Doctors are busy people, so when one decides to open a splashy, full-service, plant-based restaurant on the side, you take note. Especially when that restaurant serves an unexpected menu of gourmet vegan, craft cocktails and high tea.
Family medicine physician Katie Crifasi opened The Plantry Café in October, a project several years in the works. She says she was drawn to clean eating during medical school and her residency, when she saw patients with chronic conditions that could have been improved with better nutrition. The experience led her to personally adopt a plant-based lifestyle. It would later motivate her to dream up The Plantry Café.
Naysayers might dismiss Baton Rouge’s ability to sustain an all-out vegan restaurant. But Crifasi, 37, is steadfast. While juggling a full-time schedule as a self-employed hospitalist, she’s planned, executed and is now managing her new restaurant with help from a small team. It’s not unusual to find her on the floor soliciting customer feedback or putting the finishing touches on menu items like acorn squash risotto, beet carpaccio and roasted maitake mushrooms over vegan gouda polenta with a pinot noir reduction.
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“I don’t want my food to feel medicinal,” Crifasi says. “I want people to eat it because it’s really good and they’re happy about it.”
Crifasi says she knew she wanted to become a doctor at age 16 while working as a lifeguard at Blue Bayou Water Park. The magic of chest compressions during CPR training would eventually led her to the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and later to a family medicine career in the mid-Atlantic and New Orleans.
During an extended visit to Baton Rouge in 2020, it occurred to Crifasi that the Capital City could benefit from more plant-based dining. After all, more people were adopting the practice, even if just part time. No one was more surprised than Crifasi, she says, when she moved back to Baton Rouge to work and open The Plantry Café.
Baton Rouge has seen a boom in inventive culinary concepts, but it’s fair to say The Plantry Café breaks new ground. Its expansive plant-based, gluten-free lunch and dinner menus are combined with a design-forward vibe splashed in warm blues, whimsical wallpaper and a storybook motif centered around a mascot rabbit named Hareold. Belly up to a sprawling bar for craft cocktails or to group tables for weekend high tea.
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Crifasi says reception of the 3-month-old restaurant has been “amazing.”
“People who are plant-based and gluten-free are just ecstatic,” she says. “They’re like, ‘oh my gosh, thank you so much. I’m so happy I get to order anything here and I don’t have to worry about it.’” plantrycafe.com
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