Vegan Food Made for Meat-Eaters & the Veg-Inclined, Plus Cocktails, for South Park

Since 2011, Kory Stetina has been organizing well-attended vegan/craft beer pairing pop ups at eateries around town, from Tiger!Tiger! to Toronado to Tacos Perla, under the moniker LOVELIKEBEER.

Fueled by the popularity of those events, Stetina has announced that he's planting a full-fledged vegan restaurant in South Park.

Dubbed KINDRED, it'll take the place of Alchemy Cultural Fare & Cocktails (1503 30th Street), which opened in 2009 and just announced that it will shutter next month.

An extensive remodel of the 2,800-square-foot restaurant is planned, which will include refreshing the exterior, reconfiguring the interior, creating more of an indoor/outdoor space and adding new patios at the corner of 30th and Beech Streets.

Slated to open in mid-2015, KINDRED will aim to be both a buzzing bar and a solid community restaurant that will offer cocktails, "wild and inventive" vegan food and a curated selection of draft beers with a focus on food pairings; Stetina says that he's developing an "elevated, artful and approachable" menu inspired by successful vegan eateries from around the country, including Portland's Sweet Hereafter and City O'City in Denver.

This is Stetina's first restaurant but he's got some serious firepower in his corner; CH Projects' (Ironside Fish & Oyster, UnderBelly) Arsalun Tafazoli and Paul Basile have signed on as partners, with Tafazoli advising on operations and Basile co-designing the interior, though KINDRED is independent from the CH Projects' brand.

Stetina plans to document KINDRED's journey from start to opening via social media and through its website, where the restaurant's mascot, a four-eyed wolf with snake horns, gives a hint of what might drive the look and feel of the upcoming restaurant.