Angelhearts Diner serves vegan-friendly comfort food

Summer is the time for vacations. Lots of families hit the road, traveling to a lakeside campground, a condo at the beach or maybe just a visit to Grandma’s house. Savvy travelers pack snacks for the car ride, but inevitably, there comes a time (usually when everyone is cranky and tired and nowhere near the final destination) when trail mix isn’t going to cut it. No problem! Just pull into your nearest fast food joint for a quick burger, right? Maybe, and maybe not. What if your family is vegan?

Kim Engelheart, owner of Angelhearts Diner, knows this problem well. She said that her experiences traveling with her son’s hockey team inspired her to open a vegan restaurant here in Ithaca.

“The idea for the diner was a combination of things,” Engelheart said. “My youngest son played hockey when we lived in Philadelphia. Being on the road, we would be so excited to find a vegan establishment in the little towns we went through. When we moved back to Ithaca in 2017, I saw a need for something like that here.”

Luckily, there are apps — like HappyCow.net — to help people locate vegan-friendly dining establishments. However, the listings are likely to consist of restaurants that have one vegan dish or a market that sells oat milk. A diner offering a full menu of plant-based choices is a real find. When the food is tasty enough to satisfy even the meat-eaters in the crowd, it is a rare treasure.

“We get tourists who look for vegan dining,” Engelheart said. “Last week, there was a family traveling in Pennsylvania who found us online and drove up here just to try it out.”

Angelhearts Diner has been open in the Gateway Plaza (former site of Napoli’s Pizza) since 2019. Specializing in “vegan comfort food,” it should be on everyone’s list of favorite breakfast and lunch spots in Ithaca. What kind of things will you find on Angelhearts’ menu? How about mozzarella sticks, loaded fries, a Philly sandwich or chick’n and waffles?

“I wanted to serve food that looks and tastes like what you might find in any typical diner,” Engelheart said. “Everyone likes comfort food. Come in and try it!”

Engelheart’s oldest son, Christian, is the cook, but Kim does all the prep work behind the scenes. She first learned to cook plant-based recipes by taking classes from TV chef Christina Pirello in Philadelphia. At first, Kim’s motivation was simply to feed herself and her family in this new diet and lifestyle they had adopted. It soon became apparent that she had a real talent.

“When I first went vegan in 2003, I didn’t know what to make. I took classes to figure it out for myself and my family,” Kim said. “For the diner, I make pretty much everything in house. I make all the seitan, the cashew cheese sauce, the coconut bacon on breakfast sandwiches.”

Products that Kim can’t make herself are sourced locally whenever possible. She uses Ithaca Soy for tofu, Remembrance and Stick and Stone farms for fresh produce and Schoolyard Sugarbush for maple syrup.

When it comes to coffee, Angelhearts has exclusively served brews from local roaster Oak & Crow since the beginning. More recently, this partnership has expanded to include a coffee bar within the diner.

Jacob Landreau, Oak & Crow’s founder, said that the time was right for this next step. He’d been managing two departments at Greenstar Food Co+op in addition to running his coffee company, and he was getting burned out.

“This collaboration was Kim’s doing,” Landreau said. “I’ve been supplying Angelhearts’ coffee since she opened, and it’s been a good fit for both of us. Kim was nice enough to offer me this opportunity, and I couldn’t say no.”

Formerly the head roaster at Gimme! Coffee, Landreau launched Oak & Crow in 2017.

“I built a roasting room on my property out in Newfield,” Landreau said. “I don’t have a storefront and I’m the only employee. It’s just a roasting and selling operation.”

Landreau originally sold his bagged coffee online only as a project to support touring bands. Musicians supplied artwork for the label on a particular roast and received a percentage of that blend’s sales. As a musician himself, Landreau knew that it was becoming more and more difficult to make a living selling music but figured “you can’t download a bag of coffee.”

“Some places locally started asking me if they could carry my beans, and I reluctantly said yes,” Landreau recalled. “It got to the point where I had to make a decision between launching that full time or staying at Gimme! I decided to go with Oak & Crow.”

Although Oak & Crow coffee is sold at other locations (Alley Cat Café, Press Café, Ithaca Beer and Greenstar), Angelhearts is the first and only place serving Landreau’s own hot and cold coffee creations.

“It’s really a café within a café,” Engelheart said. “It’s allowed us to expand our coffee menu. More importantly, with another person here, we’re able to open earlier and allow people back inside.”

Angelhearts is now open at 8:30 a.m., serving a limited breakfast menu to morning commuters. In addition to breakfast sandwiches, there are fresh doughnuts made daily by Christian and the full range of Oak & Crow coffee beverages. The complete diner menu is available starting at noon.

Patrons are welcome to stay and enjoy their meal in the cool (as in, AC and funky) retro-style dining room. This is big news, as Angelhearts has been pickup only for the past couple of years.

Engelheart said that the decision to close the dining room had mostly been driven by staffing. Now, with the addition of Landreau and a few part-timers, there is a bit more flexibility (although Engelheart is quick to add that she is still looking for additional employees).

“People have been very supportive and understanding of our situation,” Engelheart said. “We’re now into our second month of modified indoor dining, and it’s going well. Everything is still served to go, but people can sit at tables inside or outside to eat.”

For Cornell University commuters, Angelhearts is conveniently located at the base of State Street hill. Stop in for an iced mocha and a gooey s’mores doughnut on your next trip to campus. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

Food for Thought appears in the third edition of each month in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.