My daughter and I were in Lafayette recently on a Sunday afternoon and wanted a light lunch. Quite a few of the local restaurants had special egg-focused brunch menus for Sunday, which was not what we were in the mood for.  I remembered a lunch in Lafayette with a special vegan sandwich I loved, featuring portobello mushrooms , squash, onion, eggplant and a sun-dried tomato tapenade, from the Rustic Tavern.  We decided to go there and I was happy to have the chance to visit the Rustic Tavern again.

The Rustic Tavern has a popular outdoor patio, but we opted to sit inside.

 

The interior of the Rustic Tavern is cozy, casual and comfortable, and the host and servers were efficient and welcoming.

The menu was fairly small, but several salads looked good, minus the cheeses.The Rustic Tavern focuses on local organic produce. I really wanted to try the Roasted Vegetable Sandwich again. One thing I did remember from my first visit when I had that sandwich was that there seemed to be a lot of oil on the vegetables, so I wanted to  request no extra oil. We knew we were having a big dinner that night and decided to share the sandwich with a side of salad rather than fries. The kitchen did the split for us and it was just perfect.

The tapenade spread was delicious, but also clearly had some oil, so it was a good call to ask for no oil on the vegetables. I also asked for the salad dressing on the side and was happy that I did, because it avoided a lot of unnecessary oil. We both ended up eating the sandwich and salad with a forks and knives because the vegetables tended to slip and slide when we tried to bite into the sandwich. It was all good, though, because it was just so delicious. We were happy to have shared, finishing the meal feeling that sense of “Hara Hachi Bu”,  the Okinawan rule of eating only until one is 80% full. Satisfied, light and happy!