Inn Season Cafe

I am into singing bowls.

Does that surprise you?

Maybe not.

I guess since I’m a veggie hippie dude, being into the singing bowls is not the last thing that somebody might imagine that I’m into.

And that somebody imagining all of this wouldn’t be wrong.

They would be right.

Lucky somebody.

Right again.

Dang them, that somebody. They pegged me.

Saw me as a singing bowl lover from a mile away.

Knowing this, that somebody might also think that I am not a fan of science.

They might think that because I find the singing bowls to be healing and special that I am someone who ignores the fact that the science on the issue suggests otherwise.

But here that somebody is wrong.

Ha! The fool that somebody can be sometimes.

I love science. It has a lot to do with why I adopted a plant-based lifestyle about five years ago. So does compassion, but that’s neither here nor there for right now.

An understanding of science and belief in the singing bowls do not need to be mutually exclusive. In fact, they can go hand in hand.

The key, in this case, is placebo.

Science believes in placebo because placebos have been proven to be effective in many studies. Science likes that kind of thing. Repeated provable results.

And placebo is part of the reason that singing bowls are healing for me.

Since I believe in them enough, in their own small way their effects become real to me. My mood is lifted, my breaths are deeper and easier, my blood pressure drops, and stressors drift away. These are real effects. The changes are observable and repeatable.

Somebody else might not believe in or appreciate the singing bowls, and that’s fine.

For them, the singing bowls would probably have none of those healing effects that I mentioned them having on me. The placebo is ineffective if the person receiving it does not believe it to be real.

That’s the wild part. It requires belief in order to become real, yet is scientifically provable. There are very very very few things out there that can host both of those truths
at once.

Placebo is one of them.

You know what doesn’t require any special belief in order to become real?

The fact that Inn Season has some seriously woofable food. That is just a plain and simple truth.

But it never hurts to gather a leeeetle bit more evidence.

So, in the name of science, we’re off to Inn Season Cafe
for lunch.

Eating lunch at Inn Season Cafe feels a lot like it would feel to eat lunch at yr grandmother’s house if she were a cool vegetarian hippie.

There’s pretty natural light, light colored wood that moans a little with age, and sweet green plants dangling from macrame hangers in the windows.

Is yr grandmother a cool vegetarian hippie?

If so, then it is exactly like eating lunch at yr
grandmother’s house.

Like if she had a bunch of her friends over to all eat in the living room at the same time.

And it FEELS like that too. I mean that in the best of ways.

It FEELS like people are comfortable there. Like they’ve been going there for years.

Grub

The Big Baprawski (Daiya chez for vegan option).
Dang was this good. There are a few veg places that do a take on the Big Mac, and this one’s my favorite. It’s not because it comes the closest to the Big Mac, because it doesn’t (the Big Mock at Chili Mustard Onions is much closer to a Big Mac in flavor). It is because it gives you what you want from a Big Mac without making yr tum-tum go a’ heavily rumblin’ afterward. The thousand is delicious, the multigrain bun is soft and perfect, the tempeh’s done right with no bitterness, the veg chez melted just right to become buds with the sauteed onions which in turn become buds with yr taste buds, and classic lettuce and tomato for a little extra freshness, and all the flavors are just being buds with yr taste buds and budding around in there. It’s nice when flavors just get along and be buds. Sides are blue corn chips and coleslaw.

*Extra credit to Inn Season on their coleslaw. Caraway seeds in there? Yes, caraway seeds in there. Not creamy and not astringent. Just fresh. I like all kinds of coleslaw, for the record. This one is just unlike a lot of the others that I’ve had

Open Face Luncheon (Violife chz for vegan option).
We don’t usually get specials for our first post about a restaurant, but we made an exception here. We made this exception not only because it sounded totally delicious, but because they almost always have some version of the open face luncheon on their lunch menu. The big idea stays the same. The toppings just change. This one had a bangin’ combination of broccoli, snow peas, mushrooms, and sauteed onions, tomato, avocado, nicey-spicey dijon, and a creamy dreamy white Violife melted chz — all over a thick slice of multigrain bun. What’s there to say about it? If that shit doesn’t sound good to you, yr frigged bud.

Well, that was it.

Our research was finished.

We stretched out real quick in the sunny dining room and I belched the belch of a scientist. If you don’t know what that sounds like, just imagine anybody else belching.

That’s what it sounds like.

Xoxo

J