Austin favorite Plow Burger plants a food truck outpost in Denton

A cool concept from Austin has expanded to the DFW area: Called Plow Burger, it's a food truck set up at Tom's Daiquiri at 1212 Mulberry St., where it's serving burgers, wings, and fries that all happen to be plant-based.

This represents the first foray for Plow — which stands for "Plants Lead Our Way" — outside Austin, where the concept has three locations. They've been called "a vegan and meat-eater's food truck heaven," with burgers so flavorful that meat-lovers might fail to notice the difference, and won an award in 2018 for "Plant-Based Burger Supremacy" from the Austin Chronicle.

They use Beyond burgers, which they stack with decadent toppings like cheese, pickles, fried shoestring onions, and barbecue sauce.

They're also one of the few places right now where you can try Beyond Meat's buzzy new chicken tenders, which they serve with honey mustard for dipping.

Plow Burger was founded in 2018 by Isaac Mogannam and partner Jason Sabala, founder of Buzz Mill Coffee in Austin, where they set up their first food truck location.

Mogannam grew up in San Francisco in a family that owned a gourmet hamburger chain, before moving to Austin where he worked in the food & beverage and hotel world.

He'd changed to a vegan diet, and observed that the category often became complicated by social pressures, both inside and outside the vegan community. To that end, he casually describes it as plant-based, if the subject comes up at all.

"I wanted to do plant-based food that anyone would enjoy, vegan or otherwise," he says. "There are more people who love eating meat but are trying to eat less of it. Our goal is to not guilt, convert, or vilify. I want people to see another way that plant-based food can be."

His goal is change the way we relate to our food, environment, and agricultural system, which he says "is much easier with delicious plant-based proteins."

In addition to Plow Burger, he's also founded sibling concepts in Austin that include Plow Bao, Brunch Bird, and Mission Street Burrito.

Plow's menu includes a basic burger with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, red onions, and Plow sauce; and the Campfire burger, with cheese, pickles, mayo, crispy fried shoestring onions, and barbecue sauce. They also do a burger of the week.

They have wings with choice of sauces from Buffalo, BBQ, or teriyaki; nuggets; fries with organic ketchup or Plow sauce; and now the Beyond chicken tenders.

The expansion to Denton was initiated by Ed Soto, a veteran chef and manager who's worked at restaurants such as Cru, Ferre, and Coal Vines. He'd worked with Mogannam, and was also a Plow Burger regular in Austin.

Soto and his wife moved to Denton after she was hired as a professor at TWU. He saw that Denton would be a great market for Plow, and in trademark Plow form, they made it happen pretty quickly.

"They had an extra truck, and I knew the owner of Tom's Daiquiri in Denton," Soto says. "It only took us about a month to get it here and up and running."

"The goal isn't just to make vegan food — it's to make a good burger and good food that happens to be all plant-based," Soto says. "Everything is well thought out and carefully executed."

The Denton location has menu items from Austin as well as its own dedicated burger, called the Mean Green burger — "since we're across from UNT," Soto says — with spicy salsa verde, crispy fried jalapenos, and avocado-citrus mayo.

"There are four burgers, plus burger of the week, plus wings, nuggets, and fries," Soto says. "It's a simple menu, with the goal of doing a few things and doing them really well."

They've been open since mid-July but will throw a grand opening party on September 12 that coincides with a fifth anniversary party being thrown by Tom's Daiquiri.

The food can be ordered through Uber Eats or online through their website, plus walk-ups. They're open 11 am to midnight, and until 2 am on Thursdays-Saturdays.