Quick Take
At The Grove Café and Bakery in Felton, chef Jessica Yarr's "plant-forward" breakfast and lunch menus put the focus on plant-based foods but include some meat and dairy. Her inclusive food philosophy and recent vegan dinner events have drawn attention from the local vegan community.
Diary-free, gluten-free, vegetarian, paleo. These days, ordering at a restaurant often means sifting through asterisks and qualifiers. Inclusivity on menus is a good thing, and when it comes to noting allergens, it’s vital. But these food labels have one critical flaw: They don’t sound delicious.
Arguably the most feared label, the one that will have most eyes jumping from that menu item to the next, is “vegan.”
At The Grove Café and Bakery in Felton, chef/owner Jessica Yarr takes a different approach. “I don’t even write the word ‘vegan’ in my menu description. I like to use symbols, so it’s a little more stealth,” she says. “Because we still unfortunately have this stigma around vegan food that it’s not good. And that’s just not true.”
The Grove isn’t a vegan café, or even meat-free. Yarr describes her menu as “plant-forward,” where the bounty of the plant kingdom – fruits, vegetables, nuts, mushrooms and grains – takes center stage and animal products play a supporting role. Vegan items blend seamlessly into the menu and are noted with a low-fi mushroom symbol.
On the menu, “plant-forward” plays out like this: The California goddess salad ($16) with quinoa tabbouleh and marinated chickpeas is also dotted with feta and bound with a creamy yogurt-based dressing. A vegetarian reuben sandwich with smoked beets ($16) is a flagship item on the lunch menu, but you can substitute pastrami for $1. And within a list of 15 to 20 items, there are one or two that focus on meat, including a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich ($13) available for breakfast and the ham and brie sandwich ($17) on a house-made baguette for lunch.
There’s plenty to tempt those who are minimizing animal products or avoiding them entirely, but Yarr says she doesn’t make food with vegans in mind. The process just comes naturally to her: “I make a lot of my menus based on my own tastes and experiences, and I am not a vegan. I like bright flavors, and [the dishes] kind of come together.” She also credits one of The Grove’s chefs, Angélica Yee, who is vegan, for helping to amp up the plant-based flavors.
Among them, well-seasoned and seared tofu and herby quinoa add substance to the colorful Rainbow Bowl ($15), along with sunny bites of cauliflower pickled with turmeric and crunchy pink-centered watermelon radishes. On the lunch menu, mild chickpeas stand in for fish on an open-faced tuna salad-inspired sandwich ($15) on homemade bread, punched up with bright Meyer lemon, pickled red onions and anise-y tarragon. The Bigfoot ($15) – one of the most popular menu items, says Yarr – is a substantial but simple vegan sandwich filled with crunchy sliced sweet potato, fresh pea shoots and a zippy scallion “aioli” made with aquafaba on luxurious homemade sourdough bread.
The beautiful, fragrant bread The Grove uses for its sandwiches is made in house, and a daily selection of homemade seasonal pastries and desserts is displayed next to the cash register, with vegan and gluten-free options. The ideas and colors here are playful and full of joy – it’s impossible to resist a perky strawberry-guava mochi cake, twisted ube morning bun with flowery matcha cream or plump vegan cinnamon roll with candy cap mushroom frosting.
Yarr is a Felton native and has prioritized local and seasonal ingredients for her entire culinary career, including her early days working at Gabriella Café in Santa Cruz and Theo’s in Soquel, and as the head chef at Assembly in downtown Santa Cruz. After Assembly closed in 2018, she accepted a position as the campus executive chef for Bon Appétit Management Co. at the San Jose headquarters of software company Adobe. Serving 3,000 people per day made her even more interested in limiting animal products as a way to eat sustainably without cutting out meat entirely.
A few years later, she launched Chicken Foot, an Eastern European pop-up, with a plant-forward menu that included potato and sauerkraut-stuffed knish; walnut bread topped with beets, goat cheese and tangy kumquats; and pierogi filled with leeks and farmers cheese, served with sour plum jam.
“It’s a way to make real change without having to make it vegan all the time. You make change more effectively if you make things easy for people,” says Yarr. “Taking the label off of things is really helpful.”
Although her food isn’t entirely plant-based, two recent dinner events at The Grove have drawn attention from the vegan community on the Central Coast. Last fall, Yarr launched a twice-monthly themed supper club, sometimes partnering with other chefs or businesses. In November, she hosted her first vegan dinner with plant and mushroom powders created by Goldmine Adaptogens, a Santa Cruz-based wellness company.
Last Saturday, Yarr worked with Yee to create another vegan tasting menu for $95 per person. The response was huge and unexpected. It sold out in 12 hours, and soon had a waitlist. Some came from as far away as Monterey and San Jose just to attend the event. One diner gave Yarr a card that thanked her for “providing her culinary magic to the vegan community.”
Yarr says it made her realize how underserved the vegan culinary community is in the fine dining world, especially when it comes to tasting menus. Over the years, she’s participated in many farm-to-table dinners for event companies like Outstanding in the Field, and while vegan substitutions are always available, it’s rare to create a menu that prioritizes vegan diners. Because of that, she’s currently considering offering vegan tasting menu events on a regular basis.
At Saturday’s dinner, the menu included crispy chickpea fritters with smoky aquafaba-based aioli and pickled chanterelle mushrooms; a cashew-based fromage blanc “cheese” served with redwood- and juniper-infused walnut sourdough bread; and three other plant-based courses. At the event, she asked how many of the guests were vegan, and only about half of them raised their hands. The rest were just there to enjoy a good meal.
“I want it to make it easy for someone to choose a vegan dish,” says Yarr. “To give it a try, and be pleasantly surprised that what they ate was entirely plant-based.”
6249 Highway 9, Felton | 831-704-7483 | thegrovefelton.com.
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