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Although veganism is not the first thing you think of when you hear about delicious Mexican food in San Antonio, Plantaquería is a vegan Mexican restaurant that leaves people wondering how something so delicious is completely plant-based.
It is located downtown on the corner of Broadway and East Travis Street. Large pink cursive letters read “Plantaquería,” with the words “Tacos y Más” reeling in hungry tourists and locals alike.
The name, Plantaquería, is made up of the words “plant” and “taquería” combined. The restaurant maintains the name’s integrity by having a comforting environment that a typical taquería has. Plants line the windows and upbeat Latino music softly fills the space alongside the smell of fresh homemade tortillas and guacamole. The owner, Sofia Maria Renteria, said that as a San Antonio native, she understands the daunting feeling of going downtown and trying to navigate parking. She tries to relieve this stress for people by having a section in the Plantaqueria website that guides people to affordable parking options.
It’s 11:30am on a Friday and Elijah Bratton is ordering. He’s from Washington D.C. and in San Antonio for a work conference.
“Anytime I'm able to try ethnic vegan, I'm always super eager to do that. Because, you know, standard American vegan, okay, sure,” Bratton said. “But I always want to see what different culture groups and nationality groups do without meat and without dairy.”
The menu has a variety of options such as breakfast tacos, tortas, birria quesatacos, and aguas frescas.
“This is our carne asada. It's made with a soy protein. So that's why it has kind of that meaty look to it. It also has that chew to it. So we're just instead of doing meat, it's all soy product. For this one specifically,” Renteria said. “We also do jackfruit. We do the barbacoa. We do the birria out with the jackfruit as well.
They season their dishes the way one would season non-vegan plates. The in-house marinade is made with freshly squeezed lime juice, Mexican spices, and soy sauce.
Michael Chunn is a shift lead at Plantaquería. He has been there for 16 months. Before working there, he knew nothing about vegan food and did not expect to like the food.
“I really love asada, and it tastes just like asada — has a great flavor, has a great taste. The potatoes are fresh,” Chunn said. “I mean, Mexican food is still Mexican food. Tortillas are homemade. So, I’ve been surprised, for sure.”
Veganism is the practice of refraining from consuming any food containing animal products such as meat, butter, and gelatin. It can also be a lifestyle, where people don’t buy any sort of products containing leather or that were tested on animals. There are various reasons one might go vegan, including health benefits, animal cruelty advocacy, or some of its positive environmental impact.
The owner of Plantaquería, 30-year-old Sofia Maria Renteria, initially went vegan for none of these reasons. When she was 19 years old, her friends took her to a yoga class that encouraged people to try a New Year's “cleanse.” This included being gluten-free, sober, and vegan. Renteria was the only one in the friend group who was adamantly against it.
“I was such a hater. And I was like, ‘absolutely not. I'm not doing that. I love meat.’ I loved meat at the time,” Renteria said. “I truly didn't know what vegan was. I just thought, like everybody else, like, it's just salad. Why would I want to do that to myself?”
She reluctantly looked up vegan recipes online and went to the grocery store to buy the ingredients. When she got to the produce section, she realized how absent vegetables had been in her life growing up.
“You know how when you're a kid and you go to the zoo and you're like, I've never seen an elephant in real life. I was like this with an artichoke and an eggplant, and I never had cooked those things before, so it was really exciting,” Renteria said. “At first, it was more just kind of cool how eye opening it was that I could use these things that I had never done before.”
Veganism ignited a creativity and curiosity in her that she enjoyed. She said it felt like a fun challenge to take a normal recipe and try to turn it vegan.
“I feel really confident now. If you told me, like, 'Oh, here's this Italian dish' that I've never made before, I feel confident that I could remake it vegan,” Renteria said.
When Renteria first told her family she was vegan, they responded in the ways she expected: they poked fun at her. That is, until they tried one of her meals. They soon started asking her to bring dishes to family gatherings. They soon became her biggest supporters, with her sister assisting her when she first started selling food during the pandemic in 2020. That’s when she began posting images of her food on social media. People were intrigued and reached out asking if they could buy her vegan tamales for the holidays. That’s when Renteria’s entrepreneurial journey began.
At the time, she was an applied behavioral analysis therapist for children. The pandemic had a detrimental effect on her job stability. This encouraged her to pursue selling the food that she cooked in her apartment’s kitchen. It slowly grew into something bigger than selling to people online. She began collaborating with local coffee shops to sell her breakfast tacos and was a vendor at local pop-ups such as First Friday at Blue Star Arts Complex.
Although the local events were not very lucrative, she said it helped her with marketing and networking within the food industry. This led her to meeting a local vendor who was looking to fill space in their commercial kitchen and rented her space. Renteria feels that is when Plantaquería really got its start. With a commercial kitchen she had the space to fulfill more orders. In March of 2023 she grew enough to open her Plantaquería location downtown.
Although Renteria did not turn to veganism for its health benefits, she recognizes the positive impact it has. She said high cholesterol is common in her family and providing them with healthier alternatives that don’t sacrifice the taste of the traditional Mexican dishes is important for her. With Plantaquería she wants to provide these healthier options to the community.
“We're giving people options that have no cholesterol, which I think is really important for people like us, that are not used to having this, right? But they still want the flavor,” Renteria said. “Like, what's the most important thing? Is sharing a meal with your family, sharing something that is delicious.”
Renteria’s journey with Plantaquería started with her selling tamales during the holidays. She pays homage to how it all began by selling tamales, meats, salsas and other menu items in bulk every year for people to take to their holiday gatherings.
