Today, Jared and I celebrated our 7th Monthaversary. Yes, we are huge nerds and celebrate our falling in love every month! Tonight, he took me to Native Foods Cafe
(1484 North Milwaukee Avenue Chicago, IL 60622) since I've been talking about wanting to try this new vegan restaurant for the past few weeks.
This place was super cute. You place your order in the front and fill up your own drinks in the back. They have free refills! How many vegan places do that? We tried all 3 of the house made beverages. They had native iced tea, lavender lemonade, and watermelon fresca. The tea tasted like cough syrup, the fresca tasted like watermelon juice and the lemonade tasted like.... well, delicious lemonade! I think that I will be sticking with the lemonade when I dine here in the future.
Jared and I adore cheese fries and often day dream of vegan cheese fries, so we were super excited about trying the chili cheese fries that they had on the menu. I'm disappointed to report that these were... okay... I think I was expecting a more junk foody taste. The cheese is house made and although delicious, it wouldn't have been my choice to top of chili cheese fries. I would have rather had a hot melty cheese that pulled the chili and fries all together.
I ordered the Oklahoma Bacon Cheeseburger. This giant sandwich had thinly sliced Native Original Seitan, melted cheddar, caramelized onions, and crispy Native Bacon on a bun slathered with BBQ sauce and ranch dressing, romaine, carrots, onions, and tomato. In case you were wondering, yes, it is topped with crunchy battered and fried dill pickle chips! Oh My God, YUM! This burger made our trip to Native Foods totally worth every penny. It was the biggest burger ever, Jared had to eat half of it for me.
Jared got the Portobello and Sausage Burger. This sandwich had grilled portobellos, homemade Native Sausage Seitan, caramelized onions, pomodoro, sweet roasted garlic, creamy pumpkin seed pesto and mayo. I tried some of his and really liked it, and although Jared liked it as well, he thought that my burger was way tastier.
We cleaned our plates! I'm glad we got to celebrate 7 months together over fun vegan cuisine. We will definitely be coming back to try different items off their extensive menu!