Shawn Dickensheets doesn’t want to put a definitive “vegan” label on his new restaurant’s menu or philosophy. He just wants customers to enjoy its wholesome offerings.
“My goal is to sell food. I’m not here to push agendas. I do this for health,” he said. “And so plant-based cuisine is what’s on our menu; that’s what we cook. I don’t make you espouse a certain thing to eat here.”
Dickensheets has brought more than three decades of chef and restaurant experience to his new Manchester eatery, 21 Oak, which serves vegetarian and vegan dishes made with fresh and local produce and ingredients.
“Plant-based cuisine” is how he likes to refer to his food, an array of scratch-made appetizers, soups, salads, entrees and sides built around seasonal vegetables, nuts and legumes in place of meat, fish and dairy products.
It’s a lifestyle Dickensheets didn’t necessarily expect to be living as he grew up in meat-crazed Texas and later went on to co-own a chicken and ribs restaurant in Idaho in the early 1990s. But his life experiences and missionary work have taken him to 28 states. As he moved throughout the country, he would take jobs in restaurants as a cook or dishwasher, and after 10 years, he decided to get serious about a culinary career. In 1991, he entered Western Culinary Institute (now Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts) and applied his skills and knowledge to chef positions in hotels, country clubs and other large venues.
In Manchester, Dickensheets honed his vegan cooking skills at Divine Treasures, a vegan chocolatier, by creating soups, salads and entrees for the shop. He also hosted a monthly series of multi-course pop-up dinners. The special dinner events helped him build a base of vegan and vegetarian fans, he said. “They kept telling me to open a restaurant and I would laugh and be like, ‘Never,'” he said. “Well…I did.”
Before Dickensheets opened 21 Oak on July 4, he scheduled a routine doctor’s appointment with his approaching 50th birthday in mind, and his doctor pointed out troubling signs with his weight, cholesterol and blood sugar. He immediately decided to change his diet, going 100 percent vegetarian. In 12 weeks, he says he’s lost considerable weight and his cholesterol and blood sugar have dropped. “This is the best I’ve felt in a long, long time.”
The diet has given him new energy for his ownership venture, the 28-seat BYOB restaurant (formerly home to the Sinnamon Shop) that’s attracted guests from well beyond Manchester, he said. Diners have already designated 21 Oak’s sweet potato scallion cakes with green goddess cashew crema as a favorite, along with a spicy bean-loaded Navajo chili; a whole wheat wrap with grilled eggplant, nut-based vegan chevre, arugula, smoked tomato and black garlic cashew cream; and Brussels sprouts, pan-seared with coriander-cumin lemon spice blend, garlic and olive oil. Appetizers like beet chutney, hummus and braised French lentils with flatbread are $7 to $9, soups are $4 to $8, salads are $10 to $13 and full meals are $13 to $15.
Dickensheets says he’s “perfected” his Brussels sprouts recipe after his appearance on Food Network’s “Chopped” in 2011. The judges eliminated him after the entrée course, where the chef contestants were required to make a dish with the sprouts and duck breast. “I swore to do better,” he said.
Diners have also loved 21 Oak’s version of French onion soup, with roast onion broth, caramelized onion and toasted vegan chevre.
“The vegans are ecstatic about this,” he said of the classic, which is conventionally made with long-simmered beef stock and often gratineed with croutons and cheese. “They haven’t had it in 20 years, or they’ve never been able to have it.”
The menu remains the same at lunch and dinner, but Dickensheets has added a list of sides like marinated tofu, lentil cakes, sauteed and pickled vegetables and a pilaf of the day priced at $2 to $6, encouraging guests to build their own light meals at their desired price point. A specials board features the day’s additional options, like the indulgent desserts ($6) created by Dickensheets’ wife: raw-vegan chocolate hazelnut cashew cheesecake, Kahlua cacao cake and the chef’s caramelized banana with vegan caramel.
Dickensheets says he’s been happy with 21 Oak’s business in its first few months. While vegetarian and vegan eaters are a solid core audience, he says there’s still “[that] hurdle of people coming in and trying it and realizing ‘Oh, it’s good.’ My idea was to have meat-eaters come in and enjoy it enough to come back. Every single thing here has protein, it’s just a matter of level. Americans don’t really need that much protein, compared to what they think they need.”
And while he may have once said he’d never open a restaurant, he’s enjoying the experience.
“For 37 years I worked for someone else, working the long, crazy hours for their dream and their future. Now I’m doing it for my dream, and [my] and my wife’s future. Now, instead of the drudgery, it’s actually fun. I look forward to getting up and doing it. There’s a reason behind it, that really matters. It’s never become work.”
>>21 Oak, at 21 Oak St., in Manchester, is open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday; Tuesday through Friday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and again from 5 to 8 p.m.; and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sunday. 860-533-9218, 21oakmanchester.com.
