So it’s pretty much a given that Cafe Indigo in Concord is THE place to be in southern NH for Sunday brunch (well, if you’re a vegan, that is). And now that they’ve scaled back the frequency to just twice a month (second and fourth Sundays only), it’s even more of a special occasion.
The thing about all this brunch hubbub is that I often forget that Cafe Indigo is open for breakfast and lunch every day during the week, and you don’t even have to pay $15! My mom and I enjoyed a light lunch here a few Thursdays ago and it was more than satisfactory.
While a few menu items overlap, in many respects the lunch experience here is quite different from the brunch experience. It’s far less crowded, for one, and far less expensive, for two. I wasn’t particularly hungry on the occasion in question, so I ordered a bowl of the soup of the day (which the waitress, oddly enough, couldn’t describe to me — she said something to the effect of “it’s seitan…and vegetables…and I really don’t know how to describe it, but it’s good”).
Soup du jour from Cafe Indigo, served with a slice of homemade cornbread.
I wish she had put a bit more effort into her description because this soup was a DEAD RINGER for chicken noodle, which I unfortunately never liked very much. But if you do, or you did and now you’re vegan so you miss it, you should try the Cafe Indigo version for sure! It was served with a big piece of sweet cornbread, which I accidentally ate a huge chunk of before I took the photo — hence the hiding behind the bowl.
The photo doesn’t look like much, but I can assure you it tasted just like chicken noodle soup, only with seitan instead of chicken chunks. I don’t know how they got the broth to taste so authentic but it was really spot-on. A bit of a twist, texture-wise, to use orzo pasta instead of more traditional noodles, but the flavor was unaffected. Plenty of veggies, too, to satisfy us healthy-types.
My mom’s portabella wrap (not pictured — my mom is still a bit wary of the food-blog thing) was also quite tasty. I was granted a few bites in trade for a few spoonfuls of soup.
We ended the meal with a slice of the famous, award-winning carrot cake, which is definitely not pictured because we dove into it far too eagerly. Next time I will try to remember to snap a photo for you.
While it still can’t top their brunch, a midday meal at Cafe Indigo is a good, much less expensive way to sample what they have to offer. I will definitely be back, next time hopefully with more of an appetite so I can try something more personally preferable. If you find yourself hungry in Concord, I highly recommend stopping by!
Cafe Indigo is located at 128 H Hall Street (off the beaten path, in what can perhaps best be described as an industrial strip mall?) in Concord, NH. http://www.cafeindigo.com/
