Restaurant Review - Daily Grub

I made a lunch stop at Daily Grub, a new restaurant serving farm-to-table comfort food on 20th and Pierce Street. The restaurant is in a converted bar and has a rustic feel that is also very open and clean. Well designed, the kind of place you want to stay a while. It doesn't advertise itself as a vegan or vegetarian restaurant (a sure way to scare off Nebraskans!). But in all reality, it's a vegan establishment. Who knew vegan food could be so tasty or so filling?


I started with the spring mushroom and herb soup, which came with a baguette from Bread Oven. I could wax poetic about this soup all day. The mushrooms were pureed with cashews. The perfect amount of fresh thyme complimented but didn’t overpower the rich nuttiness of the soup. A very good olive oil was drizzled on top and some coarsely ground black pepper. The soup was very thick and perfect for bread dipping. If I had one complaint it would be that it was almost too thick and hence, very filling. I wanted to fully enjoy my next item!

Unbeknownst to me, my second course also had cashews as an ingredient, which tied the meal together in a way that I did not expect from a somewhat random order of mushroom soup and sope.

This was a black bean and corn sope with avocado, ranchero cashew cream sauce and topped with pear and cabbage salad. It came with a side of nice-n-spicy homemade red chili sauce and a lime wedge to squeeze on top. Everything about this sope was delicious but my favorite part was the pear and cabbage salad. The pear offered a sweetness that I was not expecting, but it went so well with the other flavors! I could have downed another one of these tasty fellas but I was saving room for dessert.

For dessert I ordered the Three Lady Mulberry Tart. Now, I’m not a huge fan of mulberries but I decided to go out on a limb and try it. We had a mulberry tree on the farm I grew up on and I always thought they were “trash” berries. We had enormous quantities of fresh strawberries and olallieberries available to us from my grandparent’s garden, so I never even knew that anybody even ate the lesser mulberry until I moved away.

Okay, now to get my childhood reminiscing sidetrack under control: this was a raw tart (did I mention there are always a couple raw items on the menu?). The crust was made from what appeared to be oatmeal, almonds and honey formed into a sticky, flat round. A sauce made from mulberries and chocolate mint was spread onto the crust and on top of that, a pretty sprinkling of ripe mulberries.

The presentation of the tart with its purple then even-darker-purple layers plated on white looked great. But this was actually the most disappointing part of my meal. An overabundance of fresh chocolate mint had been purred into the sauce, which made it incredibly pungent; it actually made my mouth go a bit numb and tingly. I would have much preferred the yummy crust simply topped with berries and a mint garnish.

While the final taste was a disappointment, this is still easily my favorite new restaurant in Omaha. I love both the idea and taste of locally-sourced comfort food with southern, Mexican, and other international influences (mostly Indian and Thai). The dishes were fresh, bright and wonderfully balanced. The servings aren't too large, and are full of veggies and good stuff for you, yet very filling. Healthy comfort food ... what more could you ask for?