Epic Vegan Brunch at Little Rock's The Root Cafe!

This past weekend, my best friend Sheridan had her school drama teacher directorial debut in Little Rock. This is her first year teaching drama at a private school there, and they put on Seussical the Musical. She (and all of her students) have been working hard for months to put the show together, so I just had to drive down there on Saturday to watch the closing night show. It was awesome! So proud. Here's Sheridan and I!

Little Rock is about 2 1/2 hours away from Memphis, so I spend the night when I go down to visit. And we typically always wake up early on Sunday and brunch at The Root Cafe. I've written about this kitschy little shop before, but we had such an epic brunch this morning that I just have to share. The cafe isn't totally vegan, but they always have tofu scramble on the menu, and they usually offer some vegan specials.

Well, this morning, there was a line out the door to order food, so I grabbed a table on the patio and trusted Sheridan to pick out some delicious food for us. When she returned from ordering, she said, "I just ordered everything vegan on the menu." And a few minutes later, a server delivered plate after plate after plate. She ordered so much food!

For starters, Sheridan got us each our own plate of Tofu Scramble and Salad. The scramble is made with grilled peppers and onions, and it has hints of chili powder and turmeric. The salad dressing, a creamy (and vegan!) vinaigrette, is so wonderful, and they use local produce in the salad and scramble. You can also order the scramble banh mi-style, which is how we usually get it. So we mixed things up today with the regular scram.

They had Vegan Pancakes on special, so Sheridan got an order of those for us to split. You get three in an order, and they're served with Earth Balance and maple syrup. Look how fluffy these pancakes are!!! These are seriously the best vegan pancakes I've ever had. 

The Root Cafe makes their own Vegan Sausage using some sort of legumes (lentils maybe?) and grains. It's really yummy, and of course, Sher got a patty for us to split.

All of that would have been plenty of food for us both, but there was another vegan special that Sheridan just couldn't pass up — Vegan Shiitake on a Shingle! Sheridan LOVES gravy more than anyone ever. And my love for gravy runs pretty deep too. I'm so glad she ordered this because it was our favorite dish of the meal. Shiitake mushroom gravy over toast! We split this too, and I'm so glad we did.

Each of us consumed an order of scramble, a salad, one and a half fluffy pancakes, half a sausage patty, and a slice of toast covered in gravy. Needless to say, we were STUFFED. But we cleaned our plates!