San Diego Magazine's Happy Half Hour

Ain’t easy being a vegan. Harder being a vegan in the Midwest in the ‘90s. Your eating options were the steamed broccoli at the steakhouse (hold the butter), some room-temp air, or learning to cook in self-defense. “That’s why I learned to cook,” says Roy Elam, chef and owner of Donna Jean in Bankers Hill. He’s wearing a death metal t-shirt in our conference room. Actually I could have that wrong. It may be doom core or emo-dream core. So many dooms and cores. Point is, he and David are really getting along on this episode of Happy Half Hour (David plays in a doom or core band you should check out, Weight of the Sun). In the September issue of San Diego Magazine, we tasked our food writer with creating the ultimate guide to plant-based restaurants, or plant-based friendly restaurants, in the city. Donna Jean is on that list. Roy’s been vegan for a few decades, having trained under one of the most-respected plant-based chefs in the country—Matthew Kenney and Scott Winegard at Plant Food in Venice, before becom