Boston menu guide
What's Vegan at The Friendly Toast? A Boston Menu Guide
Four entrees that come vegan, seven vegan sides, and a menu that tells you how to make many more.
The Friendly Toast is among the best places to go for a reliable vegan brunch, especially in the Boston area. The menu includes four entrees that come vegan, seven vegan sides, and extensive info on how to make many more dishes vegan. Our top choice is the vegan scramble, which includes vegan sausage. One thing to watch out for - the hash browns are vegan (and delicious) but the home fries are NOT - they contain butter.
What's Vegan at The Friendly Toast?
The Friendly Toast doesn't publish an allergen guide, but they do an excellent job of labeling items on the menu. Items marked with a V are vegan. This makes it pretty easy to see what items are plant based, and when we couldn't tell, we spoke with our local Friendly Toast in Chestnut Hill to confirm. All six Massachusetts restaurants that we checked carry the same menu, so everything should be applicable no matter which you go to.
Meals that are vegan as served
Vegan Scramble ($18.50) is vegan as served. Seasoned tofu, vegan sausage, marinated tomatoes, red onion, red bell peppers, broccoli, garlic mushrooms and spinach, topped with pickled onion and a vegan avocado crema. This dish comes on crispy hash browns which are made without butter.
Vegan Breakfast Burrito ($18.00) A gluten-free tortilla filled with tofu, black beans, vegan cheese, vegan sausage, fire-roasted poblano corn, avocado-cilantro sauce and pico de gallo.
Gluten Free & Vegan Pancakes ($12.00) Three pancakes made from a gluten-free batter of oat milk, agave and vanilla. I tried these and they look great, but the texture is unexpected. They are very chewy and the flavor is a little off from a regular pancake. I suppose the gluten-free batter is probably responsible for that. I would not order them as my main meal but having one pancake on the side was nice to balance my savory main. Many of the specialty pancakes below can be made vegan by subbing in the vegan pancake batter.
Gerti's Garden Salad ($11.00) Nothing special but worth noting they do offer a garden salad. Mixed greens, English cucumber, red onion, tomato, radish, and a citrus vinaigrette. Online ordering doesn't list any vegan protein as addable, but I'm sure in person they could add vegan sausage or potentially tofu.
Other vegan items
The following sides are confirmed vegan.
- Side Vegan Hash Browns
- Side Vegan Sausage
- Side Waffle Fries
- Side Sliced Avocado
- Side Garden Salad
- Side Seasonal Fruit
- Side Mixed Berries
Maple syrup is real maple and vegan.
Dishes you can make vegan
Unlike at most restaurants, swapping ingredients at The Friendly Toast does not require creativity on your part - the menu frequently lists when swaps can make an item vegan! That takes out the guess work.
Classic Breakfast ($14.00) if you're in the mood for a basic american breakfast made plant-based, this is for you. Swap seasoned tofu for eggs, vegan sausage, vegan toast (no butter), and hash instead of home fries.
MYO Scramble ($14.00) and MYO Omelet ($14.00) are also great options. Swap eggs for the seasoned tofu and add in vegan sausage, cheese, and/or whatever veggies you like.
Monster Breakfast ($19.50): If you're hungry, the Monster Breakfast can be made vegan by subbing vegan pancakes, tofu for eggs, vegan sausage, hash browns, and no whipped butter. This is a big meal but the logical choice if you need a balance of savory and sweet.
On the kids menu, Tiny Classic ($8.00) and Tiny Pancake ($8.00) both offer Vegan Sausage as a choice of meat, tofu instead of eggs, and vegan pancake batter.
Side Toast is vegan only as GF/vegan toast, ordered without butter (jam optional).
Drinks
The Friendly Toast has a variety of juices, soft drinks, coffee, and, as of recently, espresso drinks. Oat milk can be subbed into the coffees or lattes at no extra charge!
What to Know Before Ordering
"Dairy free eggs" is not vegan. This is obvious to vegans, but it's the sort of thing your non-vegan parents might try to order for you.
The home fries are made with butter. We asked the kitchen directly. Hash browns are vegan and waffle fries are vegan, but the home fries are not, and they come with a large share of the breakfast menu. But the hash browns are delicious and an easy and obvious swap.
Toast arrives buttered unless you say otherwise. The vegan options by default come with the toast dry (you can add jam), but make sure to request no butter if you're ordering just the toast.
The only vegan bread is gluten-free.
Does The Friendly Toast use a shared kitchen? Yes, The Friendly Toast uses a shared kitchen so cross contamination with animal products is a possibility. However, they are 100% nut-free as of 2024, so there is no worry of nut allergies. That also means no almond milk, though.
Does the menu change by location? No. The Friendly Toast publishes one food menu and one non-alcoholic drink menu across the whole chain, so everything here holds at all six Massachusetts restaurants: Back Bay (35 Stanhope St), Cambridge (1230 Mass Ave), Chestnut Hill (199 Boylston St), Burlington Mall, Dedham (Legacy Place) and North Andover.
How We Verified This Guide
Farro collects and analyzes menus from thousands of Boston-area restaurants, including The Friendly Toast, to identify which items are vegan. At The Friendly Toast, the menu itself provides most of the answers, but we also called the restaurant to confirm a few questions for this article.
Menus and preparation change, and they vary by location. If you find something out of date here, please send me an email at ryan@getfarro.com.
This guide covers one chain. Farro covers the rest: which dishes are vegan at any Boston restaurant, ordinary ones included, with prices, on a map. Every Friendly Toast location is on it, with what is vegan at each one.
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