Brunch is one of my favorite meals, and I have a feeling a lot of you feel the same way.
Tucked away in a nondescript house on a street corner at the edge of Downtown Danville is a lovely cafe that serves freshly baked pastries, light and healthy appetizers, hearty entrees, gourmet coffee, and flavorful cocktails called Sideboard. Really, the location is so easy to miss, we didn’t see the building the first time we drove by, leading to this exchange:
“Are you sure it’s here?”
“Yes, I’m sure! Google says so, too!”
Once you enter the house from a side door, not the front entrance, you immediately find yourself in this homey, comfortable environment. The walls are a deep red from with all types of art on the walls, and almost everything inside is mismatched in a the way you might see at someone’s house. All of tables, chairs and benches were mismatched, all the plates were mismatched, and all the silverware was mismatched, but in a good, likable way.
The place is packed with families, groups of girls catching up, men and women on brunch dates, students working on papers, elderly men reading the newspaper…basically everyone.
There’s no menu on the wall, so you pick up a paper menu and proceed through the line while making a decision on what to order. The menu here is extensive, and there’s something for almost anyone. You will have plenty of time to decide on what to order, and but if you’re anything like me, you will still second guess your choices once you reach the cash register and you’re placing your orders. There’s so much delicious food to choose from, you really have to make sure you have enough room in your belly to actually eat everything you order!
I was pretty tempted by the mac and cheese, but we ended up getting the Grilled Chicken Breast Salad, the Roasted Pink and Gold Beets Salad, a Four Barrel espresso, a Four Barrel Latte, a slice of coffee cake, and the Vampiro (spicy bloody mary!)
Since we were there at a peak time, it took us over 10 minutes to find a place to sit,
We ended up sitting at a large community table inside, which was quite roomy and actually made it really easy to talk in the midst of all the loud and fun conversations happening around us.
As soon as we sat down, our food came out quickly, and we devoured our food. I don’t know how but I was somehow able to fit a heaping salad, soup-sized latte, a slice of coffee cake, and half a bloody mary in my belly. My bloody mary ended up being too spicy for me (as in it was burning my stomach), so I decided to not finish it. I’m a fan of spicy bloody marys but my body just wasn’t ready for this one.
I was kind of amazed at myself for eating so much food for one meal! Oh well, we all have those days where we pig out, right?!
If you’re in the Bay Area and you’re out in the East Bay looking for a place to eat that combines healthy food with good flavor, you need to go to Sideboard!
