Tara Punzone’s culinary journey is a testament to passion and innovation. From her roots in New York City to her bombastic presence in Los Angeles, the Brooklyn native (and VegNews Restaurant Awards’ Best Vegan Chef) has carved a unique path as the chef-owner of Pura Vita—the first entirely vegan Italian restaurant and wine bar in the country. Her dedication to a plant-based lifestyle, which began at the age of 12, has been the driving force behind her mission to serve up classic flavors of her childhood through a vegan lens.
Fast-forward to today, and Punzone is churning out traditional Southern Italian flavors with sustainable, organic, plant-based ingredients at her acclaimed restaurant in West Hollywood CA. Inspired by her grandparents’ Italian sandwich shop in New York, she’s seamlessly blended her heritage with her commitment to animal rights and environmental stewardship, and customers are eating it up.
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In this exclusive interview from 2024, VegNews editor Jasmin Singer sat down with Punzone to learn more about just how her childhood dream of opening a vegan Italian restaurant came to life.
Linda Pianigiani Photography
You switched to veganism really young. What sparked that decision?
When I was a kid, I loved animals. Every shape and size, fierce and cuddly—it didn’t matter. I grew up in a really traditional type of Italian American, Brooklyn house. I always felt a certain way about eating meat, but I couldn’t explain why. For example, I would never eat something if it was on a bone or very obviously from an animal’s body. Our typical Italian American house had a table full of cured meats and cold cuts, and I would be that little kid who’d hold up a piece of meat to the light and say, “How can you eat this? You can see the veins in it! It’s disgusting!” My mother would respond, “You’re a little shit! Could you stop doing that? You’re grossing everybody out.” But I didn’t understand, you know?
Right, because kids genuinely don’t understand why we’re eating animals. What made you further connect the dots and remove them from your plate?
In fifth grade, I had a bit of a unicorn of a teacher. She showed our class a video of a slaughterhouse, and it changed my life in one 15-minute clip. After that, I threw my lunch away, went home, and sat my parents down. I said, “This is what I watched today, this is how it made me feel, and I don’t want to have anything to do with this.” They were like, “What do you mean? What are you going to eat?” But they were pretty chill, probably thinking it would only last a week or two. Instead, it never went away. It only got stronger. My parents didn’t understand it and would never follow it themselves, but they respected that I felt strongly and supported me however they could.
Including in the kitchen?
That’s how I learned to cook. They didn’t really know what vegetarianism meant for cooking, so they asked me to be present in the kitchen. I loved it. My grandparents owned a popular sandwich shop in Brooklyn. But my father warned me about the hard life of working in a restaurant. I told him at 12 years old that I wanted to open a vegan Italian restaurant, and he was like, “Please don’t. Have a life, travel, do other things.” So I went to art school, got a master’s degree in fine art, and began a career in photography.
Linda Pianigiani Photography
How did you pivot back to your childhood dream?
One day, I was listening to Howard Stern, and he talked about a restaurant called Pure Food and Wine. He made it sound like the most incredible dining experience ever, so I went. It was popular and beautiful. I asked the manager how someone could get a job there, and he took me to meet the chef. I started as a line cook and fell in love with the environment immediately. I felt like I’d wasted time not being in the kitchen sooner. I never looked back.
What was the final push to open Pura Vita?
On my 40th birthday, I took my family to Italy. I saw vegan restaurants in Rome that hadn’t been there before and thought, “If Rome is on board with veganism, the time is now.” When I got back, I quit my job and started looking for locations. I found a tiny space in West Hollywood and made it home. And here we are.
Linda Pianigiani Photography
Wow, what a journey! Tell us about Pura Vita.
It’s a lot of traditional Southern Italian food. My family is from Napoli and Calabria, so there are lots of spicy dishes. There’s also a big Roman influence with dishes like carbonara and cacio e pepe. We have pasta, pizza, eggplant parm, and lots of vegetables—all super clean and organic. Everything is made in-house from scratch. We have a wine bar with 100-percent vegan, biodynamic, natural wines.
Do you think attitudes toward veganism are changing?
I used to be the odd one out, but now it’s not weird. We’ve come a long way, though it feels like we’ve taken a step back recently. The economy, COVID, and industry strikes have made things tough.
Still, I believe that one day, people will look back and say, “Can you believe people used to eat animals?” Things are changing in the right direction. We just need to make sure the change happens faster, and that people feel supported in making choices for their lives.
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Jasmin Singer (@jasminsingerauthor) is the author of The VegNews Guide to Being a Fabulous Vegan and the memoir Always Too Much and Never Enough, and host of The VegNews Podcast and the award-winning Our Hen House podcast.
