Who loves brunch!?

Brunch (including vegan brunch) is the very, very best meal known to men and women alike. For example, if you love breakfast food, you love brunch, if you love lunch food, you love brunch, and if you love awesome combinations of breakfast and lunch mixed together (think a black bean burger with an Oreo waffle) then brunch in manna from heaven. Furthermore, when else can you drink mimosa’s freely starting at 9am? When else do you drink mimosa’s at all? Clearly, out of all the meals, brunch reigns supreme, and in Sacramento there is only one place vegans should go. The Best Vegan Brunch in all of Sacramento is at The Porch.

The Porch is both beautiful and tasty!

I have been to The Porch three times, twice for brunch and once for lunch, and never have I had to eat the same thing twice. There must be a closet vegan back there, motivated despite the Porch’s house made sausages and shrimp and grits. Who else could come up with meat free wonders like vegan Frito pie, Oreo waffles, and vegan spaghetti with spaghetti squash and house made vegan meat balls? As vegans, we all know how tired we get of the same dishes made with mediocre skill and a lack of motivation. Often, I don’t eat out, simply because I know that I can create far better food at home. I never felt that way at The Porch. The vegan menu is consistently good and constantly changing, illustrating how much this southern themed restaurant values its vegan clientele. It’s vegan dishes even awe non-vegans like my mother, who ordered the spinach salad with vegan feta and fell in love. She said she had no idea why it was good (it was vegan after all) but absolutely adored it.

Black bean burger and fries

Frito Pie

Vegan Oreo Waffle with fruit

My mom loved her vegan salad with vegan feta!

Furthermore, The Porch is gorgeous. Southern charm is evident in a color scheme of yellow, white, and polished wood. The staff are uniformly cheerful and helpful, and as the name implies, the best seating in the house is outside in their covered and heated porch. Being right in the middle of midtown Sacramento, the people watching is superb. My only possible complaint is the use of shoe string thin fries. French fries are one of my favorite dishes, and thin cut fries rarely have the ideal texture of crunch on the outside and hot/soft on the inside. There is also no special spice put on the fries. For such a southern cooking institution, I would think a little Cajun seasoning would be in order.

Now, for a short rant.

You may think you can go elsewhere for vegan brunch. If you look on yelp, there are tons of listings for vegan/vegetarian friendly brunch places, from The Orphan and The Veg Café to The Tower Café. Let me emphasize the VEGETARIAN part of that. And can we be frank here? Aren’t all brunch places vegetarian friendly? I mean, EVERYONE has a veggie omelet or pancakes. When I was a vegetarian, I would go to any brunch place without fear of being hungry afterwards. COME ON. Omnivores order eggs sunny side up with a side of hash browns.

Did I mention non vegan friends loves The Porch too?

In regards to vegan friendly? NONE of these places, as far as my googling revealed, yielded a single vegan option aside from a salad ordered without the chicken. Truly, how hard is it to make your pancakes vegan and inclusive for everyone? Is it really that hard? And yelp, why would you call ANY OF THESE PLACES VEGAN FRIENDLY? Sustainable organic food, and vegetarian food, IS NOT THE SAME THING. It is positively infuriating that there is not a single, token vegan dish at any one of these places.

In conclusion, save yourself some heart ache and go enjoy a cup of coffee, and some good food, on a porch, at my very favorite Sacramento restaurant: The Porch.

This Week in Updates: Still in Portland

So I am still in Portland. A little sleep deprived, haggard, could have used another weight work out, and I haven’t stretched. Sounds like traveling, yes? But I have been eating very good tasty food, I have clean clothes, Jesse still is wonderful to sleep next to, and the families so far seem to be enjoying each other. You can’t ask for too much more! Everything is going to seem so unexciting after all of this. Oh, and did I mention an epic, epic Amtrak train ride from Sacramento to Portland? I could have gotten sleep, but it was all so exciting, I didn’t!