The Best Vegetarian Restaurant in Salt Lake City Isn't Trying to Convert You: The Story of Old Cuss Cafe

There's a Fisher Price barn sitting on a shelf inside a restaurant on Pierpont Avenue, and somehow, it makes perfect sense. Old Cuss Cafe — downtown Salt Lake City's newest and most quietly exciting vegetarian restaurant — is the kind of place where a vintage children's toy fits right alongside antique barn wood, a rotating rack of secondhand clothing, and one of the most thoughtfully crafted plant-based menus in the entire state of Utah. It's a little rustic, a little weird, and completely, stubbornly itself.

Walk through the door and you'll immediately understand why people who don't even like vegetarian food keep coming back. Customers consistently describe the atmosphere as rustic and warm, the kind of place that's ideal for a leisurely brunch — or, honestly, for camping out with your laptop for three hours and not feeling guilty about it. One recent reviewer basically said it for all of us: "Once you find it, the service was very nice and quick." That's the Old Cuss experience in a sentence.

This is the best vegetarian restaurant in Salt Lake City not because it waves a green flag and lectures you about your carbon footprint. It's the best because it starts from a completely different premise: what if plant-based comfort food was just… really good food? Full stop.

From a Pandemic Coffee Trailer to Downtown SLC's Most Anticipated Opening

Brent'Lee Williams didn't set out to become a vegetarian food evangelist. He grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, raised by farmers, chefs, and artists — people who understood that feeding someone well is an act of love. He's been working in coffee and food for over 17 years, and describes himself as a drink artist, agriculture enthusiast, vintage collector, and musician. If that sounds like a lot of identities to carry around, spend five minutes in his cafe and it all starts to make sense. The vintage finds for sale, the live music on Friday nights, the obsessive attention to the coffee program — it's all one coherent vision of a place where people feel genuinely welcomed.

Williams started Old Cuss as a coffee trailer during the pandemic. In a moment when the entire restaurant industry was in freefall, he was out there on the corner of Pierpont and 400 West, pulling espresso shots and building a following one cup at a time. In 2021, he opened a physical location in South Salt Lake called Old Cuss Coffee & Market, which began with a fully vegan menu. But something interesting happened: his customers — real, regular, omnivore Salt Lake City people — kept asking for eggs. For dairy. They loved the food, they just wanted it to be a little more, well, inclusive. So Williams listened. The menu shifted to vegetarian, more accessible to everyone, and a new philosophy was born.

That South Salt Lake location eventually closed, and Old Cuss returned to its coffee trailer roots while Williams quietly worked toward something bigger. The result is the brick-and-mortar that opened on Pierpont Avenue in January 2026 — a cozy restaurant filled with antiques and vintage objects, where you can sit down for a full meal or camp out with your laptop and one of Old Cuss' specialty lattes or craft sodas.

Chef Chandler Bailey is the other half of this equation, and she might be the most important vegetarian chef in Utah that most people haven't heard of yet. Utah-born and raised, she has over 10 years of cooking experience in the Salt Lake Valley, having been the chef at multiple highly regarded restaurants, specializing in vegetarian food. She joined Old Cuss as an ownership partner in summer of 2023. Bailey brought with her a vision that pushed Old Cuss beyond coffee-shop-with-food territory into something that deserves to be called a real restaurant — a chef-driven, scratch-made, rotating seasonal menu built around vegetables treated with actual respect.

The Old Cuss Vegetarian Brunch Experience: What to Order (And Why You Will Absolutely Eat the Whole Thing)

Here's what you need to understand about the menu at Old Cuss Cafe: all of the substitute meats are vegan and made from scratch, but there are also real eggs and dairy for the omnivores, and most menu items can be made gluten-free. It's Southern-influenced comfort food — biscuits and gravy, "chicken" and waffles, fried green tomatoes, country-fried "steak" — executed with the kind of care that makes you forget you're in a vegetarian restaurant at all.

The fried vegan "chicken" sandwich is the dish everyone's talking about, and for good reason. The "chicken" patty is made with seitan and jackfruit, which captures the meat's slightly stringy nature, battered and fried — a meaty, savory bite for anyone trying to eat more plant-based food. At $17.50, it's not a throwaway menu item — it's a deliberate statement about what plant-based comfort food can actually be. The seitan-jackfruit combination is where the scratch-made ethos really shows. This isn't a frozen patty from a distributor. Somebody in that kitchen made this.

Then there's the BBQ jackfruit breakfast burrito, which has its own small cult following among the Salt Lake City brunch crowd. Jackfruit done right — and Old Cuss does it right — has this tender, pulled-pork quality that makes the whole thing feel indulgent in the best possible way. It's the kind of dish you order thinking you're being healthy and eat half of before realizing you're actually just eating really good food.

And then — this is important — you have to get the pie. Williams noted that Old Cuss Cafe is one of the only places around that offers pie by the slice. In a city with no shortage of excellent bakeries, somehow nobody else has really owned this particular niche. The vegan strawberry-raspberry slice has already earned admirers, but the cherry crumble might be the thing that converts you completely. Six dollars for a slice of something made with actual intention is, frankly, a steal.

Wash all of it down with the cereal milk latte. Made with Cinnamon Toast Crunch and its lovely warming spices, it's the kind of thing that puts you in a state of uncomplicated happiness. The chai latte has also developed its own reputation — one reviewer was so enthusiastic about it she sent her husband back in for a second one immediately. Old Cuss uses Marcell Coffee Roasters beans out of Kansas City, a nod to Williams' roots and a genuine commitment to the craft coffee side of the operation. This isn't an afterthought coffee program. It's the spine of the whole place.

Givin' a Dang: Old Cuss Cafe and the SLC Community It's Building Around Itself

The Old Cuss philosophy comes down to three things: people, place, and "givin' a dang" — valuing guests, the team, and the community; honoring the Salt Lake Valley and the environment; and serving with intention. That might sound like marketing copy until you actually sit inside the Pierpont Avenue space and feel it in practice.

The vintage clothing and antiques aren't just decoration — they're for sale, part of a shop-and-eat concept that is genuinely unique in Salt Lake City. Live music happens on Friday nights, which transforms dinner service into something closer to a neighborhood event. The rotating seasonal menu means Williams and Bailey are constantly working with what's fresh and available, an agricultural instinct that connects back to Williams' Kansas City farming roots.

The location on Pierpont Ave is worth noting. This historic corridor in downtown SLC sits close to the Delta Center (now Vivint Arena), putting Old Cuss in the path of people headed to Jazz games, concerts, and the general energy of downtown. It's not a destination-only restaurant tucked away somewhere inconvenient — it's genuinely woven into the fabric of how people move through this part of the city. Taste Utah visited the cafe and noted Williams' pride in honoring Utah culture, including their own take on the Utah dirty soda. That detail — a scratch-made craft soda riff on one of Utah's most beloved culinary traditions — tells you everything about the sensibility here. They're not above anything. They're just going to do it their way.

Planning Your Visit to Old Cuss Cafe

Old Cuss Cafe is located at 325 W. Pierpont Ave in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah 84101 — inside the historic Pierpont Ave Building. Parking is available in the surrounding area, and the spot is walkable from the Delta Center and much of downtown SLC.

Hours are Sunday through Thursday, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and Friday through Saturday, 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM, with dinner service running on weekends. If you want the full experience — full menu, live music, dinner energy — Friday night is your visit. If you want a slower morning with a great latte and a laptop, a weekday before noon is the move.

What to order: the fried vegan "chicken" sandwich, the BBQ jackfruit breakfast burrito, pie by the slice (whatever's available that day), and the cereal milk latte or chai latte. If you're an omnivore who thinks vegetarian food isn't for you, this is genuinely the right place to test that theory.

Find them on Instagram at @oldcusslc for menu updates, seasonal specials, and Friday night music announcements.

Why Old Cuss Cafe Matters to Utah's Food Scene

Salt Lake City has a genuinely impressive plant-based dining scene, but most of it requires you to opt in — to already believe, to already be converted. Old Cuss Cafe is doing something different and, frankly, more interesting: it's making vegetarian food for people who don't think of themselves as vegetarian food people. Scratch-made seitan. Jackfruit treated with the same care as a good brisket. Pie by the slice at six dollars. A cereal milk latte that makes a Salt Lake Tribune food writer feel like she's in heaven.

Brent'Lee Williams spent five years — a pandemic, a trailer, a first location, a closure, a return to the trailer — figuring out exactly what he wanted Old Cuss to be. What he and Chandler Bailey have built on Pierpont Avenue is the answer: a community cafe that happens to be one of the best vegetarian restaurants in Salt Lake City, serving food that doesn't ask for your permission to be delicious.

Go find out for yourself. The pie alone is worth it.