Victory's Banner Visited 11/3/2012 3 Forks

Victory's Banner 2100 W Roscoe St. (between Hoyne Ave & Hamilton Ave), Chicago, IL 60618

I've had some pretty great brunches in Chicago so I was excited to hit up another spot while I was here this weekend.  Deanna had mentioned a few options and when she brought this place up, she had said that it was run by a bunch of "devotees",  I thought that she was joking.  But she also mentioned that the food was really delicious, so I said, What the heck?  When we got there I noticed that everyone was wearing a sari (and they weren't Indian), so that's when I realized that Deanna wasn't kidding when she said the place had a lot of "devotees".  The place seemed like more of a spiritual center with lots of pamphlets on meditation and a higher being than a restaurant, which is fine but just a tad weird.

The restaurant is also more like a cafe and the food is all vegetarian, mostly vegan.  I've actually been to a lot of places like these where the food is amazing and you don't miss the meat at all, so I was hoping this place would be like those.  At first glance, the menu here sounded amazing and I had a hard time narrowing down what I wanted to eat.  They have a lot of great sounding egg dishes and salads.  Since it was brunch I opted for the breakfast burrito which was a tortilla stuffed with 2 scrambled eggs, mushroom, red onion, red peppers, gouda, black beans and sour cream and served with organic salsa & brown rice on the side ($9.55).  Deanna got the Satisfaction-promise, which is 2 scrambled eggs with spinach, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes and feta ($9.45), except that Deanna got it with fresh tomato instead of sun-dried.  I also had this weird hankering for pancakes but didn't want to commit to a full stack and they were nice enough to bring my 1 single pancake.

As with all breakfast burritos I've had, this one was huge and just way too much food for one person.  I need to remember next time I"m at brunch to not order it because I never finish it and frankly all I really eat is the inside, which is essentially an egg scramble.  I was a bit disappointed that there didn't seem to be a lot of eggs in this one and the egg that was in it wasn't as moist or scrambled as I would have liked it.  Also the cheese on it wasn't melted at all and was kind of clumped on top.  I should have just gotten an omelet or some kind of egg scramble since I pretty much opened up the burrito and discarded the tortilla after 1 bite.   I did appreciate the brown rice as a healthy side as opposed to getting a bunch of potatoes but it would have been preferred it to have been inside the burrito instead.  Meanwhile, I was having a serious sweet craving and luckily the waitress told me that I could just get 1 small pancake instead of an entire stack which was music to my ears.   The pancake was made with oat bran and was the perfect serving size for what I was looking for.  It was perfectly fluffy but just a bit toasted on the outside for a bit of crunch.  The oat bran absorbed the syrup well without making it overly soggy and it just really hit the sweet spot I was trying to fulfill.   I tried Deanna's dish and I did like it more than my dish since it tasted more egg-y and just more breafast-y.  She also got an order of soy bacon and while it looked like a piece of soggy, sad fake bacon,  it was surprisingly good.  It tasted just like a piece of bacon but like the kind that doesn't have any fat or a meaty crisp to it.  But for fake meat, it was a fairly good copycat. 

Overall, I appreciated the healthy, hippie-dipping vibe the place was giving.  I wasn't totally annoyed with it, which normally I would, but they were so nice that it's hard to be cynical about it.  I definitely would get something other than the burrito and dare I even say that I would even consider getting a stack of pancakes, which is something I would never do but they were that good.  Total bill: $17/pp with tax and tip.

Photo Credit: Yelp