Vegetarian restaurant in Milwaukee burbs: Café Manna

My friend Susan and I spent the day together, we had errands to run in Milwaukee, so I thought today we would check out Café Manna is. Back in December of 2008 I read an article at JS Online, and bookmarked it for future reference. Café Manna is a vegetarian restaurant located in Brookfield, Wisconsin. What a great little place!  The staff was very nice, service was great, and the atmosphere warm, clean and comfortable. The best thing is that the food was excellent.

I have only been to one other vegetarian restaurant a number of years ago, in Chicago. I suppose I would have to make another visit there to truly compare, but the one big thing that I remember was I did not leave feeling very satisfied.

What I loved about Café Manna were the flavors of everything that we had. I love spices and herbs. Things don’t have to be necessarily hot and spicy, but they do need to have a lot of flavor.

The waitress started us off with a complimentary order of Baba Ghanoush with pita chips. I had the baked falafel sandwich with a citrus tahini sauce. It came with a side of your choice. I picked the oven roasted potatoes that were nicely browned and perfectly seasoned. They weren’t stingy on quantity. It seemed like I had almost a dozen small wedges. I also ordered a cup of the lentil soup, which was very tasty.

Susan ordered the spaghetti and meatballs. She asked what dish would be the most bland, and the waitress suggested the spaghetti. Susan doesn’t care for flavors as strong as I do. I tasted Susan’s dish and it was good, not terribly bland.

I will go back to Café Manna and try a few other things on the menu. It was hard to decide what to get, since everything sounded so good. In addition to their regular menu they had a few Mardi Gras specials for today — a veggie gumbo, and a tempeh po’boy.

We left Café Manna feeling very satisfied, and not guilty about what we ate.  If you find yourself in the area — even if your aren’t a vegetarian — I think you will be quite happy trying Café Manna.