Dining
BY ASIA ARMOUR
Kebobs are one of Pythagoras’ most popular menu items.
Pythagoras started as a pop-up restaurant at concerts and festivals with vegan pizzas as its most popular entree.
PHOTOS BY ASIA ARMOUR COMMUNITY IMPACT
Sugar Land’s Pythagoras plants seeds for going vegan The story behind Pythagoras began with a truth that is largely unknown, said Roozi Avokhani, co-founder of the vegan restaurant in Sugar Land. “Basically all the Greek philosophers—Pythag-
location. “[At the time, there was] nothing out here in the form of fully vegan [restaurants], but there’s a good amount of vegetarian/vegan community out this way. When we were doing pop ups, people would come from Missouri City or Rosenberg,” she said. “We thought, ‘This might be where we’re supposed to be.’” Craving galactic vegan? The couple’s goal is to remain diverse and creative when it comes to concocting new and innovative vegan options for their menu, they said. “We call ourselves ‘galactic vegan’ because we have [in uence] from a little bit of [everywhere.] I’m Persian; she’s American; I had a cook ... who was Chinese; ... we had a cook who was Mexican,” Avokhani said. Pizzas were a main feature of the restaurant’s pop-up era and something the couple carried over to the restaurant space, they said. “Our top seller is the Annoying Vegan pizza, which is our stu ed-crust pizza,” Avokhani said. “When we started doing that, we were the only vegan restaurant in the entire Texas that was doing stu ed crust.” The restaurant also has a bar with creative cocktails, such as the Tipsy Mermaid, a coconut rum-based drink made with pineapple juice, re- ball, lime and orange liqueur, and the Alien Tears Martini, crafted with organic tart cherry juice and shaken with gin or vodka and dry vermouth.
The Tipsy Mermaid is one of many unique drinks from Pythagoras’ bar.
oras, Plato, Socrates—these guys were all raw vegans, meaning they only ate fruits, vegetables and nuts,” Avokhani said. “Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, ... at the time there was no term for veganism, but these people did not consume anything that came from animals.” How we got here It took two or three years for Avokhani to com- pletely cut out meat and any animal byproducts from his diet, Avokhani said, and only with the help and support of his now wife, Jaime Avokhani. In 2016-17, she became vegan herself. It started with preparing vegan recipes at home. Then, a friend of theirs opened a pop-up vegan restaurant for concerts and festivals that the couple often helped with, they said. Their shared background in the hospitality industry gave them an edge over other restaurant concepts, Jaime Avokhani said, through their emphasis on customer service. In fact, it opened the door for them to create Pythagoras when a customer who worked in commercial real estate encouraged them to start their own business, she said. The couple relocated to Sugar Land after the birth of their daughter. In her research for where to plant a vegan restaurant, Jaime Avokhani found that the southwest region of Houston was an ideal
Pythagoras co-founders Roozi and Jaime Avokhani opened the vegan restaurant in January 2022.
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PARKWAY BLVD.
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14019 Parkway Blvd., Ste. 101, Sugar Land https://pythagoras.space
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SUGAR LAND MISSOURI CITY EDITION
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