At Plant Based Heat, owner Ralph ‘RJ Groove’Johnson is chuckling over a spitting fryer.“Twenty-plus years ago, I owned a [branch of] Crumpy’s Hot Wings,” he tells me. “And now my first vegan restaurant is next door to one, so we laughed about that.”
One of more than 200 wing joints here in the ‘hot wing capital of the Deep South’ (an epithet I’ve heard three times in as many days), Crumpy’s is something of an institution.The rib-sticking, finger-licking wings it’s been slinging since the early Nineties — served up red hot or sweet with honey — are as Memphis as Elvis Presley, barbecue and the blues. Here at Plant Based Heat, however, things are done rather differently.
The all-vegan restaurant opened in June 2021 and is one of several plant-based spots shaking up Bluff City’s meat-heavy food scene. The vegan wings — known as ‘vings’ — are a top seller, made from a mix of soy
