Vegetarian soul-food pop-up kitchen returns to Germantown on Sunday

The Uptown Soul Food Vegetarian Kitchen pop-up restaurant will make a return appearance at Wired Beans Cafe from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.

The pop-up restaurant, first hosted at that Chelten Plaza location in September, was supposed to become a monthly event. However, Uptown owner Takia McClendon said she wanted to take time to evaluate and improve it.

Black History Month would be a great time to return as it meshed with her mission to celebrate African-American cooking traditions with plant-based foods, she said.

“The cool thing about a pop-up restaurant is that it gives you the chance to experiment with things that work and things that don’t work,” said McClendon. “I don’t want to come back and do the same exact event at the same exact place with the same exact menu.”

The menu

This time around, she will offer fewer sandwiched-based products. Instead, the menu will include items like Caribbean-style jerk tofu kabobs served with red pepper collard greens and a sweet potato kale wrap, which proved to be popular on her Instagram account.

Among other $8 platters, she will also serve the Carolina classic fried chick’n (tofu) sandwich served with macaroni and cheese that was at the last event. (There will also be a disc jockey providing music and a vendor selling handmade bracelets.)

“I want them to see the diversity of the menu and the foods we eat and know that if you like a certain spice, or style of cooking or seasoning, you don’t have to give that up for vegetarian food,” said McClendon, who is expecting an estimated 75 customers. “I am really excited about the chance to actually cook and not just being the brains behind the recipes.”

For more information, go to uptownsoulveg.com.