1. Morning Glory Café, 450 Willamette St., 541-687-0709, MorningGloryEugene.com.
2. Acorn Community Café, 769 Monroe St., 541-403-7647, EatAcornCafe.com.
3. Nelson’s in the Whit, 400 Blair Blvd., 541-844-8404, NelsonsInTheWhit.com.
Morning Glory Café, Eugene’s oldest vegan/vegetarian restaurant, has long been a place where Eugene residents and visitors could eat vegan without paying an exorbitant price. Morning Glory has placed in the top three of Eugene Weekly’s Best of Eugene polls for the past 10 years, and this is its second straight win.
Josh Aldersong, the owner and operator of Morning Glory, purchased the café in 2011, and opted to keep its menu meatless.
“That’s the legacy of the place,” he says. “There’s a lot of desire for that in Eugene, and we’re one of the last ones standing.” In fact, Morning Glory is one of seven Eugene breakfast and lunch restaurants that don’t feature meat on the menu, according to Happy Cow, an online service that helps traveling vegans find accommodating restaurants.
Not all those who travel for Morning Glory are vegan, though. Tamara Sirmons, a frequent visitor of Morning Glory, drives all the way from Portland to eat the food.
“I love pork,” she says, “but I love this more.”
Morning Glory also offers a from-scratch kitchen, with only the tofu and cheese being outsourced from local producers. Even the soy milk is made on-site, and the orange juice is freshly squeezed (and delicious).
Aldersong recommends ordering the Three Sisters breakfast — which features herbed potatoes, a vegetable medley and your option of nutritional yeast sauce, cheddar cheese, tofu sour cream or Moglo mushroom gravy — as it offers a variety of vegan and vegetarian options.EW recommends ordering the Happy Morning Sandwich — a fresh biscuit smeared with tofu sour cream and topped with a soysage patty, a glory tofu patty, spinach and tomato, as well as a side of herbed potatoes drenched in mushroom gravy. That soysage patty is a labor-intensive production, Aldersong says, but it’s more than worth it.