For decades, Chaka Khan has kept us well fed with hits like “Ain’t Nobody,” “I’m Every Woman,” and “Tell Me Something Good.” But now, the Queen of Funk has turned her attention to sustenance of the literal kind: plant-based food.
Khan has teamed up with her sister, Tammy Michelle, and chef and restaurateur Anne Onyeneho to open Chaka’s Plantbaed Café in Serenbe, Georgia. The new spot is a sister location to the original Plantbaed Café, which Onyeneho opened in Vinings, Georgia, in 2024.
As at the Vinings location, customers can expect a wide range of wholesome, plant-based offerings, including tacos, sandwiches, bagels, and bowls, alongside a few dishes created especially for the new café.
There’s the Chaka Bowl, for example, with black beans, Plantbaed’s own ground walnut meat, cilantro-lime wild rice, pumpkin seed and jalapeño pesto, pico de gallo, and the café’s new signature Through the Fire hot sauce.
Chaka’s Plantbaed Cafe
There’s also the Serenbe Cobb Salad, featuring king oyster mushroom “bacon,” seasonal greens, avocado, deep-fried garbanzo beans, Roma tomatoes, and black salt, all drizzled with hemp seed ranch.
The café plans to source all its produce from Serenbe’s own farmers market.
“Yesterday we officially opened the doors to Chaka’s Plantbaed Café in Serenbe, Georgia, and my heart is full,” Khan wrote on social media.
“My sister Tammy and I fell in love with Chef Anne Onyeneho’s food as customers first, so being able to bring this next chapter of Plantbaed to Serenbe feels very personal.”
Chaka Khan’s plant-based journey
Onyeneho confirmed to Essence that the idea came about because Khan loved the original Plantbaed Café so much that she wanted to bring it to Serenbe, where she now lives.
Khan has followed a plant-based diet for some time. In 2012, she told Huffington Post that she had ditched meat and dairy to help manage her type 2 diabetes.
And now, more than a decade later, she wants to make plant-based food more accessible to others, too.
“She is plant-based, and she actually believes in it,” Onyeneho told Essence. “She’s not just trying to hop on a trend. It’s really her lifestyle. I’m able to really see that she enjoys the food.”
Plantbaed Cafe
“She’s a legend,” she added. “We’re hyperlocal in our business, and I feel like this relationship could be the beginning of the most beautiful opportunities.”
Khan also confirmed in her social media post that, through Chaka’s Plantbaed Café, she hopes to “create opportunities for neurodivergent adults and support [The Chaka Khan] Foundation programming.”
Khan launched the foundation in the 1990s. Its work includes raising awareness of neurodiversity in communities of color and empowering and supporting women and at-risk children across the US.
“Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate with us,” continued Khan. “Come hungry, come curious, and come see what we’ve been cooking up.”
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Charlotte is a VegNews editor and writer based in sunny Southsea on England's southern coast.
