Basilico (Limehouse, London)

18" wood fired vegan pizza? Yes please!

Basilico's a chain of non-vegetarian pizza delivery shops across London. They've 2 vegan options marked on their menu - a margarita and a roasted vegetable pizza (we opted for the latter).

Forty five minutes after ordering we had an 18" with 2 drinks delivered to The Isle of Dogs for under £20 - enough for two hungry adults and one hungry toddler (with a slice left for breakfast!).

The base was fantastic; actual glutenous Italian bread with great flavour. The toppings were fairly generous, though not as generous (or adventurous) as Mr Singh's. It was good to see the cheese go right the way to the edge of the crust (as oposed to within several inches of it like Pizza Face). The brand they use (Violife) is alright warm, but tasted fantastic cold the following morning.

Overall we were really impressed. We'll definitely order from them again and recommend that Londeners give them a go. Despite the lack of options it's my favourite takeaway vegan pizza in the UK so far. Basilico takes Pizza Face, bends it over and gives it a good spanking!

Amico Bio (Holborn, London)

As if one mediocre Italian restaurant wasn't enough, last year a 2nd branch of Amico Bio popped up on New Oxford Street (half way between Holborn and Tottenham Court Road tubes).

I visited shortly after it opened in May and liked it even less than the Cloth Fair branch. Oppressive decor, loud electrical buzzing throughout the meal and a clueless waiter who explained to everyone that it was his first day. The starter was disgusting:

What was supposed to be "Potato gnocchi with aubergines and rice milk mozzarella" was like eating glue. It had next to no flavour, other than the harsh taste of herbs.

Second course tasted alright:

But bore little resemblance to its description of "Mixed vegetables & seitan kebab, yoghurt & cucumber dip".

The veg had been chopped too finely to have been cooked as a kebab; tasting more like an underseasoned fajita as a result. The yoghurt & cucumber dip was nowhere to be seen - for a restaurant with vegan meat, cheese and cream I'm unsure as to why they don't have soya yoghurt.

When I returned in July things had improved slightly. I decided to keep things simple and go with their "Pizza with tomato and mozzarella" which actually looked pretty good:

I know that some vegans like the mozzarella they use, but for me it's just a bit too yucky.

Dessert of "Peach with red wine, limoncello liqueor and carrot cake" however I actually enjoyed:

The carrot cake is the best thing I've ever tasted at Amico Bio - it was really nice! If only the portion wasn't tiny, I could have happily eaten a man sized portion. The peaches in wine was a little weird, but tasted alright and I'm led to believe is traditional.

I love Italian food and I can see what Amico are trying to achieve. London needs a good vegan Italian restaurant - there's no reason why Amico couldn't be it. In two visits to each branch so far however it's been underwhelming to say the least.

I hope the situation improves and will pop back sometime in the next few months. I'll blog an update if things are better.

Pizza Face (Brighton)

Whilst on a pizza posting spree, it's only fair to mention Brighton's vegan friendly takeaway also.

Pizza Face is an omni pizza chain with branches in Kemp Town (Brighton) and Hove. They stock Redwoods vegan cheese, which can be substituted for normal for £1 extra. They've a separate vegan menu available on Mondays & Tuesdays (with fake meats as well as cheese) - it's too bad they don't do this on a weekend.

We visited at 10.45pm on a Saturday evening in November, towards closing time of 11pm. We ordered a couple of pizzas, garlic bread and tub of Boho Gelato sorbet to eat at our hotel nearby. We've heard rumours that they can deliver directly to the beach, but it was a bit chilly for that!

I'm not entirely sure why the garlic bread came with rosemary and it needed about 10x the amount of garlic on for my taste, but the bread itself was really good:

The pizzas however we're so good. With all the rave reviews about Pizza Face from people we know, hopefully we just got unlucky. Either way, the amount of toppings on both our pizzas was pitiful:

Having paid extra for vegan cheese there was hardly any on there, with a good few inches around the edge completely bare. Even the amount of tomato sauce was stingy. Compare this to somewhere like Mr Singh's where you get toppings right to the edge (not to mention two 12" for £13.49) and you'll understand why we felt a bit short changed.

We left half our pizzas each to move onto dessert. We often do this and eat the other half the following morning (pizza improves with age!).

I love Mojitos - they're easily my favourite cocktail. For a drink with so few ingredients it's impressive how badly people manage to screw them up however - they typically range in bars from mediocre to undrinkable (with exceptions - I found a stunningly good mojito bar in Leith last year). Sadly Boho Gelato's mojito sorbet falls into the inedible camp - we managed about of third of the tub between us before admitting defeat and leaving it to defrost. I don't know if the ingredients had been mixed wrong or what, but it tasted disgusting.

I want to love Pizza Face, but it's all a bit to 'meh' for me - the halves we kept went in the bin. I hate giving places a bad review and it's possible that towards the end of the shift we got unlucky. I'll try and give it a go on a Monday / Tuesday night some time - hopefully on vegan night things will be a lot better.

Carbonara

A long, long time ago this was a recipe blog. The more I started travelling the lazier I became, so it turned into a restaurant / cafe review blog instead. Why make yourself when someone else can do the work?

I still do a fair amount of cooking, but it tends to be highly reliant on finished goods (premade sauces etc) rather than from scratch. I don't blog recipes that aren't tried and tested - I've taken some great photos of attempts before that haven't quite worked out taste wise, so ditched them and continued experimenting.

This blog is useful for me too - though I go through phases of making something I'll then completely forget about it for 12 months, only to realise that I can't remember the recipe. Old age and all that. There are several things that I've made up and not blogged - now I'd have to start again from scratch! So, think of this as own personal cookery scrap book.

I've been experimenting with Carbonara for a few years, using different types of vegan cheese. I made pretty good stuff with Redwoods super melting, but it uses a whole block which is both expensive and horrendously fatty. Scheese will melt if you grate it finely enough and apply enough heat, but it's taste is too easily lost. Alpro cream works well, but needs thining. The new Tesco scheese will melt into sauce but causes it to set up as it cools.

What does work well is the new scheese cheddar spread that's sold in Tesco (see previous blog post for more). Combined with Alpro cream it tastes great, but isn't runny enough. Thinned with soya milk the taste is less intense, but the compromise is worth it.

Serves 2:

120g Tesco Cheddar Spread

125ml Alpro Fresh Single Cream

50ml Plain Soya Milk

4 Redwoods Bacon Rashers

Oil, Salt & Pepper

Slice the rashers into sensibly sized pieces and put enough pasta onto boil for 2. Spaghetti and linguine work well, shapes can be good too (except those designed to hold loads of sauce as there won't be enough).

Fry the rashers in a little oil until crispy, then add the rest of the ingredients to the same pan and whisk until smooth:

Add salt to taste, then pepper before serving. Vary the quantities of each ingredient to suit.

Fellinis (Ambleside)

Having visited Zeffirellis in Ambleside many times over the years; I was initially excited by the prospect of trying their latest venture - Fellinis, a supposedly higher end vegetarian restaurant.

Their website describes it as a "modern 'Vegeterranean' restaurant catering for the most discerning vegetarian palette with a distinct Mediterranean twist", before going on to promise that "You can indulge in fine dining vegetarian cuisine with us at Fellinis."

Sound good?

My excitment waned somewhat however, on finding quite how unvegan-friendly the menu is. When we were up in the area last year they had a vegan starter and dessert option with no main! This time round there was 1 starter and 2 mains, which was enough for us to try it out.

Fellini's is a short walk from Zeffirellis and clearly styled by the same person (the interior is almost identical). Prices are above average for vegan options that sound uninspiring to say the least.

We ordered the one starter, a couple of sides and both the mains:

Spiced baba ganoush with green tahini dressed crudites, pickled cucumber and toasted pitta (V) £5.95

Basket of homemade bread with virgin olive oil and balsamic reduction (V) £3.50

Bowl of marinated olives (V) £3.50

Butternut squash, with a tomato, walnut and puy lentil filling served on fresh spinach and saute potato (V) £11.95

Spanish roasted vegetables and chickpea cassoulet topped with crostinis and basil oil (V) £11.95

Paprika roasted potatoes (V/GF) £3.50

It's the kind of menu which whilst boring; if perfectly executed is worth a go.

It's a good job that we had a big basket of bread; half a pitta isn't enough to eat an entire pot of baba ganoush with!

The pickled cucumbers and baba ganoush were actually pretty good. It tasted a lot like hummus though and we chose to avoid the creamy looking dressing on the veg. The bread was OK but not stunning (focaccia or ciabatta would have tasted a lot better) and olives fairly average. I'm not convinced the balsamic had been reduced, at least it was still at the thin and runny stage rather than sweet and sticky.

In contrast the mains were probably the most boring things we ate whilst away:They were pretty much as advertised - half a butternut squash filled with lentils and some sauted potatoes on the side, a thick chickpea and vegetable soup with teeth breakingly hard crostini.

The roast potatoes (recommended by the waitress for my main) were above average, but didn't really fit with the dish.

We skipped the £5.95 sorbet option for dessert and opted for ice-cream sundaes at the hotel instead :)

(crappy looking picture taken on an iPad3)

Overall, at £20 for 2 courses of uninspiring food each it's difficult to recommend Fellinis to other vegans. It's a real shame too - irconically it's un-fine dining sister restaurant serves better food for less money.

Amico Bio (London)

Amico Bio's a good looking organic Italian restaurant in a good part of London. If first impressions are all that matter then they're onto a winner.

Having heard several negative comments about their food I gave it a go anyway. A few months back I had a four course dinner (with at least a bottle of wine). It wasn't overwhelmingly good, but it wasn't that bad either. Everything's vegetarian and the number of vegan dishes/options is quite reasonable (except on the dessert menu, as is often the case with vegetarian places).

I didn't take any pics and I can't fully remember all that I had, so decided to return for lunch whilst in the area.

Whilst dinner service had been almost full; at lunch it was relatively quiet - only a few other diners. I guess most people in the area are seeking faster food than a sit down meal at lunch time.

I planned only for 2 courses, but my greedy eyes got the better of me and I ended up with 3:

Tofu arrosto con scarola £6.00 V-Gf
Roasted tofu served with scarola

Seiten Sandwich with Chips £10 V
I can't remember the exact description so I'm making this up

Selezioni di gelati e sorbetti £5.00 V-Gf
Selection of ice cream and sorbets

Service was polite and efficient. Waiting times reasonable.

OK, so what do we have here then? A lump of non-marinated plain firm tofu (lightly fried on one side) on top of some leaves.

Ummm.

Redeemed only by the fact it had olive oil and salt, it was overall not so great. Last time I had polenta, which was far far better. This however was something I'd expect a non vegetarian restaurant to serve.

It's a burger and chips. The chips were soggy and barely cooked. The bread was focaccia roughly cut into a circle and the burger a slab of seitan.

Seitan is a concept most UK vegans are unfamiliar with, yet widely available in Europe and America. Believing everything I read on the Internet without question (OK, not quite); I was led to believe when I turned vegan that I was seriously missing out here by not being able to buy it in the UK. The reality is that whilst seitan is pretty good, really it's the base for many mock meats we have in the UK already - which are better than eating seitan on its own.

Overall the burger concept was pretty good - the bread was nice, the salad good and well seasoned. If it had better chips and cost £7 I'd happily order it again.

Gelato is one thing that Amico does do well. I had it last time and this time again. Elsewhere this option would consist of a few scoops of Swedish Glace, but here it's something to actually look forward to.

I'm in two minds about Amico. I'd like to like it and there's enough menu options I've not tried yet. Maybe I've just been unlucky? Maybe I've an unsophisticated palate?

As there's not much else in the area and I'm often nearby I'll probably try it out again. It does seem a missed opportunity for some seriously good Italian flavours though.