Plant Based Mafia

About Us

My name is Daniel Costanzo, founder of Plant Based Mafia, and I have a hell of a story for you. Like most great Italian stories, it involves family, food, a little drama, a few near disasters, and eventually, an unbelievable plate of pasta.

Plant Based Mafia did not begin as a restaurant. It began as a health journey. It began with heart disease. It began with one of those life moments where God, the universe, and apparently my arteries all got together and said, “Danny, we need to have a serious conversation.”

In 2014, I was living in Los Angeles, California. I owned a talent management company, worked as a film producer, and had a studio on Hollywood Boulevard. By most standards, I was living the dream. I was surrounded by entertainment, building businesses, dating, traveling, and enjoying everything Southern California had to offer.

The problem was that my health was falling apart faster than a cheap folding chair at an Italian wedding.

I was approaching 400 pounds. I had high cholesterol, high blood pressure, pre-diabetes, obesity, and just about every metabolic issue you could collect. If metabolic dysfunction had a loyalty program, I would have had platinum status.

But like many men, I ignored all of it. I convinced myself I was fine because I was still active. I still boxed. I still lifted weights. I still moved through life at full speed. I was not healthy, but in my mind, I was invincible.

Then everything changed.

One day, I received a phone call that nobody ever wants to receive. One of my closest childhood friends, John Gleeson, had unexpectedly passed away.

I was devastated. I flew back home to New York to attend his funeral. Like many larger people, I had to ask for a seatbelt extender on the plane, which is always one of those humbling moments where your ego quietly gets escorted out of the room.

When I arrived in New York, my friends and I spent the week celebrating John’s life. We told stories, laughed, cried, and remembered our childhood together. In many ways, it felt like we were reliving our senior year of high school.

Then something strange happened.

I started feeling like I could not get a full breath. It was not chest pain. It was not traditional shortness of breath. I just felt like I needed to keep taking deep breaths, but no matter how much air I took in, it never felt like enough.

Naturally, as a highly intelligent man with multiple obvious health problems, I ignored it completely.

The next day, I went to the gym. I boxed for an hour. I lifted weights. Then I went to my chiropractor for what I thought would be a routine adjustment.

Instead, he looked at me and said something I will never forget.

“Danny, you need to go to the emergency room immediately. I think you have congestive heart failure.”

That is not exactly what you want to hear when you are expecting a back crack and maybe a little neck adjustment.

Reluctantly, I went to the hospital.

The doctors ran every test imaginable. My blood pressure was elevated. My cholesterol was elevated. None of this was shocking. At that point, my body was basically a walking warning label.

But nothing immediately suggested a heart attack.

Then one test caught their attention. My troponin levels were elevated. A few hours later, they repeated the test. The levels had come down slightly, but the doctors were still concerned. They recommended an angiogram.

I agreed. I assumed they would not find much.

I was wrong.

Very wrong.

At forty years old, I had three major coronary arteries that were over 90 percent blocked. One of those arteries was blocked in two separate locations. The cardiologists were stunned.

Within hours, they implanted four stents.

Just like that, my life changed forever.

Here is where the story gets even crazier. The strange breathing issue that sent me to the hospital had nothing to do with my heart.

Weeks later, I was still having the same breathing sensation. After researching online, I discovered that a hiatal hernia can sometimes create symptoms that feel like breathing problems. I found a chiropractor who knew a specialized adjustment technique. The moment he performed the adjustment, my breathing improved dramatically.

The culprit had been a hiatal hernia.

In a strange twist of fate, that hernia may have saved my life. Had it not created symptoms, I may never have gone to the hospital. Had I never gone to the hospital, I may never have discovered the severe blockages in my arteries.

Sometimes life’s greatest blessings show up disguised as problems. In my case, the blessing apparently showed up as a hernia with dramatic timing.

For the next two years, however, I still struggled to make meaningful changes. That is the part people do not always understand. A major health scare does not automatically turn you into a new person overnight. You can get scared, inspired, motivated, and still fall right back into old habits.

Then in 2016, something finally clicked.

I woke up one morning and decided I could not continue living the way I had been living. I began searching for natural ways to improve my health, and that search led me to the work of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn and his research on reversing heart disease through a whole food plant based lifestyle.

His work changed my life.

That day, I committed myself to adopting a plant based lifestyle. Was I perfect? Absolutely not. I made mistakes. I had setbacks. I had moments where I was probably one bad decision away from negotiating with a slice of pizza. But I changed. I dramatically transformed the way I ate and the way I thought about food.

Soon afterward, I launched an educational platform called Heart Disease Mafia. The mission was simple. I wanted to help people understand the same information that had changed my life.

I built a website, launched a podcast, created YouTube videos, and began sharing the lessons I was learning from Dr. Esselstyn in a way that everyday people could understand. I was not trying to sound like a medical textbook. I wanted to talk to people like a real person, because most people do not need more confusion. They need someone to say, “Here is what I learned, here is what helped me, and yes, you can still eat food that actually tastes good.”

Then something unexpected happened.

I started creating recipes.

Food had always been a huge part of my life. Like many Italian families, some of my greatest memories were built around the dinner table. The recipes my grandmother made. The recipes my mother made. The Sunday dinners. The holidays. The smell of sauce cooking in the kitchen. The laughter. The yelling. The louder yelling that was somehow still considered love.

Food was never just food in our family. Food was connection. Food was culture. Food was identity.

When I committed myself to adopting a plant based lifestyle, I quickly realized that I did not want to lose those connections. I did not want to abandon the foods that reminded me of my childhood. I did not want to give up the flavors and traditions that had been passed down through generations of my family.

So I started taking many of my family’s old recipes and reverse engineering them. I would look at the ingredients, understand what made the dish special, and then challenge myself to recreate it using plant based ingredients.

Some recipes required experimentation. Others seemed to happen almost effortlessly.

Many nights, I would wake up at two or three o’clock in the morning with a recipe idea. Not just an ingredient. Not just a concept. An entire recipe. I would jump out of bed, grab a notebook, and start writing.

The only way I know how to describe it is that it felt like the recipes were being given to me. I truly felt like many of them were coming from God. I know that may sound strange to some people, but that is exactly how it felt.

The remarkable part was that when I tested many of these recipes, they worked almost immediately. There was not a lot of trial and error. There was not a lot of going back and forth. I would write the recipe down, make it, and somehow it would be incredible.

It felt like the recipe already existed and I was simply being guided to it.

The very first recipe I developed was Not Your Grandma’s Rigatoni.

It was not designed to be health food. It was not designed to reverse heart disease. It was designed to help people transition. Because the truth is, most people cannot flip a switch overnight and completely change how they eat. Sometimes people need a bridge.

That dish became that bridge.

Soon, I began hosting dinner parties at my home in Los Angeles. Friends would come over and eat these elaborate Italian meals. Nobody knew the food was plant based. I never told them. I just let them eat, smile, go back for seconds, and make all the noises people make when they are having a religious experience over pasta.

Then one day, I finally revealed the secret.

Their reaction was always the same.

“Wait a minute. This is plant based?”

Many of them told me it was some of the best food they had ever eaten. Not some of the best plant based food. Some of the best food. Period.

Around that same time, a friend of mine who produced reality television invited me to compete on a cooking competition show featuring one of my recipes.

We won.

We beat professionally trained chefs with food that started as part of my personal health journey. That victory gave me confidence that this could become something much bigger.

A girlfriend I was dating at the time sat me down one day and said something that changed everything.

“You have something here. You are helping people. You are changing lives. But Heart Disease Mafia is too limiting.”

She was right. The mission had become bigger than heart disease. Together, we landed on a new name.

Plant Based Mafia.

In 2016, Plant Based Mafia was born.

At first, it was not a restaurant. It was simply a mission. I started selling Not Your Grandma’s Rigatoni at farmers markets and local food events, and the response was incredible.

Eventually, I moved to Las Vegas and continued building the brand. Then in 2018, I relocated to Florida.

My brother Benji joined me, and together we opened a small pop up location inside a food hall in West Palm Beach. The response exceeded our expectations. Customers loved the food. The community embraced us. For the first time, we began believing a real restaurant could work.

Then in 2021, we found a location in Palm Beach Gardens and opened the first Plant Based Mafia restaurant.

Neither Benji nor I came from the restaurant industry. So naturally, we did what every reasonable person with no restaurant experience does. We opened a restaurant.

We learned everything the hard way. We made mistakes. We adapted. We figured it out one day at a time. Some days were inspiring. Some days were exhausting. Some days felt like the restaurant business was personally trying to take us out. But we kept going.

Shortly after opening, our childhood friend Brian Fitzpatrick made a life changing decision. Brian believed in the vision so much that he packed up his life, moved to Florida, and joined us as a partner in the business.

From the very beginning, Brian became an instrumental part of Plant Based Mafia’s growth and success. He was not just helping us run a restaurant. He was helping us build a movement.

Together, the three of us navigated every challenge imaginable. Then came COVID. Supply chain issues. Labor shortages. Inflation. Equipment failures. Construction delays. And all the challenges that come with operating an independent restaurant.

Through it all, we stayed focused on the mission.

Today, Plant Based Mafia is entering its next chapter. What started as a blog called Heart Disease Mafia became a food concept. That food concept became a restaurant. That restaurant became a movement. And now that movement is expanding.

We are opening additional locations throughout South Florida and have plans to expand Plant Based Mafia throughout the United States.

But our mission has never really been about opening restaurants. Restaurants are simply the vehicle. The mission is helping people improve their lives. The mission is helping people make healthier choices. The mission is helping people discover that plant based food can be delicious, satisfying, comforting, and accessible.

As Plant Based Mafia grows, we are also expanding our commitment to health and wellness through a dedicated longevity and wellness initiative. Our goal is to connect our customers with some of the best health, wellness, and longevity practitioners in the world.

If we trust them, you should be able to trust them too.

Most importantly, we do this philanthropically. We do not accept referral fees. We do not take commissions. We do not get paid to recommend anyone. We simply want to help people find resources that can improve their health and quality of life.

That has always been the heart of Plant Based Mafia. Helping people get healthy. Helping people make informed decisions. Helping people live longer and better lives. And yes, helping people eat fewer animals.

We understand that most people are not going to become fully plant based overnight, and many never will. We respect that reality because we have always believed that progress is more important than perfection.

Our philosophy has always been about meeting people where they are.

If someone replaces just two, three, or four meals each week with plant based alternatives, that creates meaningful change. The impact on personal health can be significant. The impact on healthcare can be significant. And the impact on animal welfare can be significant as well.

We are passionate about encouraging people to think more consciously about where their food comes from and how it is produced. If someone chooses to continue eating meat and dairy, which many people will, we simply encourage them to support the most humane and responsible farming practices possible and avoid factory farming whenever they can.

For us, this has never been about judgment. It has never been about telling people what they can or cannot eat. It has always been about education, awareness, compassion, and giving people better options.

As we continue opening new locations, reaching new communities, and serving more customers, we hope our impact extends far beyond the food itself.

We hope to help people live healthier lives. We hope to help people make more informed choices. We hope to help create a little more compassion in the world.

And we hope to prove that healthier choices do not require sacrifice.

Sometimes they just require an unbelievable plate of pasta.