Dinner With ... Rich Landau
Chef/owner of 15-year-old vegan restaurant Horizons
- Photography by Stuart Goldenberg
Your vegetarian classification: I’m not vegan. I’m an ovo-lacto vegetarian, so I eat milk and egg products. These days, “vegetarian” can mean almost anything.
Last time you ate meat: I’m 41, and it was probably when I was 19. Something disgusting, like a cheesesteak.
Reason for conversion: When I was a kid, I thought a cow laid a steak like a chicken laid an egg. Then I found out the truth.
Secret meat craving: A nice thick juicy burger on a charcoal grill, or a corned beef special.
Favorite vegetable: Cauliflower. It’s so good raw, cooked or half-cooked. If you think mushrooms and eggplant are best to grill, try cauliflower.
Your more notable customers: Pierre Robert comes in with John Lilley from the Hooters; Larry Kane and his wife, I think she’s an almost-vegetarian; and M. Night and his wife.
Frequency of a wife dragging in her carnivorous husband: Every night.
What you’ll do when your toddler Rio asks for a hot dog: I’ll give him a veggie dog. If the kid wants a steak, my wife says she’ll take him to the farm and say, “There you go. Kill it.”
