Wayward Cafe

Favorite Bites: Tofu scramble
Food: (poor) 1 2 3 4 5 (excellent)
Service: (poor) 1 2 3 4 5 (excellent)
Appearance: (poor) 1 2 3 4 5 (excellent)

This used to be the restaurant Good Morning Healing Earth and then it was Rainy Day Cafe. It is my understanding that it is now run by a group of vegan punks. The staff is made up of volunteers who can become collective members that get a say in how the restaurant is run. The menu has become a little less hippie granola than Good Morning Healing Earth's (although they do have that on the menu), the number of selections has decreased, but the taste of the food has improved. Plus they host live music some evenings, anything from political folk punk to gutter country to local accordian players.

The focus of this restaurant is affordable homestyle vegan food. Everything is 100 % vegan, free of hydrogenated oils and refined sugars, and they try to use organic products whenever possible. Breakfast is served everyday they are open all day (as one of them told me, it's none of their business when you wake up for the day.) They have a printed menu for breakfast and lunch, but at night dinner is whatever is posted on their "Daily Specials" board.

The night that I went I had a pesto pasta which was served on a bed of fresh spinach leaves. They did really well with the sauce (although it did need salt for my tastes), i.e. it didn't taste like a tofu sauce that was trying to taste like the real thing. The person I was with had the Migas - black beans, mexican seasoned tofu, pico de gallo, salsa, and cilantro tofu cream served over fried corn tortillas. The seasoning and spices were good, especially the tofu cream. I do have to say though, I'm not a big fan of corn tortillas - they tend to always make everything a little too dry for my taste. On another visit I tried the tofu veggie scramble which had curried scrambled tofu, onions, green peppers, mushroons, carrots, tomatoes, and broccoli with whole wheat toast. It was your good basic tofu scramble. My friend had a homemade veggie burger, which she was quite impressed by. It came with homemade cole slaw, which was tasty, and a pickle.

The appearance fits in with your typical casual comfortable cafe: mixed wood furniture, lots of light, and outdoor seating available. What I really loved about this place, besides the food, is how happy the people were that worked there. They seemed to honestly enjoy being there and will often banter with the other staff and customers. The atmosphere is definately laid back and stress-free. They didn't even get mad the time my friend accidently made one of the server's children cry (she was there visiting off hours.)