Hip Vegan: A Fresh Start
An Organic Ojai Café Returns
When Marisa and Ben DiChiacchio closed the East Ojai Avenue location of their Hip Vegan Café back in July 2017, they thought they would reopen in a new space by the end of that same year. Then the Thomas Fire happened, disrupting life in Ojai. Coupled with construction that took longer than expected, the relaunch was delayed until January 2019. It was worth the wait.
The bright, airy new restaurant on the corner of North Montgomery and East Matilija streets is a departure from their former back-of- building bijou digs. It includes a curved bar with a partial view of the kitchen, plus plenty of dining tables inside and on the patio. Geometric art deco murals by Denver-based artist Strange Dirt, aka Marsha Robinson, grace the walls and provide a link to the café’s original site, where Robinson also had done the artwork on the patio.
If you look closely, you’ll also notice a small decorative volcano on the white tilework behind the bar. When I sat down to speak with them in the week before their soft opening, the DiChiacchios explained in passing that they put it there to cover a hole. But this souvenir of the Japanese volcano, Sakurajima, turned out to be key to understanding this unassuming couple and their approach to food.
Shortly after Marisa and Ben met in Thousand Oaks, where they grew up, they traveled together around Asia, eventually moving to Japan to teach English. They both love to travel, but for Marisa, whose mother grew up in Okinawa, it was also a chance to connect with her roots. After returning home and getting married, they moved back to Japan to Kagoshima, a city in Kyushu, the southernmost of the main islands.
“This area has a volcano that’s visible from everywhere, and it spews ash every single day,” Ben explains. “It’s like the mascot for the city,” adds Marisa.
Already vegetarians—a choice born of their love for animals—they struggled to find restaurants in Kagoshima to accommodate their diet. Too often a request for no meat was assumed to just mean no beef, and vegetable dishes came sprinkled with fish flakes. As a matter of necessity, they started cooking more for themselves, creating their own versions of popular meals.
Inspired also by the mom-and-pop-style restaurants in Japan, on their return to California in 2012 they immediately turned their experience into action. “We managed to buy a restaurant before we realized that it was too crazy of an idea,” says Ben.
The couple made the menu vegan to minimize vegan vs. vegetarian ambiguity for customers and then, with no formal training in the food industry except Ben’s previous experience as a server, taught themselves the business by doing every job in the restaurant. They eventually settled into a setup where Marisa leads the front of house and Ben runs the kitchen. In the process, they created a café that garnered a loyal following and eventually caught the attention of the national travel press and Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle site, Goop.
One of their regular customers was Aubrey Balkind, founder of Be Sane, an organization focused on permaculture-based farming, building and design, dedicated to helping people “live sane lives.” Balkind was remodeling a new event space for Be Sane, and the DiChiacchios knew they needed to find a new location for the restaurant as the East Ojai Avenue lease was coming to an end. Plans to house the two businesses in the same building soon clicked into place. Not only were they philosophically aligned, it also made mutual business sense since Hip Vegan could provide onsite private catering for events.
But Balkind’s involvement in the café goes beyond the building. His organic farm, Sane Farm—off Highway 33—provides much of Hip Vegan’s produce. In reciprocity, the DiChiacchios hope to use compost from the café to help sustain the farm. They’re also looking forward to growing their relationships with other local farmers now that they’re practically next door to the Sunday Ojai Certified Farmers’ Market. Another neighboring business, Revel, brews a vegan Jun kombucha that’s served on tap at the café and is available with custom add-ons like juiced ginger.
During the period that the restaurant was closed, the DiChiacchios traveled for a few months, returning to Indonesia, Thailand, India and their beloved Japan. And while they’ve kept some favorites on the menu like the tempeh-based Old Fashioned Burger, their all-organic fare also reflects flavors from their travels.
Ben explains, “A lot of our cooking just comes out of nostalgia and loving certain memories that we have. The food brings back memories for us.”
For customers, this means a Japanese macrobiotic-inspired bowl with a grilled Japanese sweet potato and a tempeh burger with an Indonesian-style peanut sauce. Simple breakfasts cover California staples like avocado toast and breakfast burritos, but also include a savory Asian rice porridge with peanuts, fried shallots, scallions, garlic and ginger. They’re also serving everything with house-made pickles or pickled veggies, a happy by-product of missing an opening date over the summer and wanting to do something with that season’s abundant crop from the Sane Farm.
Reflecting on the menu updates, Ben’s care is evident. “Hopefully people won’t be too upset about things that are missing because we tried to replace them with things that we are proud of.”
Despite all the changes, Marisa is clear about one thing at Hip Vegan that’s stayed the same: “It’s our baby. It’s been our baby for years.”
