About Chef Adam Sobel

& The Cinnamon Snail

What I love sharing on this site:

📖 Vegan recipes and cooking tips enjoyed by beginner and advanced cooks alike! My website is visited by home cooks, and culinary professionals from all around the planet.

📼 A massive library of all of my recorded plant-based cooking classes.

📧 An email newsletterwhere I share with you new recipes, resources, and information about upcoming pop-ups!

🔪My vegan cooking membership program, where you learn essential techniques, and recipes, and learn alongside other cooks from around the world who are improving their vegan cooking skills.

The Cinnamon Snail Cookbook

I wrote this book, and it's jam-packed with people’s favorite dishes from my food truck. There are also a ton of wacky stories from my adventures serving food on the road.

Buy it on Amazon

I HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE FOLLOWING BOOKS:

Can I use your photos or recipes on my website/blog?

I’m flattered! Thanks for checking with me. You may use ONE photo from any recipe you would like to feature. Instead of republishing the recipe on your site, please link back to my recipe, and if you can, also include a link to my homepage (https://cinnamonsnail.com/). If you would like to feature any more comprehensive content, reach out to chat with me about it. Who knows? Perhaps I’m an approachable and reasonable guy!

My Nutty Professional Career in a Nutshell

1999 - I started cooking professionally

in 1999 to learn how to cook better food for my vegan girlfriend (now my wife).

2001 - I became vegan

on the day our first daughter was born. Here is a podcast interview where I talk about that experience.

2008 - I cooked A LOT

I cooked a whole gaggle of vegan and vegetarian restaurants until I made the leap to create my own thing.

2008 - I launched The Cinnamon Snail

on Valentines Day. It was the country’s first organic vegan food truck! Here's a little article about us opening.

2011 - I won the Maker’s Mark challenge

for my Vanilla Bourbon Creme Brûlée donuts.

2012 - Best in NYC

By 2012 Gothamist was calling us the best food truck (of any kind!) in NYC.

September 2012 - Won Vendy's people’s choice award

This was super gratifying, because hundreds of food critics picked our vegan food over all of the non-veg finalists. It absolutely made me feel so loved, and that vegan food was no longer just for weirdos…

December 2012 - Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast.

Our generous customers donated to a fund to make it possible for us to provide about a month of free hot vegan meals, and charging stations to the worst affected neighborhoods. Here is a feature in VEGNEWS about our relief efforts.

2013 - Top 10

My wee little food truck was voted one of the top ten food trucks in America and the Daily Meal did a story about it.

2013 - Donut Showdown

The day after catering over 1300 different family’s fully vegan thanksgiving dinners, I was flown out to Toronto to film Season 1, Episode 2 of The Cooking Channel’s Donut Showdown.

2014 - #1 Highest-rated place to eat in NYC

The Cinnamon Snail was the #1 highest-rated place of any kind to eat in NYC and the #4 highest place of any kind to eat in the entire USA on yelp.com.

2014 - Sara’s Weeknight Meals

I was featured on Sara’s Weeknight Meals with adorable (and very tiny) Sara Moulton.

2014 - Vendy Awards

My team and I took home the Vendy Cup at the 2014 Vendy Awards. This was a BIG DEAL to me. We competed against to top non-veg food trucks at an event that is all about street-meat, and the judges were blown away by our vegan food. This was a dream come true for me!

November, 2014 - New York Times Dining Section

My rosewater toasted pistachio cake donuts with cardamom glaze (a variation of my apple cider donut recipe) was featured on the front page of the New York Times Dining Section.

2015 - My Cookbook

Street Vegan was published by Clarkson Potter. We ran the food truck at the book launch and
it was crazy!

2015 - A Google Talk about vegan food

I was hosted at Google’s NYC headquarters to give a Google Talk about vegan food and my adventures in the food truck underground.

2015 - Closing our truck...

2015 wasn’t all rosy. Here is a story in the Wall Street Journal about why we had to shutter our food truck business that year. Luckily it wasn’t the end of the road, but it sure seemed that way at the time.

2016 - Brick and Mortar

I opened my first brick and mortar location just in front of Madison Square Garden in the Pennsy Food Hall. It was a huge success!

2016 - Inception Donuts

I created “Inception donuts” which went more than a little bit viral.

2016 - Huffington Post Interview

Huffington Post did a lengthy and fun interview with me.

2016 - World Street Food Congress

OMG, this one was nuts. I was nominated to represent the USA at the 2016 World Street Food Congress in the Philippines. This event had some of the worst working conditions I have ever experienced in my life. Literally, it was so bad that one of the young people they had supporting us there died during the event. I am still traumatized about the experience.

2016 - Quick Serve

QSR magazine did a feature on me and my perspectives on the fast-casual dining industry.

2017 - A Second Location

I opened a second location by Wall Street in 2017.

2017 - James Beard House

I was featured as a guest chef at the prestigious James Beard House for their first night ever featuring a vegan menu.

2017 - Marketing4Restaurants Podcast

I talked about business and marketing on the Marketing4Restaurants podcast.

2020 - Pandemic Changes

Right as the pandemic hit, I closed the doors for my restaurants and food trucks. The timing was actually really graceful for me, because as my kids were growing, I really wanted to switch gears and work more locally to where I was living. Here is a very sad (to me at least) article the Asbury Park Press did about the closures.

Vegan empanadas take over the galaxy

I launched a line of vegan empanadas and croissants which were shipped everywhere in the USA!

2021 - Online Cooking Classes

I started offering my first online vegan cooking classes.

2022 - It's Over 3000!!

My cooking classes had been taken by over 3000 students, and I started offering a membership program to make the classes even more affordable to a wider audience.

2023 - This Recipe Blog

After decades of people begging me to do it, I finally launched a recipe blog. I didn’t realize how much I would absolutely love to share more detailed writing on cooking!

This website is absolutely jam-packed with resources to help more people transition to a vegan lifestyle.

I have recorded vegan cooking classes covering a broad range of topics, and a very affordable membership that includes all of my live upcoming classes and many other perks.

I share tips, techniques, and information on modifications is as to my recipes. All of the recipes on my blog have been used professionally, or developed by me exclusively for the blog. I test them all as often as it takes to ensure they work consistently and deliciously for you. I also have a supportive little gang of recipe testers and proofreaders who make the recipes to ensure the recipes perform perfectly in other people’s kitchens using different equipment.

There is something for every skill level, from beginner to advanced, for people who don’t even know what nooch is, to the level 5 vegans out there (we don’t eat anything that casts a shadow)… I have quite a few great gluten-free recipes as well as plenty of sattvic vegan dishes.

My taboule, Korean cucumber salad, cig kofte, and tahini recipes are recipes that don’t require any cooking and are easy, fast, and nourishing. I have a complete guide on making perfect seitan, and the step-by-step photo guide makes a fairly advanced process attainable for everyone. Imagine making plant-based old-fashioned apple cider donuts, or creme brûlée? You can find the recipes on this website! Dim sum masterpieces such as chee cheong fun, or kimchi fried rice, which happens to be naturally gluten-free and an easier way to make vegan butter chicken without sacrificing quality or taste are just a click away. And whatever you do, don't miss the really easy and delicious tofu katsu - tis’ my favey!

Some Personal Stuff About Me

I am a Hare Krsna.

I am a devout bhakta, and strictly follow the four regulative principles, and chant Harinam Japa daily. I love studying shastra, particularly the Bhagavata Purana. I faithfully serve Jagannatha, Baladeva and Subhadra who were entrusted to my wife and me by some fellow disciples of our Guru Maharaja after our marriage in Puri.

About my family

I started cooking vegan food before I was vegan after I met Joey, the woman who would eventually become my wife. She basically lived on French fries and canned soup, and I was determined to learn to cook so she would eat better. Along the way, I became vegetarian.

I went vegan on the day of my first daughter’s birth on September 22nd, 2001. My kids were both home-birthed, homeschooled, and vegan since birth. I greatly support people who take a natural, intuitive, and loving approach to family life. If you ever want to talk about raising vegan kids, contact me at [email protected], and my family will be happy to support you.

F.A.Q.

Why did the cinnamon snail close?

I closed down our food trucks and restaurants when the pandemic hit in March 2020. We gave away all our food and inventory to support New Yorkers who were concerned about food scarcity as lockdowns started, and the future seemed scary and uncertain.

The transition was graceful, and I was able to spend a couple of years planning a new local small vegan venture in NJ. I also started an online vegan culinary program and sharing recipes online, which has been rewarding beyond my wildest dreams.

During the pandemic, I had time to reflect on how growing The Cinnamon Snail into a fairly large company with over 60 full-time employees had made it harder for me to do what I loved most - directly cooking for people. Scaling my business down to something I could largely handle on my own has made my life much less stressful, and I have still found ways to apply my talent for food to help more people stop eating animals. Many thousands of people have now taken my online vegan cooking classes. I spend more time creating recipes for other people’s food businesses, ensuring there is more great quality vegan food being served all around the planet.

Why isn’t the Beastmode Burger Deluxe in Street Vegan?

My cookbook Street Vegan was written and edited before we started regularly serving one of the most popular menu items I ever created. The Beastmode Burger was a bourbon bbq sauce grilled ancho chili seitan burger with jalapeño Mac n cheese, smoked chili coconut bacon, arugula, and chipotle mayo on a grilled pretzel bun.

If you want to learn how to make the burger, the recipe is included in the Vegan Burgers and Fries Workshop which is available on my classes page.