Street Food of Your Dreams

Serving up fun and thoughtful plant-based takes on classics - whether it’s cheesestāk, banh mi, New Jersey porc roll, tacos, and more - we cook with super fresh ingredients and a ton of care.

Our Food and Sourcing

Every dish in our menu is Vegan. We strive to make most everything gluten-free, with the exception of our sandwich bread, and we keep our fryers free of products containing gluten, making for a wide variety of menu items available for those with gluten sensitivities. All the faux meat and tofu we use is minimally processed and made with non-GMO soy. Further, our “porc” faux meat comes from a small East coast woman-owned company. In season, we get our produce from local family NJ farms, such as Hauser Hill Farms. Regardless of season, we source produce that is organic or low/no spray and is as local as possible.

The Team

We’re John Connolly and Leslie Hatfield,  a couple of Gen X East Coast transplants (originally from St. Louis  and Washington State, respectively) who wound up on the North end of the Jersey Shore after meeting in Olympia, WA and spending 15 years in Brooklyn. We both have a long history of food service industry experience and are passionate about ethical, healthy, and sustainable food. Both of us have more than a decade of front-of-house experience, and John spent years cooking in restaurants in Seattle and Chicago, getting his start in plant-based cooking at the OG veg restaurant, The Chicago Diner, in the 1990s. After relocating to the East Coast, we shifted our careers to nonprofit and philanthropy work.

During those white-collar years, John never lost his passion for cooking and continued to hone his recipes and techniques. When pandemic lockdown left us with our no decent takeout, hours to kill, and a bad case of heartburn, he went into overdrive. By summer of 2023, our home-cooking had gotten so good we felt we had to share it with our community, so Flora Vegetarian was born. We strive to serve food that is delicious and nourishing, to work with other local businesses, to pay workers fairly, and to source with sustainability in mind.