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.

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