Rascal’s Pop-Up Energizes the Santa Barbara Vegan Scene

Back in January, a very, very long year ago, it was a crisp and cool night outside of Potek Winery in The Mill on East Haley Street. A growing group of hungry diners were huddled in their beanies and fleeces, sitting and standing much closer together than six feet apart, as the smell of Mexican spices emerged from a wide, sizzling griddle. On the menu were steaming bowls of savory pozole verde and bready tortas, with your choice of chorizo, suadero, or pastor as the filling. 

As we all knew — most evident in the bold front-of-neck tattoo sported by Dalan Moreno, the fully inked chef in charge — these colorful, aromatically enticing proteins were not derived from animals. They were instead, as that tat proclaims in chin-to-clavicle script, “VEGAN,” the method and message served up by Rascal’s Pop-Up, which Moreno started in 2018.