CREDIT: GLENN WHITEHEAD
Plant Matter Kitchen is a vegan restaurant that vows to only serve fresh, locally grown items is opening up in Wortley Village.

Vegan restaurant coming to London

There is something new coming to Wortley Village.

Plant Matter Kitchen (PMK), owned by Glenn Whitehead, John Burwash and Melanie Wendt is a fully vegan, plant-based, organic restaurant opening in the Forest City.

In the process of obtaining the last few permits, owners of the restaurant are hoping to open the doors this week and start serving smoothies, coffee and baked goods.

Whitehead explained the progression PMK plans to make coffee and smoothies to full meals.

“We will expand into the lunch menu and then into the dinner menu and by the time June rolls around we should have our liquor licence and be fully running dinners and brunches and the whole nine yards.”

The three co-owners feel that the decision to open a restaurant together was natural as they all have experiences owning or at the very least working in the restaurant industry.

“The three of us are all very passionate about food and cooking and have pursued a life of good quality cooking, great delicious tasting food and pure natural ingredients. It was a match made quite nicely for us. We are all basically foodies you could say,” Whitehead said.

PMK’s decision to support the community to ensure the freshest and highest quality ingredients is an initiative that more restaurants should adopt.

“PMK is as committed to the foundation of local organic and plant-based as possible,” Whitehead said. “We are working with a number of local, smaller and independent farmers to secure that sort of farm-to-table, as close to fresh and as close to its natural state food experience as we can for the restaurant goer.”

Whitehead explained that that they will be able to successfully incorporate a wide selection of locally grown ingredients due mostly in part to the partnership PMK will have with a local organization Globally Local.

“They will be supplying us with a large portion of our food…In the summer time they will be literally bringing in stuff that was picked that morning, and you can get corn that is still fresh right off the stalk and you can get other fresh fruits and vegetables that are literally being picked the day that they are being delivered to you,” Whitehead said. “That is our goal, to get that as close to fresh and ripe picked as we can.”

The local partnerships don’t end there. PMK is partnering with other local London business that believe in similar philosophies of local and organic.

“We will be working with Booch on some great local kombucha teas; they are a great local organic, London based [organization], committed to craft tea making, and we will be working with them in making our own sort of custom tea flavours.”

Whitehead discussed that in addition to Booch, PMK is working with a local coffee roaster as well.

“Patrick from Patrick’s Beans will be making us our own proprietary roast so we will have a PMK roast that we will be roasting and selling. We have been working on hard on [partnerships] while we are [also] working hard to open”.

If you want to stay up to date on all of the exciting things going on at PMK you can follow them on Facebook, Instagram and twitter. Their name on Instagram is @plantmatterkitchen and their Twitter username is @PMKRestaurant.