Hudson Valley vegetarian burger chain Moonburger is coming to Brooklyn.

Eater reports that the meat-free restaurant with locations in Kingston, New Paltz, and Poughkeepsie will soon open at 126 Bedford Avenue.

Moonburger has been a rising star over the last three years, expanding quickly in the Hudson Valley. It started as a drive-thru only, which obviously is not possible on Bedford Avenue.

Founder Jeremy Robinson-Leon left his day job in 2020 to ride out the pandemic upstate. Inspired by a burger cook-off using Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat led him down the path of opening a meat-free burger joint. Meanwhile, Anoop Pillarisetti, a former Shake Shack and Momofuku manager, also joined in.

The burger joint rose to fame thanks to its association with Alison Roman, a food writer, cookbook author, and YouTube star who helped bring attention to it. If you follow food-writer gossip, you’d know she’s also friends with Bon Appétit editor Amiel Stanek, who is also involved in the project. Basically, the founders were friends with trendy New York City food personalities, and they all fled to the Hudson Valley during the pandemic.

Moonburger was a pandemic-era project. Some people took up sourdough, others took up opening vegetarian fast food restaurants in the Hudson Valley. It opened in Kingston and there were long lines of cars waiting to order— the same kind of experience traditional meat fast food restaurants earn.

The new Moonburger outpost will replace another pandemic project, Cutlets, which never opened. That chicken-cutlet sandwich shop operated as a popup during the pandemic, and was expected to open as a brick-and-mortar shop, Cutlets in 2022. It never opened. That plan was officially cancelled in the summer of 2023.