Food for Friends (Brighton)

We stayed at Vegfest for about an hour, then went for a wander around Brighton (Steamer Trading and Heals). As it was particularly wet (and foggy!); both Starbucks and Costa were rammed.

I quickly realised that a better idea would be to get coffee and a dessert from a restaurant instead. It was at least 90 minutes before we'd booked Terre a Terre - plenty of time for a pre dinner snack.

I've not been to Food for Friends since 2002. I remember it being pretty good back then (and the first time I ever bought vegan cake that didn't look like it'd been made in a large rectangular pan in school canteen), but haven't been tempted back enough by their menu since.

This time though it looked actually pretty good - we'll definitely return for a full meal at some point.

Impressively; they have a couple of options on their afternoon tea menu - a vegan cake and vegan scones (I'm not sure why this is impressive come to think of it, but most vegetarian restaurants don't).

We skipped the tea menu though and ordered a couple of desserts off the standard menu:

Rich dark chocolate truffle torte (V,N) £5.95
baked on a hazelnut biscuit base served with berry compote

Hot cinnamon apple and pear fritters (V,GF,S) £5.95
with vanilla icecream and a sweet sesame sauce

Service was polite and efficient, atmosphere good.

@cherrivalentine didn't want to give the torte up when we swapped half way through. Uninspiring as a concept (just about every v*gan restaurant has sold it at one time or another), but a seriously good effort. It wasn't obviously tofu or tofutti cream cheese based - it didn't have any weird hippy flavours either, just rich velvety chocolate. It didn't look like it'd be smooth but it was - it melted beautifully in the mouth and even the base didn't fall apart:

In comparison however; the fritters sounded fucking boring.

It's the token dessert that Chinese restaurants sell, knowing full well that diners will be far too stuffed to ever order it. We chose it anyway (for research purposes) and I agreed to go first:

In a word; they were fucking amazing (that's two, I realise).

Great taste, well balanced, simple yet complex enough flavour, perfect consistency, crisp, light, refreshing.

Completely unexpected; they were potentially the best thing I tasted all day. I would totally order these again.

(that awkward moment when you swap plates, hoping that no one will notice; immortalised in photograph):

For 6 quid each; Food for Friends' desserts are exceptionally good quality for the money. It's everything that Mildreds should be, but isn't.

As previously stated; we'll definitely return for a full meal in the future.