• 4
• A Delicious Meal Indeed

While I wish my first time eating The Tramontane Cafe's food was at their location (which looks like it has a great atmosphere as well as tons of live music, poets, and open mic events) for the full experience, my first taste ended up being from the comfort of my own couch. For reasons I shall leave unsaid, I was unable to cook my husband's and my dinner for the evening. This sounded like the perfect opportunity to try out The Tramontane Cafe, which proudly serves vegetarian and vegan dishes as well as more traditional meat based sandwiches. My first interaction with them was through messaging on their facebook since I had a few questions I wanted to ask before I ordered. The manager answered promptly to my message online, and was very helpful and personable. Ordering over the phone was a good and simple experience, I was able to hear the person well on the other end, and I asked if the order could be ready in a half an hour for pick up, and they said no problem! For a decent sized order I was impressed by that. I got the feeling that even if I had said 15 minutes, they wouldn't have blinked. Very fast! Firstly, the salad I ordered was really great! The base salad starts with a mixed greens bed, tomato, cucumbers, and carrots, then you can add a wide variety of other veggies and toppings, the first three additional toppings being free, then it is 10-25 cents each topping after that. I was floored. This kind of customizability is rare to find, especially for such a great price. I highly recommend the sesame ginger dressing, which is vegan and delicious! I also had a chai tea latte made with almond milk with an addition of a raspberry flavor shot. While the raspberry flavoring slightly overpowered the chai flavor, it was still very, very drinkable. I loved it, but a more discerning palette might want to hold off on the flavor shot if this one latte is indicative of their usual drink mixing. My bowl of tomato basil soup was great, and that's coming from someone who usually doesn't go for tomato based dishes. My omnivore husband enjoyed the soup immensely, saying that it's amazing how good vegan fare can taste. He had the same reaction to his Tram Burger made with a black bean patty, which he scarfed down quickly. One thing I loved about The Tram was that they had multiple vegan dessert options available. Of course this also depends on your definition of dessert. On the day I ordered, they had four house made vegan sweet options available, banana muffins (plain or with blueberries or black raspberries), as well as ginger snap cookies (which were enormous). Personally I find muffins to be more of a breakfast food than a dessert, but I was curious to see how they would taste, so I ordered a black raspberry banana muffin as well as 2 ginger snaps. The muffin was surprisingly delicious! I was expecting something dense, dry, and chewy, mostly because that's how banana muffins usually turn out when I make them at home. But the muffin was wonderfully moist and flavorful with just the right density! Everything I'd ever want in a good muffin! Now with the ginger snaps, The Tramontane Cafe totally nailed that great spice filled gingery flavor that I love, but were not very snappy, but rather chewy. Regardless, I relished every bite and will definitely order more the next time I eat there! They were that good. I'm very much looking forward to my next taste of this great cafe, in which hopefully I'll be trying their delicious sounding red lentil mixed veggie soup! Updated from previous review on 2016-07-13