Garcia's Mexican Restaurant

I love social media. Without Facebook, I would never have known that Garcia's Mexican Restaurant on Madison Avenue has a vegan menu. But armed with that information, which had been posted on the Sacramento Area Vegans page and shared by Sacramento Vegan Chef Challenge, I drove up to Carmichael for lunch last week to check it out.


I requested the vegan menu from the hostess and was happy to see a nice variety of items listed. The first thing I ordered was the vegan happy roll appetizer, which was refried beans, hot sauce, and red peppers rolled in a flour tortilla and then grilled. The rolls were spicy, but good.

Next, I ordered the tasty taco salad, which came in a crispy flour tortilla bowl. It was filled with lettuce, tomatoes, black beans, and black olives, then topped with guacamole.

By the time I finished the salad, I'd had plenty to eat, but when I saw that Garcia's offered a vegan dessert, I had to try it. The apple flautas consisted of apple pie filling rolled in a flour tortilla, then deep-fried and rolled in cinnamon sugar. What a delicious way to end a very satisfying meal!

Garcia's Mexican Restaurant is located at 6049 Madison Avenue, and their phone number is 916-344-3177. Their website address is https://www.garciasmexicanrestaurants.net/ and their Facebook page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/Garcias-Mexican-Restaurant-113955535292744/. The restaurant is open Sunday through Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Selland's Market-Café

Selland's Market-Café opened a new location on Broadway recently. I waited several weeks to check it out, hoping that the newness would wear off and the lines of people waiting to order would start to die down. I should have known better -- Selland's in East Sacramento has been a local favorite for a long time, and it appears that Selland's on Broadway will follow the same pattern.


I visited Selland's on Broadway twice last week. I checked the menu online ahead of time to make sure there were vegan options, and I found a separate vegetarian menu. While there aren't any hot dishes or desserts that are vegan, there is a very nice selection of vegan salads.


During both visits, I ordered a salad trio. For the first one, I chose the roasted beet, roasted cauliflower and chickpea, and Asian noodle salads. The beet salad consisted of beets, chard, red cabbage, green onion, sunflower seeds, and a maple-sherry vinaigrette. The cauliflower and chickpea salad included arugula, and was tossed with a lemon-tahini dressing. In addition to the noodles, red bell pepper, carrots, green onion, cilantro, and a peanut dressing made up the Asian noodle salad. All three salads were excellent, which made it hard for me to order something different the next time I visited.

However, I wanted to be able to show you a more complete picture of Selland's vegan options, so I did order a couple of different salads for my next visit. I stuck with the Asian noodle salad, but I added the seasonal fruit salad and the roasted broccoli and red pepper salad, which was tossed with olive oil, garlic, and lemon.

I notice that, in addition to these vegan side salads, there is also a vegan super greens signature salad, consisting of spinach, kale, chard, roasted beets, red cabbage, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and maple-sherry vinaigrette.


Selland's Market-Café is located at 915 Broadway, and their phone number is 916-732-3390. Their website address is http://www.sellands.com/, and their Facebook page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/sellandsmarketcafe/. The restaurant is open Monday through Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Sorry, no Sacramento Vegan blog post this week

Sacramento Vegan is taking the week off...

... but watch for occasional updates on Facebook or Instagram.

Palladio LUXE Cinema

I've been wanting to try out one of the new movie theaters that offers reclining seats. I also needed to find a restaurant to write about for this week's blog post. So it occurred to me, why not combine the two?

Which is how my husband Phil and I came to find ourselves sitting in comfy recliners at the Palladio LUXE Cinema in Folsom this weekend, watching the techno thriller The Circle while eating food brought to our seats for us by the helpful servers.

I had checked the menu ahead of time, and while there wasn't anything vegan, there were a couple of things that appeared veganizable. I confirmed with the staff that the food was made on the premises, as opposed to being pre-packaged and then microwaved. That made it easy to simply request that the non-vegan ingredients be omitted.

I ordered the portobello and eggplant sandwich, a very hearty sandwich served on focaccia. I asked that the Havarti cheese be left off, and told the server that if the garlic sauce included any non-vegan ingredients, it should be omitted too. I never heard whether the garlic sauce was left off or not, but the sandwich was very good.

None of the desserts on the menu were vegan. Fortunately, the movie candy options included Red Vines!

The Palladio LUXE Cinema is located at 400 Palladio Parkway in Folsom, and their phone number is 916-693-6433. Their menu, show times, and other information is available on their website at http://www.cinemawest.com/location?house_id=43199.