Nene visit! Every time Nene visits, our primary activity is Eating Outside. It’s easy to forget when you live here, but Long Beach has some excellent food. So I thought I’d do a blog series highlighting food places in Long Beach.

First up is Alder & Sage, which opened two weeks before I got back from my trip around the country. Since it was new to both of us, Nene and I started there. (This is Nene’s ube matcha latte and fruit tart. Their drink presentation game is definitely on point.)
It used to be a preschool, which means it has a ton of space! (Relatively, for a Long Beach coffee shop. Wait until you see the backyard.)
You have the option of sitting down for formal service or ordering quick-serve from the coffee counter. It’s not super vegan, but it’s so nice that it’s worth going anyway to get the one vegan thing they do have, which for breakfast is a slice of chocolate banana bread from the coffee counter or avocado toast from the sit-down service. (Their menu also lists vegan donuts and a vegan grain bowl, although I didn’t see either the two times Nene and I went.)
The highlight is definitely the backyard. (One of the advantages of the post-preschool location.) There’s two fire pits, a long family-style table running along the vegetable boxes off to the side, and a 70s-style conversation pit (that used to be a sand pit for the kids). We sat in the shade next to a bicycle propped against the cinderblock wall and blissed out until it was time to go to the next place.
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