Portland Phoenix | Silly's Celebrates 30 Years with New Vegan Café: Simply Vegan now open on Washington Ave..

Vegans don’t exactly have it made when it comes to dining out. Outside of large cities — where vegan-centric restaurants can number in the hundreds — options for those who follow strictly vegan diets amount to little more than perhaps one or two dishes on any given menu, which is in all honesty shooting on the high side. In Portland, Chef Matt Ginn offers a vegan tasting menu at the excellent Eastern Mediterranean-focused Evo and to my knowledge is peerless in doing so. Otherwise, it’s off to the Green Elephant — the only restaurant in the area that has served a largely vegan menu for both lunch and dinner in the past decade.

Then, you’ve got Silly’s — a Portland institution that coincidentally just entered its 30th year of existence. Purveyors of smoke-laden BBQ pork, mountainous plates of fried fish and burgers the size of one’s head, Silly’s has also long catered to the needs of its vegan customer-base, offering plenty of vegan-friendly options and even boasting a dedicated vegan fryer. Now, owner Colleen Kelley has expanded this focus in the form of a new cafe located just steps away from her flagship restaurant.