On this meals creator’s Miami kitchen, there are not any ingredient lists or silent preparations. Reyes, 30, opts for a extra musical, hip-shaking routine that appeals to children, teenagers and adults alike. So when the digicam pans over a creamy vegan Alfredo, she’s proper there in entrance of the digicam, dancing and twirling her fork earlier than widening her eyes for an exaggerated chunk. Since she began posting in 2019, Reyes’s movies that remodel cooking routines into whimsical meals musicals have been considered greater than 11 million occasions.
Although they could appear to be second nature now, her vegan cooking serenades really started as a joke. One Christmas, Reyes broke out into track whereas her husband, Ace Anderson, was cooking mac and cheese. “I actually was like, ‘I really like mac and cheese.’ And we went on an entire track dancing across the kitchen,” she says. “I all the time sing about stuff. I can’t assist it.”
Tacky because it felt on the time, her tune sparked an concept between her and Anderson, who had simply watched a documentary about musical.ly, a social media app that later grew to become TikTok. Initially, they posted quick, foolish movies, however Anderson quickly inspired Reyes to share her joyous medleys with a bigger viewers. Now, One Nice Vegan is a completely fledged collaboration with a producer that options Reyes singing and dancing on digicam and Anderson beatboxing within the background.
Reyes’s knack for vegan recipes started at an early age. In her Haitian-Puerto Rican household, she was uncovered to daring flavors and sauces cooked with greens, resembling cauliflower with a Haitian epis seasoning and chickpea curry. When she was rising up in California and Texas, her household struggled financially and infrequently bought meat consequently. “The one meat we ate was sizzling canine,” Reyes says. “My household couldn’t afford it, so it form of made sense to create extra vegetarian and vegan recipes once I was a child.”
After her father died when she was a youngster, Reyes struggled for years with an consuming dysfunction. When she hit her early 20s, she grew to become dedicated to altering her life-style, starting along with her weight-reduction plan. Recalling vegetarian recipes from her youth, and her wealthy household heritage, she determined to go vegan in 2011. Reyes says it has been the perfect resolution for her physique and psychological well being.
Whereas her vegan cooking started to flourish at residence, she was juggling an appearing profession. The 2 collided at a forged occasion in 2017, the place Reyes rolled up with platters of country-fried jackfruit, sliders, and hen and waffles. There was a catch: Nobody knew her banquet was vegan, and but her fellow actors couldn’t cease consuming her meals. Seeing this as an indication, she launched a vegan catering enterprise in 2018 and started internet hosting in-person cooking classes the place she’d check out her latest meals tunes.
Up to now, Reyes is most generally recognized for her vegan baby back ribs recipe. In a TikTok video seen by greater than 1 million customers, she lyrically guides viewers by means of a severe barbecue challenge: She piles jackfruit, plant-based meat and dry seasonings right into a bowl, mixes them and kinds a prolonged “rack” of vegan meat. This from-scratch recipe carries further which means for Reyes, who created the recipe in honor of Juneteenth 2021, and to debate the significance of barbecues within the Black neighborhood.
Reyes was shocked when she obtained demise threats in response to the video. “They suppose I’m doing one thing that goes so towards what they imagine to be true, which is consuming meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she says. “Fortunately, what I’m doing is joyous and optimistic and exudes excessive vibrancy.”
Reyes says she’s dedicated to championing flavorful vegan cooking and self-acceptance on digicam and in life. So it’s solely becoming that she doesn’t give attention to altering folks’s diets, and as a substitute hopes to be a channel that anybody, vegan or not, can flip to.
“My complete perception isn’t that everybody ought to eat vegan,” Reyes says. “However I do suppose the world wants extra greens. And I do suppose the world wants extra kindness and compassion.”
