The Flora restaurant group has a few establishments around Seattle, all of which I like. Flora Bakehouse is an excellent bakery. Floret is the place to grab proper, tasty food before a flight out of SeaTac airport. And Cafe Flora is a popular vegetarian establishment–and one of the first restaurants I ever ate at in Seattle, while celebrating getting my first job out here. While I’ve eaten there a number of times, I’ve never had a veggie burger! I decided to rectify this while meeting someone for brunch.

On the menu was their Italian Burger, which is a grilled black bean burger with mozzarella, sun-dried tomato jam, basil pesto aioli, and balsamic tossed greens on a potato roll. Yes, reader, I had a burger with tomato jam FOR THE BLOG. Honestly, I should have ordered what my heart had really desired on the menu (a scramble). The burger itself held together and wasn’t too squishy. However, the overall package conveyed a bit of a charred flavor to me which stuck with me for awhile. Maybe that was the tomato jam and me simply disliking the flavor, or maybe the bun was over-toasted though it didn’t appear to be. The potato roll also was a bit large for the burger and toppings, somewhat overwhelming the other flavors. However, their yam fries and the accompanying aioli dip were quite nice! I’m still a Flora fan, but I think my avoidance of tomatoes was confirmed with this one.