What’s old is new again, or however that saying goes. Foodshed Café opened in 2017, but it closed three years later when the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the world and Reno. However, on April 1, the beloved café got a new life, reopening on the top floor of the Great Basin Food Co-Op and serving foods made mainly from local farms and purveyors.
With a commitment to sustainability, the local community and good food with real (allergy-friendly) ingredients, Foodshed Café operates under several missions simultaneously. However, none of it matters if the food isn’t good. But spoiler alert: it is.
The Court Street restaurant’s menu is heavy in sandwiches, bowls, burritos and toasts, so there’s plenty to indulge in for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Bonus points: There’s a chic rooftop patio, so your lunch comes with a downtown view.
I consider sandwiches the best food group on the planet, so the Hot Rancher felt like an absolute must-try. Like many of their sandwiches, it starts with two buttery slices of homemade sourdough bread before it’s loaded with local ingredients, including braised beef from Snowball Ranch or Avanzino Farm, caramelized onions, pickles from Nevada Brining Company, cheddar cheese and horseradish mustard. The result is a sandwich that feels indulgent but somehow still healthy in large part because I know where the ingredients came from (and the missions Great Basin upholds).
For breakfast, the toasts are hard to pass up. The Classic Avo Toasty can be made vegan—just ask. It starts with that same decadent sourdough bread before being loaded with avocado smash, microgreens from one of their participating farms, and spicy seaweed gomasio from Mountain Song Farm.
The Jammy Toast is another breakfast staple. It’s made with the same sourdough bread, then cream cheese and house-made fruit jam are spread across the top. To finish it off, a peanut butter maple drizzle is the final touch.
I, however, am a sucker for goat cheese, and so no toast stands a chance when something like The Goat is on the menu. Yes, we’re using that same delicious sourdough as the starter, but then we’re adding a house-whipped chive goat cheese that is creamy and full of flavor before drizzling it with local honey (hey, that’s good for my allergies, too, right?) and a dash of chili oil from Radish Hotel to bring some heat to the dish—but not too much. You’ll get those same microgreens added to the top and a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt.
This little beauty is best eaten with a fork and knife because it is a bit messy. It is the quintessential breakfast or lunch item that is a true stand-out thanks to its local touches.
The rest of the menu takes the same care to work with local farms and other businesses dedicated to providing locally grown food to Reno residents. As mentioned, many burritos are offered for breakfast and lunch/dinner, plus those big bowls, which use ingredients such as salad and brown rice or quinoa for the base. This seems like a good second option if you must skip the toast.
There’s also a host of “smoothie bowls” for breakfast.
If you follow a specific diet, identifying safe foods is easy because the menu has a key that shows what’s vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, organic and so on. Asking for accommodations when you order is definitely an acceptable practice.
As a bonus, you can also do some grocery shopping while you’re there. Downstairs is the Great Basin Food Co-Op, which stocks plenty of delicious foods with the same feel-good missions as Foodshed Café.
More
https://greatbasinfood.coop/pages/foodshed-cafe
Address: 240 Court St.
