Love From Philly: Han Dynasty Is Your New Favorite Dynastyby Randi / September 29, 2014
For the last official day of VeganMOFO, I want to talk about London’s hottest new nightclub. London’s weekend-long VegFest happened a few days ago, and I was lucky enough to eat my way through both days! It was so fun to be surrounded by like-minded people, including some great friends I am so happy to live near again. The best part of any festival like this is the food, and I was not disappointed here. Okay, I was a little disappointed. The actual food for sale from the many, many caterers was overall subpar. However, the vast number of companies giving delicious samples and the overall spirit of the weekend made up for it. I realize I’m a few days late, but it’s always the right time for judgment.
THE GOOD
The best part of the weekend was the people! I saw my friends from Vegan in Brighton and Alien on Toast (their blog names are so descriptive!), some other mighty fine PPKers, and new blogger friends I admire from Hasta la Vegan and Tea and Sympatico. Jojo spoke to a pretty large crowd about vegan travel, and despite my best efforts to catch her eye and make her laugh, she did a great job! I also caught a little of Brendan Brazier’s talk about using nutrition to reduce stress. Audience members were furiously taking notes during his entire presentation, with their eyes wide and bulging like the crazy alien dog at the end of “Ghostbusters”, so I assume he is now some sort of cult leader and/or too much Vega.
One of the Brassieres
Most of the food and products on offer were fabulous! I loved talking with several company representatives, most of whom were very friendly and helpful. Before I get to good product booths, let’s talk about the food I actually bought.
The best thing I ate were the baked spring rolls full of duck, mustard greens, and sweet chili from this place to the left, The Hungry Gecko, which for two days I thought was called the World Street truck. They were a decent size and priced well at 5£. And they were delicious! I had never heard of this company before and was pleasantly surprised by these rolls. Unfortunately, the next thing I tried from them (and from everyone else, almost) was not as good (see below).
Baked (though they didn’t taste it!) veggie duck spring rolls
One of my absolute favorite stalls at the fest was BFVB, the Big Fat Vegan Bakery. Now this is what festival food should look like, dammit! Everything they sold was ENORME, yet it was still super affordable. That insanely human-size focaccia was only 3£ or so! I don’t know why I didn’t buy one. I did buy a very large cream-filled chocolate king that lasted for several days. The donut pastry wasn’t as fluffy as it could have been, but it was still awesome! I wish this bakery was easier to find!
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I also loved that there was a smoothie truck! SoulJuices made me a wonderful carrot, ginger, apple, spinach juice for £4, which is kind of pricey but I guess that’s London. The man who made it asked me my juice preferences (strong on the ginger, &c), which I appreciated. The truck also sold a delicious special smoothie of wheatgrass, spinach, mango, apple, and peach, which was insanely thick and smooth. And you couldn’t tell from it that wheatgrass is gross.
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As for the vendors, many were outstanding! Even if your product is great, it takes more than that to have a good stall at a fest like this. You need samples, and you need lots of them. You need nice people, and you need to offer deals better than what you usually retail for. Let’s look at the vendors who succeeded.
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Cocoa Feliz had the most beautiful table I’ve ever seen in a warehouse full of stalls. You could tell by how carefully they laid out every single chocolate that they cared about their product enough to devote real time and effort to its sale. The same cannot be said for many others. Anyway, the chocolate from Cocoa Feliz is awesome. They have crazy interesting flavors like cardamom & coffee and juniper & bay, and well as standards like peanut butter and mint fondant. They all come in dark, milky, or white options. I love that they provide all three types of each! It’s so nice! The chocolates were absolutely delicious.
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Nakd bars did a great job as well. They had tons of samples, including new flavors like Christmas pudding (kind of weird). Even better, they had a fantastic 18 bars for £8 deal going on. This is the kind of basic fest behavior that other companies with similar products could learn from! We’ll get there.
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OH WHERE DID YOU GO, GIANT WAGGON WHEEL WITH VEGAN MARSHMALLOWWWWS! |
Another fantastic vendor was Goody Goody Stuff, makers of the most wonderful vegan gummies! The company’s representatives were so friendly and helpful, and they had bowls out of some of their wonderful gummies. They also were kind enough to share other products with me, and they were all fantastic! The summer peaches have a great flavor, but I actually liked the sour fruit salad the best. I usually hate sour things, but these are a little more sweet than sour, and it just works so well. And the texture is a little stronger, which I like. It’s hard to get the texture right without gelatin, but these are the closest I’ve had so far. I also loved the Koala gummy bears. Gummy bears are one of my favorite food groups, so I was so happy to find these. I’m so happy to be in a land of delicious vegan gummies.
I don’t have pictures because MASS CROWD but Sheese did a fantastic job! It made me really like the company and the cheeses. I was never a cheese person, but I could see myself buying Sheese. Ananda Foods was selling several products (I didn’t see any discernible discount though, boo), mostly with their marshmallow stuff, including their incredible Round Up! Waggon Wheels. They are like Mallomars of my youth but with even more marshmallow. And they’re vegan! I’m such a fan. They did a giveaway for a giant (and I mean giant, like 15 inch diameter??) waggon wheel (I’m pretty sure it’s waggon with two g’s which I don’t like) and I lost. I am still distraught. If you see a giant vegan marshmallow cookie sandwich covered in chocolate for sale elsewhere, please get one for me k thx.
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While Ananda had a great product but no samples or legit discounts (I mean I’m not mad), moo free chocolates shared their great product, good deals, and had ridiculously sized samples. They shared new holiday flavors and had the advent calendar for sale for only £4! (I should have gotten one; I’ve never had an advent calendar!) They also had buckets of broken up chocolate bars for you to try. I loved the people working this booth. They were so friendly and were like, ‘Hey did you try this flavor yet?’ and held up a bucket to me and I pulled out a ‘sample’ piece that was like 5 inches long. I couldn’t even finish it! And then I bought stuff from them, because that’s the point of nice people, good deals, and samples to know if you will like the product before you buy it. People. It’s easy. Moving on…
I think Vegusto had the most popular booth in the entire place, because they were selling their hot dogs and sausages on buns. They are sooo good! They had samples of their hard cheeses, which aren’t my favorite, but you couldn’t even get to them because the line for the food was so long. So worth it! They know how to sell their product and increase interest.
St Best patties |
Rainforest Creations |
Other great caterers were St Best Caribbean caterers, who had fantastic veggie-filled patties, and Rainforest Creations, whose raw and delicious food I always enjoy in Spitalfields market. Bangwok also had really popular pad thai that people said was great.
The always great Ms. Cupcake sold out on both days super quickly! So impressive!
The always great Ms. Cupcake sold out on both days super quickly! So impressive!
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I also really liked Jollyum ice cream. The lady who helped me was really nice and took time to answer questions. And the product was good too!
Aside from food, I loved the dishware from Magpie. How pretty is it?
Aside from food, I loved the dishware from Magpie. How pretty is it?
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While so much was good, I want to also talk about what was bad and what was worse. Yayyy judgment!!
THE BAD
Unfortunately, a lot of the caterers made food that did a disservice to the glory of so much vegan food. It was bland, tasteless, weird, not worth it. Boooo! There is so much delicious vegan food (that even I can make!) so there are no excuses.
First, unfortunately, was the much-anticipated food at Rupert Street’s truck. I have been looking forward to them for months, but this experience was disappointing. The corn tamale on a bed of grains and vegetables was so bland that it was like eating weird air.
I guess I was wrong to assume that tamales be filled with something? But this corn tamale was just a cylinder of corn masa. Like…it was all breading. There was no filling. Isn’t that weird??
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It looks so good but it’s all so wrong. I’ll definitely try something else at Rupert Street to give them another chance, but I’m not looking forward to it. |
Next up on my list of sadness was the Pani Puri Pops at The Hungry Gecko. The menu said they were ‘traditional Indian street food’. So that sounded promising enough.
So…I don’t know how people could eat this on the street. It was a cold cilantro-laden soup, and the ‘pop’s were little fried cups full of…air. It was so weird. VegFest caterers sponsored by weird air? I don’t know how people eat this without just breaking the fry cups into the soup and then eating it with a spoon. So weird, so disappointing.
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Sadness soup pops |
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I was also super excited to try The Honest Carrot. I think I’ve had one of their famous ‘roast’ balls (above, right) long ago, and it was yummy and super healthy. I tried another one this time (the superfood roast ball) as well as the leek, squash, and butter bean mini pie. Honestly, I think this kind of food needs refrigeration or something. The pie crust was insanely soggy to the point where most of it looked and felt like injera. It was not delicious. The inside was pretty tasty but how do you eat a pie filling when the crust is inedible?? The superfood roast had a weird raw broccoli and cranberry taste, but it was better at home where I nuked it. Sigh.
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The Primal Kitchen was there with unremarkable bars to taste, placed on rough wooden slabs so we got the whole caveman thing. The bars are all vegan, and they weren’t terrible, but I’m bothered that a company whose mission is to get people to eat meat, eggs, seafood, and their bars was at VegFest.
The next super sad table belonged to Fry’s Vegetarian. I’m sure most of us love their products, but they do not know how to present at a festival. They had 20% off their products, which is definitely awesome, but the table was just their products’ boxes, sitting there, doing nothing, no singing, no dancing. Like, who is going to be lured into buying something you can’t taste or even see? They had the saddest little sample trays as well, just a few cubes of the weirder meats as far as I could tell. Paltry showing for such a large company.
The next super sad table belonged to Fry’s Vegetarian. I’m sure most of us love their products, but they do not know how to present at a festival. They had 20% off their products, which is definitely awesome, but the table was just their products’ boxes, sitting there, doing nothing, no singing, no dancing. Like, who is going to be lured into buying something you can’t taste or even see? They had the saddest little sample trays as well, just a few cubes of the weirder meats as far as I could tell. Paltry showing for such a large company.
So sad
THE UGLY
What makes the following stuff ugly and not bad? Well, for starters, most of the products were actually delicious. Most of the companies are ones that I adore. What makes this ugly is the kind of interaction I had with them during VegFest. It hurts me that our encounters weren’t as great as their products, or as great as I had hoped. Some people, man.
First up, well let’s just start with the one that broke my heart the most. Vega.
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I actually said to my friend Sarah, “Don’t let me leave without buying a bunch of Vega stuff!” I love Vega products, but it’s so expensive to buy in the UK. I was excited to buy some where there would be some sort of discount and where shipping wouldn’t be an issue. However, despite setting this reminder, I left on purpose without buying any. Why? Because the people (mostly the man) working the booth were super rude and uninterested in helping customers. I asked about the new bars that I had heard about (there weren’t any samples on Sunday so I was asking to make sure I got the right product), and he barely registered that he had heard me. His response? Walking away. There were no other potential customers around me, so that wasn’t the reason. And I’m a pretty damn polite person, so that wasn’t it. On Saturday too, when I passed by and asked about the products available and the discount (barely noticeable), this man was just as curmudgeonly and awful, so exhaustion from the weekend isn’t an excuse. I don’t really know why Vega, such a successful company, sent this man to deal with customers, but that was stupid. I walked away pissed, confused, and empty-handed. One or two awful reps won’t put me off Vega for good, but I’m happy using my Sunwarrior powders at the moment, thank you very much.
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Next up! The ridiculousness of Organic Livity. The raw cakes looked delicious, and what I tried was indeed great. But, they don’t look or taste raw. I bought a raw Mexican chocolate brownie with mint cream icing. I was so excited! I love raw brownies and I love mint! But I am not convinced that the mint cream, which tasted exactly like the icing sugar- and margarine-filled frostings every nonraw baker (including myself) uses, was raw. However, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on that one. (Even though some of the raw cakes looked like baked flour. I don’t know how on earth that stuff could have been raw. Unless, as my companion said, the ingredients were raw; the final product wasn’t. Love it.)
My friend and I joked that they were ‘free from treats’, as in, not treats at all, free from all semblance of treatiness.
See that cake in the back? How is that not cooked??
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My real gripe is that it is such a superb waste of money for what you get. That brownie I got? For £2.50, I expected a regular sized brownie. Definitely not as big as the enormous donut (for the same price) from BFVB, but something at least visible. Nope. I watched as the guy carefully cut a tablespoon-sized piece for me, placed it carefully in a box, and handed it to me like it was made of gold, as my friend nearly pissed herself in disbelief. Rip. Off.
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This is slightly bigger than my thumbnail, which I keep very short. |
Lastly, my favorite encounter happened with The Chocolatier, this super fancy water ganache maker who sells to Michelin-starred restaurants, fancy businesses, and of course the Royal Family. The chocolate is outstanding (it better be for £10 per bar), and again I was so excited to buy some of the truffles, but nooooo.
Just to be clear, the slightly older lady working this booth (at least on Saturday) was the sweetest person ever. When you walked by, she stuck out little spoons of their ganache shots and smiled until you ate it. I love her. However, she wasn’t there when I was ready to buy on Sunday. A young woman, with what looked like professionally done makeup, who was probably my age but treated me like a child, was in charge. And my friend and I didn’t even have a chance to open our mouths before this girl regaled us with how fancy their usual clients are. This is almost verbatim: “We normally do business with Michelin restaurants and five-star hotels, and extremely high-profile private businesses. The rest of our clients are the Royal Family and other highly sophisticated people. We just loooooove doing this public events so that members of the public who normally wouldn’t be able to experience our services have this wonderful chance to experience something that normally only highly sophisticated people get to experience.” I guess I’m not highly sophisticated enough for her because I immediately vomited upon her. BARRRRRF.
I of course don’t want to leave on that vomitous note, so here are a few of my absolute favorite images from VegFest. Overall, it was a wonderful time, and the shitty aspects at least made it interesting.
WHATTTT.
WHAAAAAATTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Amazing.
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The Best Restaurant in London Is Almost A Secret
I get an email from various London ‘news’ roundups at least every week, no matter how often I mark TimeOut as the spam that it is, boasting that they found, yet again, the best restaurants in London. Not only are many of the reviews in these types of outlets actually sponsored (did anyone think today’s journalists followed ethical guidelines?), but they’re also always wrong. Always. Wrong. How can I say this so assuredly? Because the actual best food in London is at Persepolis.
Persepolis is this tiny, and I mean like baby shoes, cafe located in the back of a shop in Peckham, so when (not if) you go, you’ll be like “oh I can get the bus there in 40 minutes” but no silly you’ve forgotten everything you’ve learned about traveling in London and you will really get there an hour late. The main chef is bright-red-haired firecracker Sally Butcher, author of middle eastern cookbooks including Veggiestan and Snackistan, and despite only having one burner in the cafe, the food she sends out is beyond imagination. She and her Iranian (I think?) husband sell middle eastern sweets and interesting spices and all kinds of fun stuff in the shop (including what is supposed to be the greatest rice cooker ever), and the cafe – now with more than 3 tables AND a toilet – is a flinging flanging gem. The fact that I returned there before I learned that they now have a toilet (they didn’t the first time I went and I had to go into a nearby chicken shop like 8x) says much more about how miraculous the food is than I can say with other words, but I’m going to go on anyway for like 9 more pages probably because that’s how I do.
If you live in London or its surroundings (I’m going to say, for these purposes, that those surroundings stretch to within 2-3 hour flight time), you need to go now till December 23 for their Christmas feast, offered at lunch and dinner times before the baby Jesus’s birthday. For $30 (remember that is GBP but I don’t have the pound sign on my keyboard…though I could have copied and pasted one instead of typing this aside but whatever), you get, well, a feast of Persian delights. It takes a while (our meal took about 3.5 hours) because of that aforementioned single burner, but like I said, it’s the best food in London. It’s hard to remember what everything was, but it was all delicious. NB, we had one or two extra dishes in our feast because I was with a VIP, but even half of this amount of food would have been more than enough, and still an insanely good deal. Considering the quality and the quantity, this feast was more akin to the gutbusting Michelin-starred meals we’ve had, but for the price of, well, not them.
I’m also going to talk about their regular menu at the end so you can see what you might be able to enjoy if you can’t go immediately. But first, the Christmas feast!
As you can see, our table was decorated with a fun Christmassy tablecloth and lots of toys and ribbons. Christmas crackers were on the table waiting for us. Christmas crackers, I have learned, are not a crunchy edible item that smells of cinnamon or something. No, they are cardboard tubes that you pull apart to make a loud obnoxious sound. We all did ours at the same time so all the other diners knew not to mess with us.
We were treated to pomegranate juice Prosecco early on, but it took a very, very long time to get someone’s attention to ask for water, and even longer for them to bring it, so bring a bottle to save you. Finally, our cold mezze arrived.
I’m also going to talk about their regular menu at the end so you can see what you might be able to enjoy if you can’t go immediately. But first, the Christmas feast!
As you can see, our table was decorated with a fun Christmassy tablecloth and lots of toys and ribbons. Christmas crackers were on the table waiting for us. Christmas crackers, I have learned, are not a crunchy edible item that smells of cinnamon or something. No, they are cardboard tubes that you pull apart to make a loud obnoxious sound. We all did ours at the same time so all the other diners knew not to mess with us.
We were treated to pomegranate juice Prosecco early on, but it took a very, very long time to get someone’s attention to ask for water, and even longer for them to bring it, so bring a bottle to save you. Finally, our cold mezze arrived.
Admiral ajvar |
I don’t like yogurt |
These little oil balls were so good
We got a plate of ajvar, a red pepper puree that I learned to love in Sarajevo; a mild rice and pea dish that came with a tangy dilly yogurt sauce; and makhdoush with fresh herbs, Peter Piper’s pickled peppers, and sweet potato crackers. Oh, and every round comes with unlimited baskets of warm lavash or crispy lavashy chips. I think both the flatbread and cracker forms can properly be called lavash, actually. Anyway, all good, but the makhdoush was the one where you’re like, oh snap, this is blowing my mind. The flavors were so complex, it was like spicy and sour and also allspice-y? I have the palate of a fast food fry cook so I can’t identify subtle spices correctly but it was incredible. They are baby eggplants filled with a sort of walnut paste and preserved in oil. That oil was really good to dip the second bread basket into.
After a much less painful wait (considering all we just ate) came the warm mezze, otherwise known as happy fried things.
Persepolis’s delicious kibbeh is filled with chickpeas or surprisingly with chopped walnuts in their fried bulgur croquette-like shell. Their great falafel was also included, and another fried ball that I’m going to say was sweet potato but I really forget. It was all so delicious, but what pushed it over the top was the harissa cole slaw on top. Super spicy yet incredibly flavorful, this was the kind of condiment every fried thing should always come with. I want to make harissa cole slaw and put it on everything now. It’s also a pretty color.
This is probably where normal people would be full, especially because by now we have gone through 4 baskets of bread per head, but we’re just getting warmed up. Next we had a traditional chickpea, spinach, and crispy fried bread dish and a most delicious peanut and Brussels sprouts stew.
This is probably where normal people would be full, especially because by now we have gone through 4 baskets of bread per head, but we’re just getting warmed up. Next we had a traditional chickpea, spinach, and crispy fried bread dish and a most delicious peanut and Brussels sprouts stew.
Fried bread
Yahmmm
These were two of my favorite things. The chickpea, bread, and spinach dish is already a combination of my 3 favorite foods, but it also came in a super thick tahini sauce with a huge dollop of thick as hell tahini cream in the center, so it’s pretty much the perfect dish you could ever create for me. Sally doesn’t even know me. With that taken care of, what’s the next most perfect dish you could give me? Brussels sprouts of that super hard to achieve properly edible texture, in a robust tomato-based peanut sauce full of crushed peanuts. I eat at least 4 peanut-based things per day (usually 4 chocolate peanut butter cups) so this was welcome, and super delicious. Damn. These really seemed tailor-made for me and I am just reveling in the memory of how good they were.
But we’re not done! That was just the mezze/appetizer portion! We haven’t even gotten to the mains. I’m full just remembering all of this.
First came the traditional and very recognizable dolmeh: imam biyaldi (from the webiste), Turkish stuffed aubergines with tomato, onion, and garlic; and Persian stuffed red peppers with rice and nuts. Stuff vegetables are common, almost expected vegan mains and might not seem exciting to you, or me, but even I would happily order this magical plate again. It helped that the oil-dredged roasted veggies came on a bed of thick lavash, rendering the bread soaked through and pretty outstanding in its own right.
But we’re not done! That was just the mezze/appetizer portion! We haven’t even gotten to the mains. I’m full just remembering all of this.
First came the traditional and very recognizable dolmeh: imam biyaldi (from the webiste), Turkish stuffed aubergines with tomato, onion, and garlic; and Persian stuffed red peppers with rice and nuts. Stuff vegetables are common, almost expected vegan mains and might not seem exciting to you, or me, but even I would happily order this magical plate again. It helped that the oil-dredged roasted veggies came on a bed of thick lavash, rendering the bread soaked through and pretty outstanding in its own right.
Magic
The peppers and the eggplant fell apart at the touch of the fork, they were so tender and amazing (and, yes, oil soaked). Oh I almost forgot; you can see in the background the white cabbage wrap as well. It looked like an organ donation from the ice box but it tasted like heaven. The delicious dish came with a tangy peppery relish in a cup and a green salad to offset all the comforting heavy tastes. I really liked how much fresh greenery seemed to abound.
The next main was so unique and special, both in taste and appearance. The chestnut tagine with a buttery basmati rice and shirazi salsa (and more green salad!) showed off chestnuts, chickpeas, and other legumes and vegetables stewed for a very long time in tamarind, resulting in a black dish with extraordinarily deep levels of flavor.
The next main was so unique and special, both in taste and appearance. The chestnut tagine with a buttery basmati rice and shirazi salsa (and more green salad!) showed off chestnuts, chickpeas, and other legumes and vegetables stewed for a very long time in tamarind, resulting in a black dish with extraordinarily deep levels of flavor.
Black magic
It was such a fun dish to eat because, since the stewing left everything black and unidentifiable, you’d pierce an object with your fork and expect, say, a chestnut but then it would be a parsnip, or vice versa, or you’d expect a chickpea and it would be a walnut, &c. You get it. Fun game. Delicious food.
After all of this food, plus 7 baskets of lavash each, we were busting at the seams. But Persepolis’s desserts are just as remarkable as its savory food, so we knew that more challenges awaited us. We did not quite anticipate the extent of those challenges. We all laughed in disbelief, shock, and excitement when our tray of middle eastern sweets arrived with the stern order from Sally that we were to finish every last bite. (Yes ma’am.)
After all of this food, plus 7 baskets of lavash each, we were busting at the seams. But Persepolis’s desserts are just as remarkable as its savory food, so we knew that more challenges awaited us. We did not quite anticipate the extent of those challenges. We all laughed in disbelief, shock, and excitement when our tray of middle eastern sweets arrived with the stern order from Sally that we were to finish every last bite. (Yes ma’am.)
Ne’er hath these eyes beheld a more beauteous sight.
Paklava (for Persian cuisine it’s a p not a b). Turkish delight. Halva. Semolina cake. Coconut bars. That’s just the bottom right corner. I loved the big bowl of pomegranate seeds in the center, making us feel at least a tiny bit healthy. As long as you eat a spoonful of pomegranate seeds between every sugar-soaked piece of phyllo-wrapped pastry, you achieve balance health-wise, though you do have to spend more time in the underworld. It was all so delectable that I’m actually using that word even though it usually makes me cringe. Before we even finished our first pieces, however, Sally came out to test us even further:
At this point I thought I was being punked.
Yup, she dropped mugs full of vegan ice cream in front of each of us. We simultaneously groaned in pain, fear, and absolute delight. Even though they use Swedish Glace (a popular dairy-free ice cream in the UK that, if you take it out of its container and place it on a tabletop overnight, it will melt YET NOT LOSE ITS SHAPE (this is a troubling experiment that my vegans have actually done)), Persepolis has the absolute best sundaes I’ve ever had, so here was a chance to make my own! I simply put everything from that sweets tray into the mug and mashed mashed mashed it up. Perfection. And then I slept and/or cried for 15 hours with my hearing and vision both going in and out as my body focused on digesting instead of anything else.
The Christmas feast includes mint tea or coffee to end, and even though fresh mint tea is my favorite, none of us could stomach another thing, even a liquid. It was an amazing, incredible, unbeatable meal, and for only $30 there’s no better deal, especially in this town. Run don’t walk.
The Christmas feast includes mint tea or coffee to end, and even though fresh mint tea is my favorite, none of us could stomach another thing, even a liquid. It was an amazing, incredible, unbeatable meal, and for only $30 there’s no better deal, especially in this town. Run don’t walk.
A view of the quaint shoppe. You can’t read it from here, but all those little taped signs say the most hilarious things, like “if you can’t control your child we can laminate him for you” or stuff like that.
But what about for the rest of the year? Or what if you aren’t in the mood for a half day of sublime eating (who are you)? You’ll still have the best meal ever. It’ll still take a long time, but it’s worth it. Here are some moments from previous visits. HIGHLIGHTS!
liquids |
solids |
Persepolis has a really interesting drinks menu. Pictured is a mixed carrot and apple juice (I think. I don’t remember) but they offer intriguing things such as a carob, halva, and banana smoothie; a mango, tamarind, and ginger smoothie; and vegan hot chocolate with carob and spices. Foodwise, we started with bread (yay bread) and incredible individual portions of carrot soup. P.S., this was a really long time ago, I didn’t take notes, and I’m making up 70% of it. Just know it was all delicious. I remember that much.
We shared an overstuffed plate of traditional mezze: hummus, falafel, their wonderful kibbeh, tabbouleh, Peter Piper’s pickled peppers, olives, pickled other things including garlic which requires a warning, and lentil chips. All so good. I will never turn down a middle eastern mezze plate especially if there’s hummus, and this was a great batch of everything. I even ate that pickled garlic. I remember that.
The next dish was the most incredible standout, one of Persepolis’s best and most interesting offerings. It’s soft tofu cooked with the most insanely deep-flavored dates of all time. You probably think that sounds disgusting, because I did, and I would never have ordered it if my friend didn’t insist, thanks to her prior knowledge. But this puts all other tofu scrambles to shame. To damn shame. Somehow, these amazing Iranian dates meld with the tofu to create this magical flavor that you never imagined existed. And then it’s all over warm bread. Yes.
The next dish was the most incredible standout, one of Persepolis’s best and most interesting offerings. It’s soft tofu cooked with the most insanely deep-flavored dates of all time. You probably think that sounds disgusting, because I did, and I would never have ordered it if my friend didn’t insist, thanks to her prior knowledge. But this puts all other tofu scrambles to shame. To damn shame. Somehow, these amazing Iranian dates meld with the tofu to create this magical flavor that you never imagined existed. And then it’s all over warm bread. Yes.
Sugar dates and figs! Sugar dates and tofu.
Next is ANOTHER of Persepolis’s standout must-gets! I think maybe everything they make is? Anyway, get the foul medammes because 1) foul is the best, but more importantly b) it comes with eggy za’atar bread, and although it takes ages to make, Sally’s tahini-flavored vegan version is off. the. chiz. arts. I don’t know what all the components are or if it really is just pure magic that I can’t imitate, but it is insane.
Look at that eggy mess of delight
As I said above, Persepolis’s desserts are not to be missed. At one visit, since there were three of us, we ordered three gigantic sundaes to share. Duh.
NOT MY HANDS |
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We got the Knickerbocker sundae and I still don’t know what that is so don’t ask, but I know it was insane amazing. I think it had date caramel, and probably halva, probably chocolate, just definitely get it, okay? We also got the Turkish Delight, which is doused in bright pink rose syrup and lots of bits of sugar-bomb Turkish Delight. This was too much for me, though others seem to love it. It’s sugarrrrrr on another frequency, one that I don’t think I communicate on. But the Hot Paklava Meltdown, our last sundae, was exactly my speed. It’s the vanilla ice cream with, you guessed it, hot syrupy paklava mixed it, so you have to dig in asap before all the ice cream melts. We of course stopped to take pictures because we are vegans with blogs. But oh man, in that mid-melt stage, it’s the best thing you can imagine.
So obviously you can see that Persepolis is not to be missed. Not one thing on their menu is to be missed. If you can’t get to London, you should check out Sally Butcher’s cookbooks. But really, you need her to cook for you. I imagine how I feel about her now is along the lines of how Eric Ripert and all those award-winning NYC chefs feel about that old woman living in a monastery in South Korea who cooks for the monks.
So obviously you can see that Persepolis is not to be missed. Not one thing on their menu is to be missed. If you can’t get to London, you should check out Sally Butcher’s cookbooks. But really, you need her to cook for you. I imagine how I feel about her now is along the lines of how Eric Ripert and all those award-winning NYC chefs feel about that old woman living in a monastery in South Korea who cooks for the monks.
PERSEPOLIS, PECKHAM, LONDON
Water speed: Nonexistent at first, but then they really became attentive.
Service: It depends how crowded the place is. They are doing a million things at once but will be super helpful when they can be.
Bathrooms: There is one now!
Food: The best. Go hungry and don’t expect to eat for the rest of the day.
Bonus: Fun, cozy atmosphere, extremely affordable and so cheap for what you are getting.
New Orleans Inspirations: Fava Bean, Tempeh, & Okra File Gumbo
Oh okra, you beautiful alien you
Oh lordy lord, how good is gumbo?! WHO DAT! When I was in New Orleans last month, gumbo was obviously being sold everywhere you looked. I had delicious Gumbo Z’Herbes at the famous Gumbo Shop, which is a naturally vegetarian (and vegan if the roux isn’t made with butter) traditional gumbo, with parsley and cabbage and other leafy greens. I loved it and I could eat something like it every day, but seeing the tremendous variety of more interesting non-veg gumbos made me hella jealous.
I was so happy to find a meaty vegan gumbo at Seed, my favorite restaurant in NOLA, which used sausage-y seitan and a darker, more tomato-based broth than the zerby one (how I pronounce it because I only had one semester of French). So, seriously on my first day back home, I decided to make gumbo that was inspired by the Seed version’s meatiness but that retained the vegetable-heavy, healthy soul of Tess D’Zerbervilles. It also showcases okra, in my mind a necessary gumbo ingredient, and uses a variety of beans. Also! The file powder came straight from a central grocery store in NOLA, so it’s all totally legit. (Yes is it Zatarain’s but like that’s how you Jazz It Up!)
FAVA BEAN, TEMPEH, & OKRA FILE GUMBO
So, I’ve heard that okra, file powder, and a roux are all different thickening options, so you are only supposed to – or you only need to – use one, because they do the same job. I refuse to cut good solid American jobs so we are using all of them buster!
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Ingredients
Directions
 So many sources of protein especially the baby’s bottom! |
 This is a roux a what a roux  If you are fancy, you can call this mirepoix. But only if you’re fancy  My new fave find  Frozen 2: The Fava Beans  Tempeh is the best food everrrrr  Kalesss  |
I hope you make this or something like it, because gumbo is the shizzzzzz and I don’t just mean the school where Elphaba and Galinda met. What are your thoughts about what defines gumbo? Is it the okra? The roux? The use of file? The fact that you have to eat it with a top hat on while listening to Iko Iko Un-Day? Let me know!
You know what, I’m gonna leave you with that song, because it is an even bigger part of New Orleans than gumbo…maybe.
(Admission: We heard this song everywhere we went (playing restaurants, played outside by street performers, anywhere) and it took awhile before I realized I was not correct in singing “Hey now hey now hey now hey now, Iko Iko Un-day, Giacomo’s in pastry cup with a sugar bowl in his hand,” how I had sung it for like…my life. I guess I just have sugar on the brain always?)
