The walk was kind of like willfully closing in on disaster, of knowing, deep down in the black and fatty cockles of my heart, that no good could come from where I was headed. Convicts headed to the cell, reluctant grooms on their way down the aisle, cheating husbands returning to a home all lit up at 2 a.m., and children realizing they've been tricked into going to the dentist--these were my kin as I made the turn onto 15th Avenue and headed toward Sage Cafe for a meal of . . . twigs, berries, and lumps of tofu quivering like unset cheese on gluten-free bread as thick and heavy as a brick.
Peter Mumford
Mary King with her “Sweet Jamaican” sandwich, which contains absolutely no jerk chicken.
Location Info
Details
Sage Cafe 324 15th Ave. E., 325-6429, hillsidequickie.com. 10 a.m.–7 p.m. Mon.–Fri., noon–7 p.m. Sat., noon–4 p.m. Sun.
Related Content
More About
Every step was a cruelty, a denial of my most base and starveling urges. I passed Palermo Pizza, where crowds sat in the windows eating hot slices dotted with pepperoni and sausage; past the Bagel Deli, which had a nice lox special.
I was doing this because I had to. Because a couple weeks back, in a Comment of the Day post entitled "Vegan Barbecue, and a Challenge to the Fans," I'd asked Voracious readers to name a vegan restaurant that could satisfy some weird and half-joking demands I'd made for a suitable vegan alternative to proper summer barbecue. There were rules: It had to be prepared at least vaguely like real barbecue, and had to taste at least as good as the worst full-cruelty, pig-based 'cue I'd ever had in my years of full-blown BBQ addiction. And Sage kept coming up, a place many people swore by—their go-to joint for cruelty-free cuisine and a menu completely devoid of anything with a face.
Everything was fine and fun while we were all arguing on the blog about the limits of vegetarian cuisine and calling each other names, but at a certain point it had become clear that I was going to have to check out Sage for myself, to see if the claims of those who loved it were true: that it was not just tolerable, but good, occasionally great—the kind of food that people craved.
Standing out front of neighboring Smith, I was drooling. Flatiron steaks. Fat, bloody-rare burgers. Plates of lamb sausage with medjool dates and rabbit salads. I wanted to lick the glass of the big front windows. This was what I was passing by in order to voluntarily eat vegetables, soy, sprouts, and tofu.
My major issue with vegans, vegetarians, pescetarians, those who reject gluten or red meat, ovo-lacto hairsplitters, and all their ilk, is not one of morality or health, but a simple one of choice. I never try to argue food chains or cholesterol or protein loads or anything like that. That's a sucker's game. I ask only this: Don't you feel like you're missing something? Why, given a choice, would you willfully lock yourself into a cuisine which, rather than being about the best possible expression of the best possible ingredients, is solely about denial—about thou shalt not rather than thou motherfucking shall, and have seconds, too?
Sage Cafe used to be Hillside Quickie's Cafe, which closed last year for "renovations" and reopened as Sage in December. Sage is related to Hillside Quickie's Vegan Sandwich Shop in the U District and to Quickie Too on MLK Way in Tacoma—the original iteration of this mini-empire.
All of them are linked to Capitol Hill's Plum Bistro, and the central figure here is Makini Howell—born and raised in Tacoma and a lifelong vegan who's made a point of flying the tofu banner proudly for years. She owns and operates all the locations, which share menus, names, and, more important, an unwillingness to compromise on flavor simply for a lack of animal products.
Stepping one foot inside Sage is to see all there is to see: three or four tables, a bakery case and counter, a few baked goods, and a kitchen in the back from which pumps whatever music the cook has a yen for at the moment. The decor is minimal (artful photos of flowers and salads) and the service simple: Step up, order what you like, and wait—sometimes for a long time. Because of the size of the place, 10 customers can feel like a king-hell rush, and three orders coming in at once can jam the kitchen for a half-hour, easy.
But none of this matters. The style of cooking is what's important here, a form and a mindset. There's something different about Sage, something that sets it apart from most other vegan operations from the minute you step through the door and into the swing of lunch business on the Hill.
It's the smell. Sage smells good, like caramelizing onions and hot oil in the pan, like roasting mushrooms and smoke from the grill, the tart spike of citrus and the deep, earthy sweetness of sugars meeting heat. Too many vegetarian restaurants stink like flowers, patchouli, wet dogs and the hippies keeping them, of the dim and verdant vegetable murk of slowly dying greenery, like the death scream of broccoli being terribly abused.
