Organic egg, schmorganic egg

In the last five years, Sacramento has upped its breakfast game exponentially. With the Magpie Cafe group of restaurants and Tahoe Park’s Bacon & Butter raising the bar, a plain old organic scrambled egg doesn’t cut it anymore.

The most recent contender, Wild Flour Cafe, opened earlier this year near the Capitol. While it ranks high on the cozy charm, the food isn’t quite in fighting form yet.

In the space formerly occupied by Eliana’s Cafe, owner Era Sellen serves breakfast and lunch seven days a week. She cleverly offers delivery throughout most of the grid and online ordering to better serve the many neighborhood office workers.

In the cafe itself, vintage windows add to the décor and daily specials fill the blackboard, including a long list of available flavors from Marin’s Three Twins Ice Cream. On the weekend, Sellen offers a menu titled “Ice Cream for Breakfast,” with choices like lemon ricotta pancakes ($14) with lemon cookie ice cream.

Among the more savory offerings, the Italian sausage hash ($12) stood out with its fennel-spiked housemade sausage, cheese, chunks of potatoes and scrambled eggs. What the menu didn’t mention was the worthy addition of onions and bell peppers. You get your choice of local bakery Grateful Bread’s toast on the side.

Though I’m suspicious of BLTs in winter, the sweet-and-spicy BLT ($11) had such good bacon, it compensated for the out-of-season tomatoes. Sellen candies thick-cut slices with brown sugar and cayenne and makes bacon magic. Maybe avocados would have been more seasonal, but the sandwich worked nonetheless.

Some baked goods are made on-site, but it’s not always clear which because the online and written menus don’t always agree. The egg sandwich ($5.50) comes with a housemade biscuit, scrambled eggs and cheddar. While the biscuit needed more salt, the flavors came together with the optional addition of Italian sausage.

Unfortunately, I had eaten Bacon & Butter’s breakfast biscuit two days earlier, and Wild Flour’s is no match. From the lackluster biscuit to the Spartan presentation, it needs reworking.

The breakfast burrito ($8) fares better. With spicy chorizo, potatoes and cheese, it makes a plentiful meal. Ask for extra salsa; the thick tomato sauce adds welcome acid to the mix.

For lunch and breakfast, the chicken salad sandwich ($7.95) offers large chunks of chicken mixed with walnuts, apples and celery for a Waldorf-style crunch. Bound with abundant mayo, it hardly needed the smear of Dijon on the slippery bread, which struggled to contain its filling.

Wild Flour’s burger, made with local Five Dot Ranch grass-fed beef, tastes straightforward with little garnish. However, the chunky pan-fried potatoes on the side complement it. While you could add that fantastic bacon or some cheese, it makes for a reasonable lunch that won’t give you an afternoon food hangover.

Since Sellen acts as cook, cashier and waiter, service is necessarily pared down. You fetch your own drinks from an adjoining room and usually order first, then sit. On a couple of slow days, Sellan took our order tableside, though.

Perhaps as a result of the limited staff, there seem to be kinks to work out with the online menu listings versus what’s available in-house—discrepancies make it confusing. A good rule: If you’ve seen a dish there before, just ask if it’s still available.

The vibe at Wild Flour entices, especially when warmer weather encourages patio seating. With her welcoming personality, Sellan clearly puts a lot of work into the cafe, and she focuses on sourcing local ingredients.

After a few tweaks to boost the flavors to competition-level, Wild Flour could surely be a worthy contender on the breakfast circuit.