At Black Magic Mexican, Gosselin makes his own imitation meat products out of ingredients like mushrooms and wheat gluten. He says even meat-lovers have stopped fretting.

Eighty-five percent of his clientele aren’t vegan, he said: “I’ve had lots of people come who are meat eaters who actually have said that some of the faux meats that I make are better than the original.”

Outside of food truck season, Black Magic Mexican also puts together Thanksgiving, Christmas and Super Bowl pre-orders. “I felt there was an opening here for vegan food, and there was,” said Gosselin, who lives in Lebanon during the summer and heads to Vietnam for part of the winter.

As meatless diets go mainstream, even Burger King is taking cues from the meatless caucus. In 2019, the fast food chain introduced the plant-based Impossible Whopper, serving it still at its restaurant on Route 12A in West Lebanon.

But other Upper Valley eateries are woefully behind the times, vegans in the area say.

Gosselin’s food truck is a site of culinary relief for meat-abstainers in the area, where high-quality vegan and vegetarian options are few and far between, said Jamie Bernstein, of Windsor, who runs the Facebook page Upper Valley Vegans. While vegetarians don’t eat meat, vegans forgo all animal products, including eggs and dairy.

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There are only “a handful of places at best” that are both accommodating to vegans and worth the price of eating out, she said.

The group shares where to find the best vegan offerings in the Upper Valley and flags the spots where a vegan would likely find themselves out of luck.

Over the past decade, the percentage of the American population that identifies as vegetarian or vegan has steadily increased. Members of the Upper Valley Vegans Facebook group cite animal love and health impacts as their primary motivations behind dropping meat, Bernstein said.

Research that has underscores the carbon emissions associated with eating meat has also drawn environmental activists into the fold. Meat production is responsible for about 15% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, according to the United Nations.

Veganism exists on a spectrum, Bernstein said, and practitioners draw the line at different spots on the animal product continuum.

“Some won’t eat a plant-based burger if it was cooked on the same flat top (grill) as an actual beef burger,” she said. Others are more lax.

The Hartland Diner, with its full-vegan breakfast menu, is also a go-to spot, Bernstein said.

Nicole Bartner, owner and chef at the diner, makes vegan biscuits and pancakes, using substitute alternative milks. She also serves vegan sausage patties but couldn’t find a suitable vegan bacon. “The ones I tried were terrible,” Bartner said. “I’m not going to serve something that’s bad.”

In Hartland, which has about 3,500 residents, “you have to be a destination of some sort to get people to take our exit,” she said, referring to Interstate 91. “It took seven years to make the Hartland Diner a destination. And people drive here for the vegan menu.”

But Bartner doesn’t think a year-round restaurant that only serves vegan food could make it in the Upper Valley. “You can do that sort of thing in a big city, but around here you have to hustle,” she said. “You’ve got to do everything you can to survive.”

Bernstein, who runs Upper Valley Vegans, chided the “veggie burger” option on many menus as not good enough, a shoulder shrug to mollify vegetarians and vegans.

Worthy Burger in South Royalton offers a cauliflower, white bean and quinoa patty, but at the end of the day it knows its customer base, owner Jason Merrill said.

The restaurant is aware of vegetarians, but “that’s not something we prioritize,” Merrill said. “Ultimately, we’re a burger place.”

But for Tuckerbox, a downtown White River Junction Turkish restaurant, answering the meatless call came naturally.

“We eat vegetarian on a daily basis in Turkey,” owner Vural Oktay said. “Half of the region is culturally vegetarian.”

Finding that about one-fifth of his clientele are vegetarians or vegans, Oktay went further, taking the yogurt out of his babaganoush recipe to make it vegan.

“I wanted to introduce everyone to this dish,” he said.

To ensure that the restaurant’s vegetable casserole-like dishes are fully vegetarian, the restaurant keeps animal fat out of the menu item, called güveç.

Why does he go the extra mile?

“I know my community,” Oktay said.

Frances Mize is a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at fmize@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.