- ANGEL CEBALLOS
- Makini Howell wants to change the way the world tastes.
Plum Bistro owner and head chef Makini Howell was genetically destined to spread the gospel of healthy eating. Her father, James, inherited a grocery store that led to the opening of a chain of restaurants. Her mother, Niombi, founded the massively popular Hillside Quickies vegan sandwich company. Mrs. Howell raised Makini and her two siblings in Seattle on an organic, vegan regimen; not only did Makini not rebel, she used her mother’s guidance to catapult herself to the highest levels of the vegan-restaurant food chain.
Howell worked in New York City as a graphic designer and men’s denim designer for Rocawear for a time in the aughts, and even in America’s biggest metropolis, she found quality vegan food options to be scarce. In 2009, back in Seattle, Howell turned her lifelong reverence for a meatless/dairy-free diet into one of the city’s most well-regarded vegan eateries—and one of Capitol Hill’s finest destination restaurants. Howell also runs Plum Cafe on Capitol Hill (formerly a branch of Hillside Quickies), recently opened a Plum branch in the Armory at Seattle Center, and has a Plum food truck coming soon. Customers’ inquiries about her recipes eventually grew too loud to ignore, so this spring, Howell published Plum: Gratifying Vegan Dishes from Seattle’s Plum Bistro.
