Makini Howell
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| Cooking style | Vegan fine dining |
Current restaurant(s)
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| Website | plumbistro |
Makini Howell is a vegan chef and restaurateur in Seattle, Washington. Her flagship restaurant, Plum Bistro, is a vegan fine-dining restaurant in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Howell was raised vegan.[1] Her parents have since the 1990s owned vegan sandwich shops and sold vegan sandwiches through co-ops in the region, and Howell grew up working in her family's sandwich shops.[1][2]: 64
Howell worked in New York City as a graphic designer and a clothing designer, including for Jay-Z's Rocawear, then moved back to the Northwest to pursue a renewed interest in the culinary world.[1][3]
She opened Plum Bistro in 2009.[4] In 2013 Howell published Plum.[5] In 2014 she appeared on the Queen Latifah Show.[1] In 2015 Stevie Wonder hired her as personal chef during his yearlong, 44-city Songs In The Key Of Life tour.[1][6] In addition to Plum Bistro, Howell also operates a catering company, food truck Plum Burgers, casual eatery Plum Pantry in Seattle Center’s Armory, and dessert shop Sugar Plum.[1] According to vegan lifestyle magazine Laika, Plum Burgers, which launched in 2013, was the first vegan burger food truck in the United States.[3]
Howell supported Seattle's 2012 required paid sick leave law and 2015 $15 minimum wage hike.[7][8] She spoke at the 2014 White House Summit on Working Families about her support of the minimum wage increase.[7]
In 2019 Julia Moskin and John Eligon, writing in the New York Times, named her to their list of "16 Black Chefs Changing Food in America".[9] In 2017 Tasting Table named Plum Bistro one of the eight best vegan restaurants in the U.S and called them "the OG of Pacific Northwestern vegan dining."[4] James Beard award-winning food writer Karen Page featured Howell in her Kitchen Creativity (2017).[1]
Page and fellow Beard winner Andrew Dornenburg featured Howell in their Vegetarian Flavor Bible (2014).[1][10]
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