Restaurateur Interview Series: Peggy of Lovin’ Spoonfuls

Restaurant:
Lovin’ Spoonfuls
2990 N Campbell Ave Ste 120 (at Blacklidge)
Tucson, Arizona 85719
520-325-7766

Owner: Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Raisglid

Is this your first restaurant? Yes
What made you decide to open a vegetarian/vegan restaurant?
I have a Ph. D. in chemistry and a BS in Chemical Engineering. I spent most of my professional life working as a chemist and engineer. I became a vegan in August of 1989, and have been developing vegan recipes that resemble their non-vegan counterparts for over 20 years. I am ethically committed to a vegan lifestyle and decided that the best way to promote veganism was to show people how tasty vegan meals can be. That’s when my career took a new turn and I opened up a restaurant. Although the initial learning curve was quite steep, the restaurant has been very successful and extremely rewarding.

What has been your greatest professional success and your biggest setback?
My greatest professional success has been the number of awards that Lovin’ Spoonfuls has won, which have included “Best of TucsonTM” for every full year that we’ve been open, winning the Gold for Best Vegetarian Restaurant from Tucson Lifestyle Magazine for every year that we’ve been open, selected Best Vegetarian Restaurant by VegNews and winning Best Recipe for the Southwest / Rockies region from Vegetarian Times Magazine. PETA picked us as having one of the top five pies in the country – that was for our banana cream pie.

The biggest setback has probably been the small size of our kitchen, especially as we’ve grown in popularity. As much as I would like to expand our menu or try different things, we are held back by the limited space in our kitchen. We’ve had to adopt almost a submarine mentality and approach to make the most out of every available square inch.

What’s your favorite dish on the menu?
Tied for my personal favorites are our signature dish, the Piccadilly Nut Loaf with steam grilled veggies, mashed potatoes and mushroom-burgundy gravy, and I LOVE the linguini with “meat”balls with our own chunky marinara, garlic bread and organic spring mix side salad.

What’s the most popular appetizer on the menu?
Hands down, the Golden Nuggets with “honey” mustard dipping sauce.

Most popular entrée? The Route 66 bacon cheese burger for lunch and the Country Fried “Chicken” Dinner in the evening.

Most popular dessert? Chocolate fudge brownie pie on top of a chocolate chip cookie crust. Very close seconds are the chocolate fudge cake and lemon poppy seed cake.

How often do you change your menu items? Do you have daily or weekly specials? How do you choose those specials?
The menu has evolved somewhat over the six years that we’ve been open. We have a different lunch and dinner special everyday, depending on what ingredients are available or if customers have been making special requests, or when we have holiday specials. Thanksgiving is always the biggest day of our year.

Do you have gluten-free, soy-free, and sugar-free options on your menu? Yes to all three. The number of gluten-free customers is growing the most rapidly.

What are a few of those?
Gluten-free:
For breakfast we have GF waffles, pancakes and scrambles. We bake our own GF bread for toast and sandwiches. Probably the most popular GF sandwich is our hummus sandwich with tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and sprouts. Our most popular GF dinner entrees are the Green Chili Polenta with either black beans or steam grilled veggies and the Rice Primavera with a creamy Alfredo sauce.

Soy-free:
The hummus sandwich is soy-free as well as GF. One of my personal favorite dinner entrées happens to be soy free, the Piccadilly Nut Loaf.

Sugar-free: Most of our dinner entrees are sugar free, except for the Thai Veggie Curry.

Do you use eco-friendly packaging? What else do you do to reduce your environmental impact?
I have investigated eco-friendly (bio-degradable) packaging and have found that they require far more resources to manufacture and don’t biodegrade unless brought to a separate waste facility. Sadly, the net result is more harmful than beneficial. We do, however, encourage our customers to bring their own containers for take-out. That way no disposables are consumed at all. We are currently participating in a compost program with the University of Arizona. All of our food waste is collected and picked up by the University for composting. Of course the greatest positive impact that anyone can have on the environment is to switch to a vegan diet!

If you could eat at any vegan restaurant in the world where would it be?
I love to travel but haven’t been able to do much since the restaurant has been open. I especially like to go to far-away, exotic places. I don’t know if there are any vegan restaurants in Nepal or Thailand, but what a kick that would be!

Do you have any advice for those wanting to start a vegetarian/vegan restaurant?
I think what helped me the most when I first opened with no real restaurant experience of my own, was hiring people with a lot of experience that could help me learn the ropes. You’ll start out learning from your employees and eventually you’ll be teaching them. One more thing… when you’re a vegan restaurant, people with every known allergy on the planet will come and expect you to be able to accommodate their needs. Although you will never be able to be everything to all people, at least have a book with all the ingredients for every dish by the register, so you, as well as any employee facing the customers can answer all the questions with complete accuracy.

Thank you Peg for sharing about Lovin’ Spoonfuls and all the amazing things you do with the restaurant! Sounds like there is something for everyone here. If you are a restaurant that wants to be featured in the Interview Series please email us!

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