Veganizing “Friends”: Dr. Roger’s Oysters & Middle Eastern Couscous

Man alive do you know how much putting “Marylebone” in the headline is stressing me out?! I NEVER spell that forking fancy pants neighborhood (dammit, it’s so fancy it’s gonna require the ‘u’) neighbourhood correctly so I must be feeling BRAVE to put it in the headline. I think the correct mnemonic is remembering it as Mary Le Bone like it’s a person’s unfortunate name but it still looks wrong. Omg was Mary Le Bone a real person? Is it named after her? Was she chic af? OK that’s a ramble for another time. Suffice it to say Mary’s hood is chic af and we recently (like last night) went there to dine at The Gate, London’s classic vegetarian restaurant. The Gate has been serving up quality boutique vegetarian food in London since 1989, and they’ve remained a constant, dependable, classy, delicious mid-upscale choice for us throughout the quiet veg years and now in this remarkable vegan boom.

Once a month, The Gate in Mary’s the bone hosts a “secret” vegan supper club (which is cute to call it that I guess because you can’t actually find info on their website easily but obvs it’s not secret; they let me in). For £49.50, you get a decadent, beautiful 5-course meal PLUS matching wines. Five wines are included in that pretty decent price! That’s amazing if you drink/are British! I do not and am not, but I was taken care of too (more below). I believe the menu changes for every supper club event – or at least it should, because I’m gonna go every single month as often as I can, because it was wonderful. (I’m really enjoying this strikethrough feature today. I’ll never stop I will stop.)

Out of the 5 courses, 1 was just fine, 2 were good and could easily have been great, 1 was great, and 1 was forking phenomenal, so overall I call that a win, especially because if this was all phenomenal I’d have nothing to say except EEEEE! and you all know how much I like to say things. Let’s get to the food!

First up to bat was my absolute favorite of the savory dishes, the crispy shiitake wonton: shiitake duxelle (duxelle is a fancy way of saying you prepared mushrooms with onions and garlic and herbs and then mixed it all up into a paste or an almost-paste or just finely chopped), cilantro, lime sauce, alfalfa, enoki mushrooms, and shiso. At first I was like ‘I love me some sprouts but that’s a huge pile of alfalfa’, but it was actually well balanced in the dish on the whole, because the mushroom duxelle was so rich and SO delicious that you needed to even that intensity out with literally nothing threads. I loved the little herb sauce dollops, the random enoki on top, and all the flavors together. This was the dish that was great.

The second dish was avocado, mango, and shimeji ceviche. Shimeji mushrooms are the little cartoon-looking fuckers pictured. I love all kinds of mushrooms (except magic ones) (don’t do drugs (THERE’S NO HOPE WITH DOPE lol remember that episode of Saved by the Bell omg it was the best with Johnny Dakota???? and then actual NBC president Brandon Tartikoff did the actual PSA at the end? HILARIOUS) (also obvs I’m joking do whatever you want just don’t forking drive and DO NOT make me smell it FFS ALL MY NEIGHBORS)). This was a very refreshing, very fresh ‘ceviche’ of our three awesome stars (avocado, mango, cartoon mushrooms) covered in lime juice, chili dressing, soft cashews, and placed in leaves of chicory. As you can see, there are also some edible flowers sprinkled about which is a surefire way to please me. So fun! This was one of the dishes that was good but not great, and that’s because while the flavors were all fresh and nice, it was super limey without having the right amount of salt to bring it out in a nice and not overly sour way.

Next is another of the (very) good dishes that could so easily have been great. I really enjoyed this, but admit that a few tiny tweaks could probably make it incredible. Here we have zucchini rolls (I WILL NEVER SAY COURGETTE) (no I already do), filled with WONDROUS fava bean mousse and topped with sumac. These rolls were super delicious; I would buy tubs of that mousse and eat it instead of my regular hummus rotation for several weeks if I could. It was so mild and pleasant and delicious, and the sumac was an interesting and nice touch. However, the smooth mousse was a little geriatric/soft-food-diet, and one of my dining companions said it needed something in the roll-up that was a little more substantial so he didn’t think ‘nursing home safety.’

As you can see, it’s on a bed of couscous, with mint, pistachios, and pomegranate, which was fine, basic. And then there’s a blob of green garlic yogurt on the side. The yogurt did not do it for me; I left most of it where I found it. I don’t think it was necessary and it was too strong, overpowering the mousse flavor, to be worth it. I think if they adiosed that (maybe replacing with something proteiny since, as usual with vegan tasting menus, that was lacking) plus maybe added a few whole fava beans or crushed nuts or something solid-food to the mousse filling this dish would have been great.

The last of the savory dishes was the one I think was just fine. Don’t get me wrong, it tasted great, as everything did (except that yogurt glob), but it was just so ya basic, the dish vegans have been served since before people knew what vegetarian meant so now just feels uninspired and lackluster: the Mediterranean aubergine. This was a big old (nicely) grilled eggplant with Romanesco cauliflower, pieces of butternut squash, semi-dried tomato pesto (I guess because it’s not sunny enough in the UK to fully dry your maters), radishes, and a very welcome piece of baby artichoke, and some green herby sauces all over. All the components were good, especially the pesto and that artichoke (artichokes rock), but despite everything tasting good, (to paraphrase Husbo’s best restaurant review:) you’re still just an asshole eating yet another roasted pile of root veg.

BUT IT’S OK THEY MADE UP FOR IT WITH DESSERT!

The dessert was the PHUH FORKING NOMENAL dish. I mean. Wow. Guys, I think this has been added to my top five restaurant desserts of all time. OF ALL TIME! This chocolate tulip featured a lovely chocolate shell cup housing the most incredible chocolate mousse like EVER. You can see the mousse cup looks red, so I was concerned that they were trying some funny business of trying to ‘improve’ upon classic chocolate by making it chocolate-raspberry or some bullshit that we don’t need because classic chocolate is perfection, but that’s just a dusting of I’m guessing dried raspberry powder to match the lovely little bits of dried raspberry crunch on top and the real raspberries around the plate. IT WAS SO AMAZING. And even though this was amazing in its own right, that right there in green is a dollop of the MOST INCREDIBLE pistachio Chantilly cream you ever did see. I mean I’m just so grateful. This was THE BEST. You need to try this.

While my three omnivorous (they really enjoyed this!) dining companions enjoyed all the wine, I got to choose whatever soft drinks I wanted to accompany my dishes, for no added charge. I was a bit dismayed at first that the ‘soft pairing option’ they confirmed they had in the email wasn’t pre-planned, but it was nice to be able to choose my own drinks off their regular menu. I got a carrot, ginger, beet, and celery juice first, and then a ginger spritz (ginger, lemon, soda) mocktail next. They made it clear I could order more, but they brought me full-size versions so I was so full from liquid so fast, especially considering I’d gone through 3 liter carafes of water before long! And we had 5 courses to go through!

This supper club was a truly lovely experience and I was glad to be reminded of how great The Gate’s food is. Their next one is August 22, so book in now.

The Gate, “Secret” Vegan Supper Club, Marylebone, London, UK

Water speed: They brought carafes of water pretty regularly! It was good! I was so full of liquid!
Service: Very good. As usual with these sorts of events, with everyone in the room finishing at the same time, it’s a little difficult and stressful to pay at the end since everyone is trying to, and it was frustrating that the servers seemed to be cleaning up instead of seeing that we wanted to pay, but that’s my small quibble. Overall good!
Bathrooms: Three stalls in the women’s room with internal sinks, which always make me mad because when there’s a line you’re like ‘why don’t they just put the sinks outside the stalls so the line moves faster’ but this wasn’t the theatre, there was no line. So it was fine. And clean.
Food: Delicious! Overall it was really nice, and even the things that weren’t interesting were still well made and tasted great.
Bonus:  I love a good supper club! I felt this was a great value for money, especially with all those drinks included. AND THAT DESSERT!

Joey: Hey, Monica, I got a question. I don’t see any tater tots.

Monica: That’s not a question.

Joey: But my mom always makes them. It’s like a tradition. You get a little piece of turkey on your fork, a little cranberry sauce, and a tot! It’s bad enough I can’t be with my family because of my disease.

Monica: All right, fine. Tonight’s potatoes will be both mashed with lumps, and in the form of tots.

Monica: What, Phoebe, did you whip the potatoes? Ross needs lumps!

Phoebe: Oh, I’m sorry, oh, I just, I thought we could have them whipped and then add some peas and onions.

Monica: Why would we do that?

Phoebe: Well, ’cause then they’d be like my mom used to make them, you know, before she died.

Monica: Ok, three kinds of potatoes coming up.

POTATOES WITH LUMPS – ROSS      First, we’ll make Ross’s potatoes, with lumps. Get about 3-4 pounds of potatoes. I really like cooking with a bag of mixed colors, it’s so cheerful! Boil the potatoes until soft, then drain. Add half of those potatoes back into the pot, and add salt, pepper, olive oil or butter, a dash of unsweetened plain almond milk, and mash! Careful – do not overmash, because we need to keep some lumps in there!  POTATOES WITH PEAS & ONIONS – PHOEBE      Next, chop up an onion and saute it over medium heat in a bit of olive oil in a saucepan. You know how do to this! I believe in you! After about 5 minutes, add in about 1/2C frozen peas, and cook for about 5 more minutes.       Then, in a new pot (or the pot from Ross’s potatoes, if you move them to a bowl), add the remaining 1.5-2 lbs. of potatoes, add your salt, pepper, olive oil or butter, dash of milk. Get your immersion blender or hand-blender out now, because we are going to whip these babies! Once they are really well blended and whipped, add the onions and peas and mix through with a wooden spoon.                   TOTS – JOEY’S I’m still really beat from my weekend, and from my full week now of being sick, so we’re going to use frozen tots instead of making them from scratch. I bet Trader Joe’s fantastic frozen (and vegan-marked) tots would still trump anything I tried from scratch. They cook really well, for about 20 minutes in a 400° oven. I let them cook an extra 10 minutes because crispy Tots are the work of heaven.

Purdy taters! Am I always sauteing peas and onions? Just like Lily would make Gotta have my tots, man