bean cheese—which is clearly the way to go. If carbs aren't your thing, there are three salads available, including a good-looking Broccolini Caeser and a bright, tangy Cauliflower Waldorf which pairs the headliner (served both raw and roasted) with Asian apples, celery, grapes, pecans, and a tarragon dressing.

Ice Cream, which is oat-based, is central to the Lekka experience. There are two soft serve flavors, Vanilla and a rotating special, which is Carrot to start, and you should of course get it as a swirl, topped with something sweet and/or crunchy like cookie or brownie crumbles, rainbow sprinkles, or toasted nuts. You could also try the Lekka Milkshake, flavored with chocolate, strawberry, matcha, caramel, or, best of all, halvah. Lekka is Afrikaaner slang for "delicious" or, more generally, "awesome," and for the most part the food here definitely lives up to that promise.

But there's more at work here than just making you a great meal. Cohen and Kerzer fervently believe that eating vegan can go a long way toward lowering our collective carbon output, and the more everybody starts thinking of plant-based food as casual, everyday fare (burger, fries, ice cream), the better off our planet, and our future, will be.

Cohen told Gothamist, "Dirt Candy doesn't have a philosophy, it's just about making vegetables taste amazing. But Lekka has more on its tiny brain. Making our burger releases 98% fewer greenhouse gasses than a beef patty and causes 78 times less water pollution. We make our burgers fresh, by hand, every day. Same with our buns. They've got less carbs, more fiber, fewer calories, and less trans fats than the Impossible or the Beyond Burger, which are great but they're made by scientists in a lab. Lekka burgers are made by a chef in her kitchen. The Lekka Burger is not going to solve any problems, but it might make things just a little bit better."

Everything at Lekka, from the dishware to the tea bags, is biodegradable. The colorful stools scattered throughout the place are made from recycled clothing, and repurposed plastic water bottles provided the raw material for the handmade light fixtures. There's a communal table up front before a striking mural by artist Magda Love, and a loungey banquette area in the back, where the white brick walls are brightened by student art from Kerzer's Lalela foundation in South Africa. The place seats about 50 total, and it's a counter-service restaurant. Cocktails, beer, and wine are served.

And all of the proceeds from Lekka merchandise (and all the quarters you pump into the Ms. Pac-Man machine) go directly to GrowNYC, the city's largest environmental organization.

Lekka Burger is located at 81 Warren Street, between West Broadway and Greenwich Street, and is open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. (646-678-5367; lekkaburger.com)