Vegan London Food Binge

24 hours, 4 restaurants, £200.

Having once visited London and eaten at its vegan restaurants on a regular basis (2000-2004 - I was a student with endless free time and cheap train tickets) I've since been visiting less and less. Not through a dislike of our capital, but through ridiculously expensive walk up fares and slow trains that really don't encourage you to use public transport. In the meantime various new places have popped up that we've yet to try.

To celebrate my partner's birthday we decided to book a hotel and cheap train tickets in advance, then go for an all you can eat food binge, to make up for lost time.

The reviews of the 4 places we ate at (Sagar, Inspiral, Saf & Zilli Green) follow. They range from Exceptional to OK, disappointing and robbery.

Sagar

I discovered Sagar (South Indian, vegetarian) by chance in autumn 2008, on Percy Street in London. It's sandwiched between Soho Wine Supply on one side (the only shop in the UK I've found selling vegan sweet vermouth) and Camerino (omni Italian restaurant, who did a genuinely good job of catering for me when on a work do there). Two doors down is Joi (vegan chinese, where I've been more times than I'd like to admit).



Though not fully vegan, Sagar has a separate vegan menu with a lot of choice. We returned due to their amazing onion bhajis - unlike any we've had before and very good.

We weren't overly hungry (Friday lunchtime), so ordered some bhajis and popadums to munch whilst waiting for our main courses. As with before; the bhajis were excellent and a generous portion size. For some reason they served condiments to us with one non vegan option, which they pointed out we shouldn't eat. Why include it, or if realising on serving it shouldn't be there, not take it away?

For mains we had masala dosa and some kind of aubergine curry with garlic rice.

The dosa itself was good, but filling a little uninspiring - more like spicy baby food than curry. The garlic rice was tasty, but a little overpriced (£3.95). I can't comment on the slimy vegetable dish, but am informed it tasted good (though a little too spicy).

Sagar's food is, on the whole, well priced. The two of us ate for £23 with soft drinks. You get a lot for your money and the food is reliably OK. I'd certainly return, but not before trying many of the other restaurants on my list.

Inspiral Lounge

I've heard a lot of hype about Inspiral since it opened a couple of years ago. The main reason for visiting was their cakes, of which Tiramisu was the most exciting.



Camden is more or less how I remember it - a mass of tourist tack and overpriced imports, marketed at middle class rebellious teenagers and wannabe hippies. An endless warren of market stall selling more or less the same stock. There are exceptions to this and a few good shops (such as Oddballs juggling shop just over the bridge), but in general it's best avoided (or visited at 10am on Sunday when at its quietest).

Inspiral was, how shall I say this? Not my cup of tea.

It was overcrowded with smoky incense and small, oddly shaped tables (i.e. not in a good way). The cakes were overpriced (£4 a slice) and disappointing. The tiramisu cake was not tiramisu how I remember - whilst well presented it seriously lacked any kind of flavour, let alone tiramisu. The peanut butter cake was over sweet and unimpressive for the price. We had a scoop of icecream which according to the board was meant to come in a vegan waffle cone, but instead came in a paper cup.

For some unknown reason they use wooden cutlery, which as well as being bad for the environment is unpleasant to eat off (try licking a spoon made of wood, ick).

Inspiral sell all sorts of things we didn't try, so there's a chance that at a less busy time it's more pleasant and I'd consider returning. All in all this time however, it wasn't for me.

Edit: Their website says their tiramisu cake has a money back guarantee! I feel an email coming on....

Saf

As the vegetable hater you all know me to be, the concept of attending Saf was more than a little disturbing. Though I like trying new things, expensive raw vegetables don't have quite the same allure as a nice wedge of focaccia or slice of lemon cake; especially vegetables I actively dislike.

I'm pleased to say however that I was pleasantly surprised by Saf - it was one of the best restaurant visits I've ever had. We each ate 3 raw courses and were buzzing for hours afterwards.



Saf is located outside the centre of London (on the edge of Zone 1) in a building with high ceilings, good decor and comfortable seating (choose a table at the rear for better seats than at the front). We arrived at 7.30 on Friday evening and by 8.30 it was almost full.

Service was excellent (for once it was worth the 12.5% 'optional' charge): we were well looked after by people who knew about and could explain components of the dishes they were serving.

We ordered a couple of cocktails whilst choosing what to eat, which whilst took a while to come were very well presented. A little on the expensive side, but interesting and unusual flavours that had had more work put into them than mixing the contents of store bought bottles together. Mine (a Rhubarb Triangle) contained balsamic vinegar and basil, which unfortunately didn't quite work for me. I'm glad to have tried it and it was drinkable. I've not considered balsamic to be a cocktail ingredient before, but as someone who sometimes drinks it neat from the bottle I'll be doing some experimentation with it.

We were a bit in the dark when it came to food, as the menu we were presented with was different from that on their website and from which we'd received recommendations. More disappointingly there was no cheese board (which we'd been particularly looking forward to) or taster plate.

For starters I chose Cannelloni (raw courgette slices, rolled with cream cheese, served with salsa and some kind of oil), Becky chose Pesto au Poivre (cashew cheese, tortilla chips, dehydrated tomato).

Mine was a little on the small side, but really tasty (coming from someone who doesn't like courgettes this is praise indeed), the cheese extremely good and generously portioned.

For mains we chose Salsify Fettucine and Lasagne. We ate half each and surreptitiously swapped mid way through.

I've always been somewhat sceptical of the whole fake pasta thing, but this really worked. It was quite obviously not your normal sort of pasta, but it was a good compromise between soft and crunchy, without the weird taste I'd expect. I've not had the pleasure of salsify before, nor for that matter knew what it was until I googled. It was (if wikipedia is to be believed) very popular in the UK a few hundred years ago.

I was more a fan of the lasagne. Again it bore very little to the lasagne we cooked earlier in the week, but was full of olivey goodness.

Disappointed by the lack of cheese platter, the manager agreed to let me order a macadamia cheese dish from the lunch menu, whilst Becky had the raw chocolate torte.

As others have mentioned the dessert sizes are small, but it was by far and away the best raw chocolate thing I've tried (I had a slice of disgusting raw 'chocolate cake' at a vegan festival a few years ago). The cheese was also good, though came with an insufficient amount of tortilla chips and think I preferred the cashew.

The lemonade we ordered to come with dessert arrived several minutes after we'd finished, so we had an odd (over sweet) lemonade course.

All in all Saf was the introduction to raw food I've been looking for. It was good, tasty, healthy food I could imagine eating more of without feeling like I'm punishing myself. I'm not looking to turn 100% raw over night (if ever), but we both agreed to trialling a (mostly) raw day once a week.

They have an unpolished iPhone recipe app (ingredients don't tally up with instructions) and various of their recipes can be found online. I'll certainly try making their nut cheeses.

The bill came to £88, which whilst on the more expensive side was worth it for the experience and is justifiable given the amount of prep that goes into their dishes. We'll definitely return.

Zilli Green

Since it's launch in February we've heard mixed reviews for Zilli Green (vegetarian Italian restuarant in Soho, owned by Aldo Zilli), but based on the menu wanted to check it out for ourselves.

Whilst I still think the Guardian article was a little harsh, the experience was not a good one and the food not worth the price. We left feeling deflated and a bit like we'd been robbed by Aldo himself.

I don't feel particularly compelled to write a long blog post about it, if I thought it'd achieve anything I'd rather funnel my effort into writing a complaint.

We visited at lunchtime (arriving at 12.30pm), having been to Saf the night before (i.e. it had a lot to live up to). We were the first people to arrive in what was a small and over cramped restaurant (it's never a good sign when they have to move the table to let you into your seat, then move it back pinning you in!). Service was disorganised and cold - not worth the 'optional' charge.

By 1.30pm it was about 20% full (not exactly buzzing), but we at least benefited from a short wait in between courses.

We ordered a meze to nibble whilst waiting for starter, which was genuinely tasty and worth it's price. My sushi for starter wasn't either of these things however - it was worse than supermarket bought vegan sushi. I can't remember what Becky's starter was - it was that memorable.

My main course was an overpriced burger, served with over manicured, under flavoured chips. Though hungry I left part of the burger. Becky had a tofu+noodle dish that was alright, but fairly uninspiring and with an ungenerous amount of tofu.

We ordered a dessert platter for pudding, which again we ended up leaving some of. The lemoncello cheesecake was quite nice, but not worth the money. The tiramisu cake was better than Inspiral's (some have said it's the same, but it was layered differently) in terms of taste, but still no where near real tiramisu in taste (the Guardian's subliminal advert for dairy quote isn't far off). The carob torte was simply vile and left half uneaten.

The bill came to £62, including 1 alcoholic drink. It was half as good as a meal from The Warehouse in Birmingham costing £30-£40.

I really can't recommend Zilli Green to anyone, especially when there's so many other places to find vegan food in the area.

(Green) Smoothies

You may or may not have noticed the distinct lack of vegetables featuring in recipes on this blog.

There's a very good reason for this - I just don't like most of them. I turned vegan in January 2000 (a new millennium's resolution if you like) only for animal rights (not a dietary requirement).

I'd say I know a fair amount about nutrition - I eat a balanced diet, am in good health and have not to my knowledge had any problems as a result of it. I saw a nutritionist at university when experiencing tiredness problems, who said I had the healthiest diet of any student she'd ever encountered. It turned out my tiredness was more related to the hours I kept / all night partying!

I'm not however obsessed with green vegetables, nor do I believe that consuming huge amounts of sprouts is required to be vegan.

My favourite ingredient in the whole world is wheat - it's so versatile (think cake, cookies, noodles, pasta, bread etc). I love bread, have you noticed? I eat a fair amount of tofu and am not completely averse to lentils. I like fruit and salad leaves, if combined into a meal and not just served up whole (I'm not a rabbit). I do like some veg when cooked up with other things; leeks, carrots, onions, artichokes are just a few.

What sets me aside from other fussy eaters is however a strong desire to try and like new vegan food. It's not that I don't try to incorporate more veg into my diet, it's that every time I do it ruins what was otherwise a good meal. I'd genuinely like to derive the same enjoyment others do from eating things like kale, broccoli and cauliflower - without invoking my gag reflex.

I think a large part of the problem is that I don't have the taste buds for bitter food. I don't like tonic (quinine) or ale (hops). I can physically drink them, but I don't get any satisfaction out of a G&T at all - quite the opposite of what some people do.

The downside of loving carbs and spending a disproportionate amount of my life sat in an office is that I often consume more calories than I burn, leading to the addition of slightly more weight than I'd like. I've tried various techniques to remedy this over the years (gym membership, swapping sweet snacks for savoury, cutting out snacks, denying myself dessert etc), but eventually I come back to the same problem - if I consume the amount of food that I want and enjoy doing then my body will naturally find a BMI of ~28 unless I'm doing regular cardio. I find nothing more mind numbing than cardio for the sake of cardio (especially when shite music is being pumped through the speakers).

My latest ploy involves tackling these 2 issues (cutting carbs, eating more fresh fruit & veg) and exploring my vague raw food curiosity. Over the past week I've been consuming 2 portions of fruit/veg before leaving the house, through way of smoothies. I've found that it is possible for green smoothies to taste good.



Do I feel better for it? Don't be daft. I don't go in for the whole psychosomatic hippy bullshit. They are remarkably tasty however and very easy to prepare. It's completely possible to hide a handful of spinach in a drink and not notice its presence (other than the colour, of course).

Green Smoothie

My favourite green smoothie thus far consists of:

• Apple Juice (glass)
  
• Celery (6 inches)
  
• Cucumber (2 inches)
  
• 1 Banana
  
• Baby Spinach (generous handful)

Blend all ingredients together until smooth. Simple?

I've been fiddling with the quantities of each ingredient and found those to be the best. Banana gives it a real sweet lift, but 2 bananas is too much. I've never fully appreciated the strength of celery's flavour until I tried 2 sticks instead of 1 - too much. You can leave out the cucumber without much flavour change.

Morello Cherry & Dark Chocolate Smoothie

I thieved the idea of this drink from Innocent's smoothie book (published/ purchased before they became Coca-Cola and were promptly added to my boycott list).

• Apple Juice (glass)
  
• Frozen Morello/dark cherries (10-15)
  
• 1 Banana
  
• 25g melted chocolate

Blend the juice, cherries and banana whilst melting the chocolate. Set to a low speed, open the lid and pour in the chocolate. Blend for a further few seconds until totally combined. It should go a beautiful dark red, with specks of chocolate and cherry skin.

Yes - I realise that this isn't green. This was my weekend smoothie. There've been various rumours circulating for years about the benefit of dark chocolate in your diet, which I'll cling to in this instance.

A note about blenders

If you don't own or need a new blender, invest in one with a dishwasherable glass jug, powerful enough to crush ice/frozen fruit and without useless gimicks. My first blender - a Kenwood Smoothie maker was complete junk. It wasn't dishwasher safe (like the shop claimed), was difficult to clean and had a completely useless tap, which got clogged up easily and ensured a lump of unblended silken tofu every time when using it to make desserts.

In most instances you can clean a glass jugged blender with running cold water, if you do it straight after blending. For slightly more stubborn ingredients, running at low speed with a little washing liquid and 1/3 water for 30 seconds will do the trick. Any cleaning that takes more than 1 minute can be done in the dishwasher.



A note about drinking

Slow down! It's possible to drink a smoothie in 5-20 seconds. This isn't good however, when 10 minutes later you're driving to work and come over quite queezy. Sip and enjoy whilst you tweet, facebook or whatever it is you do in the morning.

If you've any tried and tasted (green) smoothie recipes you can share with a green veg hater, please let me know!

Chocolate Egg Eating Festival Greetings

It's been a good year for both vegan chocolate eggs and accidentally vegan hot cross buns.

My excuse for not being a better blogger this week is that we're away on holiday in Dorset at the moment.

We made 2 cakes for the day itself, a standard chocolate buttercream and a made up almond marzipan one. I substituted 100g flour for 100g ground almonds and vanilla essence for almond in my standard sponge. I then added a layer of marzipan to the batter and cooked at a lower temperature for an extended period. The resulting cake got covered with marzipan and lightly grilled.

It tasted pretty damned good, but was quite moist and would be better suited as a bakewell tart sponge rather than a cake in its own right. I'll blog it if I ever get round to it (there is some shortcrust pastry that needs using as it happens.......)

Hazelnut Truffles / Reverse Engineering

I've been a bit crap at blogging recently - too many interests and not enough time.

I tend to go in phases, dedicating the little time I have mostly to one thing for several weeks/months, then move on. Recently I've switched attention to iPhone development - whilst I've a general dislike for Apple I find potential for an additional revenue stream through releasing apps quite appealing. I purchased a mac mini 2 weeks ago and am learning Objective-C, which is similar enough to other languages I 'speak' (I mainly code Java, Perl & PHP but have a working knowledge of Python, TCL, C, C++, C#, JavaScript and various others).

Programming and cooking are not too dissimilar. One of my interests is network protocol design and reverse engineering - figuring out how new applications talk over a network/the Internet so I can write my own code that captures, interfaces with or modifies traffic passing between them.

Reverse engineering ranges from trivially easy to insanely difficult. More often than not application programmers are not experts in networking, so use either an existing protocol their language has an API for (such as HTTP) or implement their own crude protocol in plain-text. Better programmers write their own protocols for efficiency, which makes the task a bit more complex. If encryption is used it's unlikely (though not impossible) that you'll get very far, though it may be that only the payload is encrypted and control data is still modifiable.

Recreating commercial food products is often easy too, following a similar process and pattern of logic. Start with facts (ingredients listing, literature about process etc) and informed guesses (has it been cooked?), write a plan (recipe) then move to testing. It's likely it was made using similar techniques to those you're already familiar with, modified only for preparation in bulk.

Product wrappers in the UK (and most places) list ingredients in order by weight. If a percentage is shown on an ingredient then you know that each ingredient preceding has a higher percentage and each afterwards has lower.

Knowledge of the chemical properties of ingredients helps, particularly how they interact with others. Figuring out why an ingredient was included allows you to guess at processes employed (such as an emulsifier), the stage in which it was added, perform substitutions (for a 'nicer' or more readily available ingredient) and omissions (we don't need preservatives or colouring agents). McGee on Food and Cooking is an excellent book and reference guide on the properties of ingredients. Wikipedia is good too.

Companies sometimes hide actual ingredients under another product or category, such as flavourings. It's not always easy to discover what the components of these are, beyond taste alone.

For sake of example (not gluttony of course) I'll introduce the concept with a nice (but chronically overpriced) vegan truffle that is widely available and doesn't need naming. They're easy to make and the ingredients cost a third of the finished item price.

The ingredients on the wrapper are: chocolate (55% cocoa), coconut oil, hazelnuts (18%), cocoa.

An observation test shows that the amount of cocoa (used for dusting) is negligible. Thus if we ignore it for now and know that 18% is hazelnuts then the rest must be coconut oil and chocolate, both in larger amounts than 18%. 18% coconut oil is a lot, so it's fair to guess that there's not a lot more than this in the product. Let's say that 20% is coconut oil and 62% is chocolate.

55% cocoa solid chocolate is cheaper and less bitter than higher concentrations. I'm choosing to use 70%, which I personally prefer and fairtrade bars of are readily available. It will make the end product slightly more bitter and less creamy, but given the amount of coconut oil in the product I really don't think it needs any more fat.

I'm going to use a 100g bar of chocolate, and guess that 20g of it used for coating. 100 / 62 = 1.61, so 1.61 * 18 = 29g hazelnuts and 1.61 * 20 = 33g coconut oil.

Coconut oil is solid at room temperature. As it needs to melt before adding the first step is to place the bottle in some boiling water, then set aside until later.

Grind the hazelnuts to a fine powder - I made mine slightly too course. If sugar was an ingredient I'd guess that they'd been made into praline, but the company in question tends to favour raw products and I'll leave this step out.

If water were included it'd be possible that a hazelnut cream had been made, but as it's not just chop and melt the 80g chocolate, then stir in the hazelnuts.


Stir in the melted coconut oil and pour into a foil tray approximately the size of 10 truffles. As the chocolate won't be visible after coating and dusting (nor will it want to crack when bitten into), we don't need to temper it first.

Place the mixture in the freezer, then melt the remaining 20g chocolate. Adding some extra chocolate to it will help with dipping (I added another 30g).

I have every confidence that you can find an alternative use for any wasted chocolate (ours got melted again with golden syrup and marg, then poured on icecream with pieces of mazipan and maple syrup).

When set, turn the block out onto a chopping board and trim the sides. Cut it into 10 portions.

You can see that I left a few larger pieces of hazelnut in the mixture, which sunk to the bottom.

Dip each truffle in chocolate in turn, placing on a plate that has been dusted with sieved cocoa. As the chocolate solidifies sieve cocoa onto the surface. Place in the fridge to set, then roll each in further cocoa.

Keep in the fridge, but remove and leave at room temperature for 15-20 minutes before consuming for optimum consistency.

Vegan Oxford Fail

With weather last Sunday as perfect as you could ask for it seemed like as good a day as any to check out what Oxford has to offer. We'd been aware of The Gardeners Arms for a while, so it made sense to go for a wander then have a meal there afterwards. Oxford is about a 50 minute drive, door to door.

Though I've been to Oxford several times on business and to visit people, I'd not really ever been to have a look at its shops. The only shop I had been in in the past decade is Central Furniture (opposite Oxford University Press, where I once had a meeting). This perhaps gave me a somewhat skewed belief that perhaps Oxford contained many independent shops worth visiting.

How wrong could I be? The Oxford we saw was almost exclusively chainstores - grotty ones at that. The few independent shops we found were mostly closed (I guess it was a Sunday).

Mid way through our shopping fail we found a branch of shakeaway, who make overpriced but reasonably pleasant soy milkshakes (they charge 99p per shake extra for soya). The first took 10 minutes to come, the second 5 minutes later. The music playing was overloud (I'm all for loud music, but not that loud), the staff had colds and upon finishing one of our 'vegan' milkshakes we found gelatine containing non-vegetarian marshmallows in the bottom.

I wrote to them afterwards and they seemed genuinely apologetic. I don't however feel inclined to ever go back.

I'd like to say I like The Gardeners Arms, but I'd be lying if I did. It's down a cute, narrow road near the town centre, in an area known as Jericho. The closest free parking on a Sunday is a few streets away (other roads are residents only). The building is character packed, but poorly furnished with very few decent tables and a leather sofa (an odd choice for what describes itself on its website as being Oxford's Premier Vegetarian Restaurant). The table we got was way too small to eat comfortably at.

The food is not restaurant standard. It's pub food, which being a pub is understandable. Why market it anything different? Most of their food can be prepared vegan, though they have no vegan puddings on their menu. The prices don't reflect the quality - for £9 a main-course you get a lot better in most other vegetarian restaurants.

They don't seem to sell starters, so we got a couple of side dishes whilst waiting. The chips were fries - almost certainly bought in frozen and pretty tasteless. The garlic flatbread was kind of tasty, but weird and oily (impossible to eat without getting melted 'butter' all over your fingers). We both chose the special, which turned out to be a standard mushroom pie but with roast potatoes instead of non-roast.

The pie's pastry was excellent. It was very yorkshire pudding-esque and the best thing about our experience there. The pie filling was OK - nothing special but edible. The roast potatoes were seriously some of the worst I've ever had the displeasure of eating. The red wine gravy tasted like standard bisto. All in all it was pretty disappointing - we felt robbed.

I never like to say bad things about a vegan friendly business, because i genuinely want the few that we do have to succeed. The Gardener's Arms however needs a good kick up the arse if to gain us as customers or recommend other people to visit. Either they need to improve the seating, quality and choice of food, or cut prices and market it as pub food not a 'premier restaurant' (I realise that as Oxford's only vegetarian restaurant they can do this). If I were out on the piss and found the pub I was in could make me vegan food I'd be delighted. I wouldn't however ever go back there only for the food, unless I was pretty desperate.

So, all in all, it didn't quite work out :). Oxford itself is a pretty place with lots of old buildings. I'd certainly give it another go, with guidance from someone who knows their way around.

Sunshine

I like winter - to an extent. I enjoy watching the seasons change and totally get the concept of it being a period to reflect, to create your own warmth and to look forward to the year ahead.

I know we're forever whinging about how crap our weather is in the UK, but the last couple of months have been consistently colder, greyer and snowier than any I remember. Romantic season watching aside I've been ready for summer for quite a while now.

My ideal climate would consist of 2 weeks winter, 2 weeks spring, 4 weeks autumn and 44 weeks summer. Enough time to enjoy the unique offerings that other seasons bring (beautifully coloured leaves, snow etc), with the option to spend evenings outside in sandals and a single layer of clothing the rest.

It's not that I find lack of sunshine depressing per se, rather that its presence really boosts my energy levels. I've used a light box for the past couple of years which helps to a degree, especially when having to get up and go to work whilst it's still dark outside. It's no substitute however for the real thing.

I know the obvious answer is move to a warmer climate, but I like the UK and for all it's failings it's a pretty great place to live.

So, rant aside; yesterday we had proper sun for the first time in ages.

Our coatless walk was on reflection a little cold, but it was so refreshing to be outside enjoying the light. For a few moments on Sunday afternoon whilst relaxing by the window bliss was achieved.

Alcohol isn't the answer to many things, but having a glass of something good in your hand when you've nowhere else you need to be often helps.

The following drink was concocted and worth remembering / recreating again:

• 2 Shots Summer Pimms
• 1 Shot Cucumber Gin
• 1 Shot Simple Syrup
• 8 Shots Orange Juice
• 3 Strawberries
• Crushed Ice

Muddle / crush the strawberries in the bottom of a cocktail shaker and add the rest of the ingredients. Shake until your hands go numb from cold, then stain into 2 glasses. Float a 1-2 tsp of the strawberry puree on each.

Warning: this drink goes down very, very easily. It's probably worth making 2 batches (or a jug) in advance.

I'm really loving the cucumber gin I made a while ago at the moment. It's really quite impressively cucumbery and a little goes a long way (you could probably lower the shot to a half if you're less of a fan). I've been a big lover of Pimms since it's vegan status was confirmed a few years ago and strawberries are always good.