Slutty Vegan opens doors at Baltimore Peninsula location

This weekend saw a homecoming of sorts for Baltimore native Pinky Cole-Hayes, founder of the wildly popular Slutty Vegan restaurant chain, with a grand opening of her latest brick-and-mortar location at the Baltimore Peninsula on Saturday afternoon.

The Slutty Vegan restaurants began as an Instagram business for Cole-Hayes, filling orders locally in Atlanta. She later branched out to serving out of a food truck, and eventually opened her first restaurant in October 2018. Before the Peninsula location opened, there were 11 Slutty Vegan restaurants in and around Atlanta, Dallas, and New York City.

Saturday’s freezing temperatures did not deter lines of fans from forming around the block more than two hours before the 1 p.m. grand opening celebration. Cole-Hayes told Baltimore Fishbowl she has a “different layer of love” for Baltimore. She lives in Atlanta now, but she grew up here, went to school here, and still comes back here with her mom.

“It’s not often you see people leave and come back,” Cole-Hayes said. “So, for me to come back is very special.  I’m just so excited. And people will see possibility when they see me coming back and doing what I do. And I feel like that is just a beautiful thing.”

Cole-Hayes describes her goal as bringing vegan food options to those who have never considered them, especially for their myriad health benefits. Her messaging is all about having options, even if a person doesn’t want to eat vegan every day. “This is something that you can have, and you can enjoy…. You can be able to open up your horizons to different foods instead of the things that you’re used to every single day,” Cole-Hayes said. She particularly wants to bring delicious comfort food that is also nourishing, healthy and vegan to underserved residents and people who live in food deserts.

The Slutty Vegan menu is, as the name implies, indulgent and vegan at the same time. She’s gotten pushback here and there about the “Slutty” aspect of the restaurant name and the suggestive item names on the menu. A plant-based patty loaded with vegan bacon, vegan shrimp, vegan cheese, onions, lettuce, tomato, and Slut Sauce on a vegan Hawaiian bun sounds delicious, but you can’t be squeamish about ordering a “Ménage à Trois” or hearing your child ask you what “Slut Sauce” is. Cole-Hayes remains unbothered by this.

“When you think about the grand scheme of things, I built a cult following that people love and they want to be connected to,” Cole-Hayes said. “So, people look past that because they know how special the brand is.”

And what makes the brand so special?

“The authenticity, the realness of it? It doesn’t feel like a restaurant, you know?” she said, describing the atmosphere as more like a family reunion. “It feels like people coming to have a good time. They want to party. They want to not think about the worries of the world.”