Two Dollar Radio: The Food Is the Story

If you’re one of those foodies who groans at having to scroll through a story to get to the recipe on a food blog, the folks at Two Dollar Radio have a new cookbook that isn’t for you.

Or maybe it is.

The indie publisher’s first-ever food title, Two Dollar Radio’s Guide to Vegan Cooking, is more than the recipes from café chef and owner Eric Obenauf. It’s the adventurous tale of how those recipes came to be part of the menu at Two Dollar Radio’s headquarters café.

Intertwined among the vegan recipes and vegan hacks for everyday life is the rock ’n’ roll vegan cheffing tale of characters called Jean-Claude van Randy and Speed Dog.

Illustrated by Eric’s cartoons, the story follows the pair on a cross-country road trip during which they encounter the likes of Tofu Daddy and Drunk Publicist as they discover and/or create their badass vegan dishes. “We were satirizing the blog recipe a little bit,” Eric said.

The hilarious episodes of Two Dollar Radio’s vegan protagonists are not the stuff of your average food blog. They’re more like the antidote to the overwritten puffery that recipe seekers complain about scrolling past to get to the good stuff.

The tales are also part of a larger mission for Two Dollar Radio, a publishing house that focuses on literary nonfiction. It was launched in 2005 by Obenauf, a Granville native, and his wife, Eliza Wood-Obenauf, who met as college students in New York. Eliza serves as the company’s chief operating officer while Eric is the editorial director.

Next came the company’s headquarters on Parsons Avenue, which functions not only as a bookstore for their titles, but also as a hub for community events such as book clubs and public performances. 

From there, a café menu seemed like a logical next step. Each element of the enterprise helps build a community, connecting stories and storytellers to the wider world, and serving some killer vegan cuisine to boot. The food is the story at Two Dollar Radio.

From left: Founders Eliza Wood-Obenauf and Eric Obenauf with co-owner Brett Gregory

SAY CHEEZE

Long-time vegetarians, the couple more recently has gone vegan. Eliza went first in 2013, but Eric took longer to come around. “Eric does not sacrifice when it comes to his food,” Eliza said. “He likes to eat well.”

The obstacle was the same for him as it is for many vegetarians: the reluctance to give up cheese. “For me, personally, that was it,” he said. “I was hanging on just because of the cheese.”

But then, Eric said, he began discovering the many tasty cheese substitutes he could make and all the savory and satisfying dishes those “cheezes” would allow him to create.

In the book, he describes finding recipes for good dairy-free cheeses as the Mount Everest of veganism. In fact, the book includes a section on cheezes, most of which are made with some combination of cashews, tofu and nutritional yeast, among other ingredients. 

And once you have good melty vegan cheeze, you’re halfway home to adapting many of the most treasured comfort foods and bar-food classics, including Two Dollar Radio’s Buffalo queso, smoky mozzarella cheeze and even devilish cheezecake.

Reassurances and recipes for tasty vegan cheese substitutes are part of a broader goal for the book. All the recipes are meant to make veganism more appealing and accessible, emphasizing familiar dishes and using ingredients that aren’t exotic or difficult to find.

The Taco Mac & Cheeze Tortuga

DON'T CALL IT "PLANT-BASED"

The couple always knew their menu at the headquarters would be vegan. After all, they’re vegan, their kids are vegan, their friends are vegan. “We live in this little bubble of people who don’t eat meat,” Eliza said.

But as they were developing it, the couple got plenty of advice NOT to explicitly call the café menu “vegan” for fear of putting off omnivores. Instead, they were counseled, they should call it “plant-based.” But plant-based, for all its recent popularity, does not necessarily mean vegan. Also, the duo rejected the idea that vegan food is too fringe or inaccessible for most patrons to enjoy.

Vegan food has come a long way since the steamed vegetables and brown rice of the ’70s.

For proof, look no further than Two Dollar Radio’s hearty game-day chick’n wangs, tacos hermanos or beer brats. “It’s not just some hippie food,” Eliza said.

Two Dollar Radio is hardly alone in embracing vegan dishes. Well known for its diverse culinary scene, Columbus is seeing an increase in vegetarian and vegan restaurants, as well as an uptick in the number of other restaurants that have plant-based items on their menus, according to Diane Hurd, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Restaurant Association.

The Two Dollar Radio headquarters and café is at 1124 Parsons Ave.

THE LEGENDS BEHIND THE FOOD

When Two Dollar Radio first added a café to its headquarters in 2017, they initially planned to offer a small, simple menu. “We had been thinking there would be some dips and maybe a couple of sandwiches,” Eric said. Instead, the menu grew.

And each new dish cooked up by Eric and the other kitchen staffers brought with it an origin story. ”We have a literary inclination,” Eric said. And so Jean-Claude van Randy and Speed Dog were born. And the tales of their adventures began as the inside jokes of the kitchen staff.

“They’ve lived with us for a couple of years now,” Eric said. “Whenever we come up with a new recipe we have to think of how this fits into the story.”

The stories of the cooks themselves show up in the recipes as well. Second Pair of Black Jeans Eggplant Po’ Boy, for instance, takes its name from the staffer who was known to wear all black every day. This included black jeans.

“One day he said to me, ‘Ah, I had to get a second pair of black jeans,’” Eric said. “I said, ‘You mean you’ve only had ONE pair this whole time?!’”

Among the creative offerings in the cookbook are tortugas.

The small Two Dollar Radio kitchen relies primarily on a convection oven. Using this instead of a cooktop grill transforms a crunch wrap into a puffed up, crispy-tortilla creation that looks like a turtle shell. Hence, tortuga—the Spanish word for turtle. 

According to the cookbook’s explanation of its origins, the dish was initially called a turtle by Jean Claude van Randy and Speed Dog until they met up with a rocker girl named Rach, who told them a turtle is a sundae, not a baked tortilla. And at her suggestion, the tortuga—the taco mac & cheese tortuga, the gobbler tortuga, the loaded breakfast tortuga—was born.

The café

A DEPARTURE

Don’t expect more cookbooks from Two Dollar Radio. Except for a possible future sequel to update the vegan cooking guidebook, Eric and Eliza say they’re likely to stick to Two Dollar Radio’s bread and butter, which is mostly literary nonfiction. 

But the vegan goodies are still flowing out the kitchen at the Two Dollar Radio Headquarters café. In mid-October, after months of takeout and delivery orders only, Eric and Eliza decided to reopen for limited dine-in service. 

So, whether you pick up a copy of the book and cook at home or stop by Two Dollar Radio Headquarters for a visit, vegan comfort food with a great backstory is easy to come by. And if you play your cards right, you may even spot Jean-Claude van Randy or Speed Dog heading into the kitchen.

• Two Dollar Radio Headquarters, 1124 Parsons Ave., is open for carryout from 4 to 7:30pm Tuesday through Friday and from 11am to 3pm on Saturday and Sunday. See the menu and get updates at twodollarradiohq.com.