Lyana Blount Adds a Plant-Based Voice to Puerto Rican Cuisine

For Lyana Blount, food has transformational power.

When she went vegan, she transformed her health and lifestyle. When she launched Black Rican Vegan, she transformed the identity of Puerto Rican cuisine. And, as her culinary footprint grows, she works to transform her community.

I sat down with the chef and entrepreneur at La Fonda, a restaurant in Spanish Harlem—also known as El Barrio.

“I feel like a lot of the food that I make has a story behind it—who taught me, the first time I ate it, my first experience making the recipe,” she says.

Blount was born and raised in The Bronx, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and Black father. Thinking back, her childhood memories were steeped in the flavors of soul food on one side and el Caribe Hispano on the other.

She was a curious kid from the start. Whoever was in the kitchen—her mom, her grandparents, or her uncle, ‘the soup king’—young Blount peered over their shoulders and took mental notes for her turn at the stove.

Oftentimes, she blurred out the noise around her through reading and cooking.

“Cooking was just a natural hobby for me. It was my escape from life that was happening at the time,” she says. “I didn’t have the best upbringing, but I made the best of it… with books or finding something to cook in the kitchen,” she says.

It was through food she found a way to heal her inner child.

“There were a lot of unhealthy patterns in my family, a lot of deaths, and I’m just like, somebody’s gotta change this,” she goes on to say. “So, I think, in my unique way, I thought, ‘I want to, you know, break these generational curses. I want to build something.'”

She sifted through shelves of self-help books and holistic lifestyle journeys. She learned how energy works, how energy is transferred. As a way to overcome her personal trauma, she stopped consuming foods entangled by the trauma of animals.

But she didn’t want to stop eating her favorite dishes altogether. So she got creative. Blount “veganized” her favorite Puerto Rican dishes, took her new recipes to social media, and accrued a fan base that wanted a taste.

“After my dad passed away, I was like – you know what – life is short,” she says. “Any given moment you could be gone, and I just felt like, if you want to do something, you just do it.”

So she officially launched her own plant-based culinary brand and called it Black Rican Vegan.

“I think people won’t do certain things until they have the options to do it,” she says. “[They’re] gonna be accustomed to what’s around them and they’re going to continue to consume that until somebody comes in and like…changes it. Get them familiar. Make them comfortable. Remind them of home.”

She started working out of her Bronx apartment. Then she started delivering meals alone throughout New York’s boroughs. That led to doing pop-ups, writing and publishing a cookbook, and partnering with La Fonda in the heart of El Barrio.

Funny enough, most of Blount’s customers are not even vegan. People just like her food, her new take on traditional dishes.

“I think it’s important for the community because we’re bringing these vegan options that’s new to them, especially to a place that is so based on tradition,” she goes on to say. “We’re still doing the same foods they’re familiar with, but with a vegan twist [and in] a more health-conscious way.”

Blount is actively adding a new voice to the soul-Puerto Rican culinary landscape. From the jackfruit chicharron to the mushroom sandwich, Black Rican Vegan is many people’s first experience at the intersection of vegan, soul, and Puerto Rican cuisine.

These inventions in the kitchen, inspired by the stories of her family and lovingly shared with her community, will be part of her transformational legacy.

“I feel like your inner being reflects your outer world, and everything is about perspective,” she says. “I’m still healing my inner child. She’s rooting for me. I’m the person that my little girl self needed when she was going through what she was going through. She’s super proud of herself right now.”