Ellwood Thompson’s Blog

Here’s the original post:

“I could be wrong, but…..Does anyone know of any instances where Ellwood Thompson’s has mislabeled their sandwiches and put the vegan chicken salad label on a real chicken salad sandwich? Because I love their chicken salad sandwiches and I eat them all the time, but the one I just ate tasted different. Extra chickeny. Not that this would be a bad thing if it’s really vegan, but I’m a little weirded out by the possibility that it’s not.”

Here’s the response I tried to submit, but I have not been approved as an rva_eats member -

“Okay, I work at Ellwood Thompson’s and I can tell you that we serve both vegan and traditional (meaty) chicken salads. Here’s a note from our Exec. Chef, Jannequin Bennett, who is vegan and takes this very seriously. (She has a vegan cookbook out - it’s awesome.)‘The real chicken salads at Ellwood’s are made with whole chicken breasts that are cooked then cut into large chunks. The vegan chicken salad is made from Delight Soy Nuggets which are cooked then finely minced. So the color and texture of the salads are totally different. It would be really hard to mix them up. Hope this is helpful.’

I would add to Jannequin’s statement that the “meaty” chicken salad is typically made as a Tarragon Chicken Salad with grapes or a Curried Chicken Salad with the orangy curry color. Eat our Vegan Chicken Salad with confidence -it’s made with super yummy soy nuggets that taste really chicken-y. We also sell the nuggets that are oven “fried” in our deli case. Enjoy!”