The vegan trend has come for your sausages — and it’s at one of the city’s most iconic meat emporiums.
Opened by German immigrants in 1937, Schaller & Weber has been the Upper East Side’s destination for every kind of cylindrical meat, as Eastern Europeans prefer.
Seeing an opportunity to serve the area’s growing late night crowd, co-owner Jesse Denes and his business partner Jeremy Schaller opened a side hustle in 2014 called Schaller’s Stube, which turns out about a dozen varieties of gourmet hot dogs from a window built into the deli’s former meat intake space.
And now, it’s also the first location in the entire U.S. to serve Beyond Meat’s new Beyond Sausage line, in three classic sausage flavors made entirely out of peas, fava beans, coconut oil and rice, with a touch of beet for color in a casing made of algae.
Though Schaller’s Stube had had a plant-based sausage on the menu for about eight months, “it was really just because it was something people asked for,” says Denes. “But there was always an aftertaste or the texture wasn’t right. We were looking for something that didn’t offend whatever toppings we were putting on it.”
“My wife is a part-time vegetarian and I eat enough meat,” he says with a laugh, so they knew about the Beyond Burger, which is available at BurgerFi down the street. “For me, [Beyond Sausage] is not a meat replacement. As a meat eater, if I want meat, I’m gonna eat meat, but this is a different thing I can enjoy.”
For Beyond Meat, launching at a meat-focused restaurant fit with their philosophy of being a plant-based protein, not a vegan alternative to real meat. As CEO Ethan Brown puts it, “There is such an emotional and cultural connection to sausage and we’re thrilled to honor that tradition by allowing consumers to eat more of what they love.”
You won’t mistake these sausages for meat, but they do make a good effort at being a better version of a pork sausage. They have white flecks inside that resemble chunks of fat, 16 grams of protein per link, less sodium and saturated fat, and no soy or gluten.
Their texture is dense, so you get that toothsome bite, and mildly spiced — a good canvas for the kind of creative hot dogs that Schaller’s Stube specializes in.
The Schaller’s team worked on recipes to spotlight each of the three sausages. The Original Bratwurst gets the classic treatment of sauerkraut and Dusseldorf mustard ($10); the Hot Italian needed a spicy complement, which it gets in the Bahn-Meat from a daikon-carrot slaw, cucumber, jalapeño, cilantro and a Sriracha aioli ($12); and the Sweet Italian ($11) piled with sautéed peppers and onions and drizzled with a balsamic reduction.
The sausages are cooked sous-vide instead of being boiled, then crisped up on a panini press and served on a spectacular vegan pretzel-style bun by Pretzilla that way outshines their usual Balthazar brioche buns.
You can also get the Beyond Sausage in any of the regular dogs, or as Denes’ favorite currywurst with a ketchup-based sauce — coming soon to grocery shelves. “I like it better than the classic,” he says with a shrug.
If the man who’s made a career of is meat can be convinced, maybe it’s worth a trip uptown.
