Tuna of the Tree, the first unique offering from Peter Destler’s Gustable Foods, which is based in Pine Plains, has a growing market. The plant-based product is perfect for vegans, but “we want to appeal to everybody,” Destler says. Currently, it’s carried in twenty Hudson Valley stores, including Peck’s Market, where it was sold out when I went looking for it. Luckily, Destler can quickly restock, since Pine Plains is his home.
Peter Destler lived in Pine Plains from the age of three through high school. His first job, at age eleven, was dusting books at the bookstore that used to be in the Stissing House. After graduation he attended culinary school and was a chef in St. Thomas for awhile. In 2000 he moved to California, where he worked in all facets of the food industry, often as a general manager in restaurants. He returned to Pine Plains to help his friend, Rory Chase, with his cheese making business. He now lives in the house that used to belong to his first boss, Hans Janicek. The office of Gustable Foods is on the second floor of A New Leaf bookstore which is operated by his mother, Ginger Dowd. So he has come full circle.
Destler left Chase’s operation to become manager of a vegan cheese company in Kingston for seven years. During that time, he became aware of the large market for vegan products, including not only vegetarians, but also people who can’t tolerate milk-based foods. During the pandemic he began to develop plant-based products on his own.
He started working with jackfruit, a very sustainable, pest, and drought-resistant fruit with a meaty texture, grown on trees in 50 countries. While he spent time on a BBQ product, other companies were doing that. Destler wanted to forge a unique niche, so he experimented with adding nori seaweed, lemon, and various spices to jackfruit, until he arrived at a convincing tuna taste.
Not only does Gustable produce Tuna of the Tree in a factory approved by the State, but Destler designed the packaging, does the sales pitch and distributes it to outlets in the Hudson Valley, Connecticut and Massachusetts, delivering it himself. The product must be refrigerated and can be shipped anywhere east of Chicago.
Destler, who has been a vegetarian himself for ten years, says he developed Tuna of the Tree (his wife Brittany suggested the name) because he wants to have a positive impact on the planet. He loves the ocean—out in California, he surfed with dolphins, catching the waves together. “Animals recognize and interact. Why not help the oceans as well as making a healthy, all natural product that is tasty and unique?”
While Impossible Burgers are now a familiar food product, there is not much development in the seafood area yet, but “the big companies are getting into plant-based products,” Destler stated, including Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee. And now the still small, but growing, local business, Gustable Foods, whose motto is,“Classic taste. Plant based.”