Sarajevo Vegan Scene: Zaatar & Co. Restaurant

       Not that I know what your childhood was like, let alone what the defining tastes of it were, but I’m assuming these will give you such nostalgia you’ll be compelled to call your best friend from day camp.
    This evening, I felt compelled to make caramel cookies with these fancy new accidentally vegan products (caramel extract and caramel chips!! score!) I found. I winged a recipe, expecting (hoping?) to test a few batches to get it right, but I loved the first ones! As I bit into my first of many, I realized oh my god I know this taste! But what was it? It was CHILDHOOD .

    But telling myself “it’s just childhood!” wasn’t going to cut it. I needed to figure out what it was! I had vague flashes of memories of eating really fast breakfasts before going to, well, day camp. But that wasn’t a lot to go on, except to recall that I was around age 8 because I went to overnight camp at age 10 like a badass mofo. So hmm what did I used to eat for breakfast when I was 8? Oh yes! Microwave pancakes and Eggo waffles!! These taste like microwave breakfast doughs? That isn’t a huge selling point, I guess. Also it isn’t exactly right. We are getting closer though! 
    Luckily, husband came home and tried one and said, in the nicest way, that it tasted like cheap maple syrup, or really cheap pancake syrup that has no real maple in it. Yes! That’s it! These cookies, these magical flashback cookies, taste like the melted butter-cheap pancake syrup mixture my mom would make my brother and me for our microwave pancakes and waffles! THE BEST THING EVER! IN COOKIE FORM! Hence why I’m calling them waffle cookies. They taste like the waffles of childhood. Cue the music. 

    For those in the London area, the products I used are Dr Oetker’s caramel flavor (I’m sorry, flavour) and random caramel chips from Kosher Kingdom in Golders Green (that shop is a veritable gold mine of accidentally vegan baking chip flavours). For those in America, if you can’t find your own versions, I’d be happy to bring you some in January if you want to meet me in NYC. It’ll cost you either the price of a Broadway show ticket OR enough food to satisfy me at Cinnamon Snail. Hahahah you think you know which one’s cheaper! That’s adorable! 

*This post is part of a series in which I eat fancy Michelin-starred meals and then brag about it. 
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Happy Valentines Day, everyone! Oh, Valentines Day is over, you say? Counter: Valentines Day is about love and chocolate, therefore every day is VDay. To celebrate (the actual one) (well not the actual day (it was a school night!) but close enough to it that it was undeniably for VDay) relatively recently, Husband took me to out to a fancy dinner in London’s main drag of Soho. Now I hear your doubts, because I had them too: What, Soho?! Soho is only good for 1) bros barfing in the streets before it’s even 6pm because alcoholism is a huge and underacknowledged problem in the UK  in large part due to the ingrained nature of pub culture and also the lack of sunshine and b) sad sack vegetarian options at chain restaurants (cough *Pret a Manger* cough). Although there is some decent food to be found in Soho, I never heard of a fancy restaurant there that could make a fancy meal for a vegan that was actually impressive or at least better than what I cook at home. Luckily, Husband has read the entire internet and so he discovered the vegan-friendliness of Gauthier, a restaurant that was awarded a Michelin star a few years back. 

    In a shocking twist, Gauthier didn’t give us the usual telephonic assurance that ‘oh sure we can accommodate vegans’ like somebody that I used to knowwww somebodayyyyy. I’ll try not to do that a lot more but I cannot stop singing it every time I see or hear the name of this restaurant. (I will also probably stick an incorrect L in there a few times but I will try to remember that I am not talking about Jean Paul.) Anyway, no, I didn’t have to call and ask pweeease feed me Seymour (lets me save my phone anxiety for Congress!), because the fancy French restaurant offers two tasting menus – one omnivorous, one vegan – AS PART OF THEIR REGULAR MENU. Like, if you sit down in one of the dimly candlelit dining rooms spanning the several floors of an old Georgian townhouse on a cushy chair at one of the tables covered with starched white tablecloths and white napkins, you are given a menu that has two pages, and ONE IS VEGAN. That is not a thing that happens! Not at places like this! I think the casualness with which they incorporate the veg tasting menu option into their legitimate Michelized French fine dining is the greatest part about this restaurant. It’s so natural and effortless. Maybe it’s maple leaves. In fact, we could only overhear two other tables in our dining room (the tables are very generously spaced, thanks because I hate other people), and all of our three tables had a veg menu coming. At one table was a young couple definitely on an early date, and the girl ordered the vegan tasting menu. At the other was a group of 4-5 30-something friends, and two of them ordered the veg tasting menu just because it sounded interesting. I heard them say that they weren’t vegetarian but it sounded more interesting than the regular and worth a try. Peopleeee that is how you get more people to try vegan food! Just make it normal and natural and easy cause you didn’t have to cutttttttt me offffffffffffffff…

   The experience started off well. The host took our coats and didn’t bat an eye when I also handed her my thick blanketscarf that I love so much that I think I’ll probably write a post about it someday soon. But so it’s giant and anyone else would have been like ahhhh I can’t see, why is there so much blanket! but she handled it like a French pro. We were seated upstairs in the smaller dining area from the still smallish one on the ground floor. Hooray for less chance of cold air hitting me every time the door opens! After only a few minutes, the waiter brought us water and kept us filled the rest of the evening save for one or two slow moments. Huge success for London service! I faked looking at the menu for a few minutes before I was like, what am I doing, obviously I’m getting the vegan menu! 

   As is standard in tasting menu situations, you are brought offbook food to begin. My little snack was an interesting giant cracker, resembling the folds and volume of lavash but in cracker form. It came with two little dishes, one of hummus and one of avocado cream. They were fine, nothing special, but the fact that I was given hummus and avocado, two of my favorite things, plus a breadstuff, made me super happy. 

My first main course was a celeriac and watercress veloute. I just looked up what veloute means – a sauce like velvet. That is a great word for this! It truly was! The celeriac and watercress velvet sauce was lovely, mild but with a hint of the brightness of those two vegetables with none of the bitterness. In the velvet sauce was tiny little baby ravioli that was soo good. I could have eaten a whole bowl of them, but I guess that is what pasta places are for and not fine dining. The ravioli was accompanied in the velvet sauce (I’m going to say velvet sauce as many times as I can) by pieces of crisp green apple, which sounds weird but went perfectly with the velvet sauce components. All those green flavors were so carefully chosen and so compatible. According to the menu, the velvet sauce also contained ‘fondant’ but I didn’t get any wedding cake so I’m gonna ignore that part. 

Next was the Stuffed Roscoff Onion, which I assume is a type of onion. Despite being all about onion, I really enjoyed it! The onion was filled with potato cream (like liquidier mashed potatoes) and drizzled with a balsamic vinegar reduction. It was a lot of onion, and I wish they could have bioengineered (GMOS BABY) a thinner outer layer so that it wasn’t such big bites of thick onion casing, but it was still very good. It conveyed a sort of meat and potatoes feel but without the meat. Obvs. I just googled “Roscoff onion” and the first result was the wiki for “Onion Johnny” and I am laughing too hard right now to read what it says. 

I would very much enjoy the next dish for dinner tonight, if they made it bigger/normal dinner sized. The Tofu & Swiss Chard Gratin combined many of my favorite things in a familiar, delicious way, with an upgrade in garlickiness, which is quite impressive considering how much garlic I use in my own cooking/life. The little tofu circle was firmer than you usually find when non-Asian restaurants attempt to use tofu. It was topped with Swiss chard plus an herby green puree sauce on top. Then, oh but the garlic. Roasted garlic puree covered everything, and then fried crispy garlic pieces. I think the puree might have been black garlic which makes me very happy, and based on zero knowledge I’m going to say black garlic is more potent than regular because man alive was I oozing garlic from the pores for days (months? we’ll see!) after eating it. Would recommend! 

My Whole Caramelized Parsnip came next, which I was not very excited about because no matter how much this country tries to foist the love of the parsnip upon me, I’m just not very into them. They are like fruity earth bads. But this was good! The whole parsnip was served with a minted parsnip puree and all in a liquorice-infused broth, so they were really playing it risky with things I usually hate but together they worked well. There were Terra chip-like thingers atop the food pile so that’s nice. All in all this was a very nice dish but seemed much more British than French, and a little meh for my tastes.

Continuing their theme of using one ingredient in many different forms in one dish, no matter how uninspired it would become, the next and final savory dish was Roasted Cauliflower, which also had a raw cauliflower salad with it. I’m okay with cauliflower but not when it’s being presented just as itself. I like it as fake mashed potatoes and like whipped into a cheese sub. Just roasting cauliflower and then also NOT roasting cauliflower and putting it on a plate for me does not impress me much and now I have a new song in my head. Thank goodness it was also served with a bit of truffle puree, which can save anything, but it was too much cauliflower to not nearly enough truffle puree. I guess because you have to be stingy with that most amazing stuff but then have more of another sauce. Also cauliflower is a REAL hard food to end on when you are already full. It’s hard to eat it when you don’t really want to eat anything more. You start with a vegetable like that, not end with it! 

I was excited for an Italian-style salad ender before the dessert came, as my menu said the next dish was to be a Clementine Givree, which was described in the menu as a Clementine and Coriander Salad with walnut oil. I was so excited for this, but then I was given…mango sorbet? I do not like sorbet. I have had so much sorbet at restaurants over the years that unless you are giving me chocolate sorbet (or vanilla; no one has ever made that that I’ve seen) I do not want it. So to get fruit sorbet when I was expecting salad? my favorite food? Blurghhh. I guess Givree means ice but then why did you describe it as a salad? And why was it super super sweet and mango flavored? I am still quite mad.

Why was I mad and not just disappointed?? Well, because my next dish, my first ‘official’ dessert, was Mango Vacherin, which I’m guessing means flipping MANGO SORBET BECAUSE I GOT MORE OF IT. I mean, I should have said something but by this time it was getting busier in the restaurant and I just couldn’t. Also, it was presented differently so it wasn’t the exact same plate, though it was the same main component, so I feel like we would have argued over that and things would have gotten lost in translation and it would have been more annoying and frustrating than two servings of blasted supersweet mango sorbet. The saving grace of all of this, and one of the coolest things ever, is that this second helping of sorbet was served in a meringue shell – MADE OF AQUAFABA. Yes, vegan blogger friends, the liquid from the can of chickpeas that whips up like egg white and opened up literally millions of doors for our cooking and baking achievements, the goop (not Gwynnie’s) that we haven’t stopped raving about since it first appeared on our radar circa Vida Vegan Con 2015, well that shit has made it to an actual French restaurant. I heard the waiter trying to explain to the table next to us what it was and it did not succeed because later I overheard them saying to each other “I don’t understand how they got chickpeas to look so white” so alas, not everyone is #blessed. But I was and still am pretty excited about this discovery and so pleased to see amazing vegan innovation used in the mainstream. As long as they don’t take credit for it. 

After the thrill of the aquafaba died down, I realized I still had another dessert coming. Joshgads, I was full! But the next dessert was chocolate and that NEVER happens at omni restaurants, let alone French restaurants. It’s always – as we have seen for two courses now – fruit sorbet, which is why I despise it. So it was a mixed bag o’ feelings when my Chocolate and Passionfruit Tart came out with — PASSION FRUIT SORBET. Jesus f-ing H that’s three scoops of fruit sorbet in one meal, 2 scoops worth that I let melt instead of choking down. Like, guys, I know you are really world class French chefs and it’s amazing that you are cooking entire vegan tasting menus on the regs, but did you really think 3 courses of fruit sorbet was a good plan? It’s not a good plan! I’d rather you failed to plan because you done planned to fail. Luckily, the chocolate tart was incredible. It was so thick and gooey and melty, like when you melt chocolate chips to bake with but you let the microwave go too long and/or you add a cold liquid and the chocolate seizes instead of liquefying? you know what I mean? or do you always melt your chocolate without a hitch? It was like seized chocolate but with a little bit more give and lot less broken heartedness. Oh man I loved this! Just like eating hot truffles (the chocolate kind not the above mushroom kind).

As usual with these sorts of tasting menus, when we thought we were finished, having asked for the bill, another plate of desserts came out. Husband got little French pastry cakey jawns and I was given a little pate de fruits (see caption) and two ginormous vegan marshmallows! That was very exciting but I was too full to eat them both. I wish they incorporated these into a more interesting first dessert with the meringue instead of the sorbet, and then if you want to force sorbet on me do it at the secret check-food stage so I can decline it without seeming rude. Regardless, it was very cool that they had vegan marshmallows. Maybe I’ll make rice krispie treats now. Treat. 
   Overall it was a very enjoyable meal, with some low points but mostly medium-to-relatively-high. I wasn’t blown away, but aside from the sorbets, it was a truly lovely dinner. I would totally recommend this place to groups of mixed company (vegans and omnis) or anyone looking for a fancy time in Soho. 

Gauthier, Soho, London, England, United Kingdom, Europe?
Water speed: Great! London, you’re getting it! I could cry with pride! As fancies do, they offered still or sparkling and we do one of each and it’s so nice.
Service: Very nice to start, although as the restaurant got busier it was harder to flag anyone. But nice, and great for London where customer service is usually like haha no.
Bathrooms: The bathrooms were seriously like a scene from Moulin Rouge, with dark burgundies and interesting mirrors and like a whole vanity table set-up? It was weird how much time I wanted to spend in there. 
Food: Very nice and solid, although not as innovative as I would like. The British seeps through. If they got rid of the triple sorbet horror show it would be very horosho. #wordplay
Bonus: It is so damn cool to know that a fancy restaurant will cater to veganism without having to do a lot of preparatory legwork. And it’s nice to have an upscale option for going with nonvegan fancies, like business colleagues or relatives.