Berlin Inspirations: German Potato Soup with Smoky Cashew Creamby Randi / September 21, 2014
Okay, today’s Berlin Inspiration really IS inspired by specific experiences during my travels! Currywurst, Germany’s favorite fast food, is a fried sausage cut up and served with curry ketchup sauce. Not only was currywurst sold on literally every corner in Berlin, in little hot dog vendor-style carts, but we also got to try vegan currywurst at Voner! So Voner’s was decent, but it was still covered in sweet ketchuppy curry sauce – that’s what makes it currywurst. Are you still wondering why it’s called currywurst? It’s because it’s the worst way to consume curry. Seriously. Currywurst is the food version of Mona Lisa Saperstein.
No but really, millions of German people can’t be wrong about something sausage related. They’ve been wrong about several really important things, but I’m going to give them weird meat foods. So, it’s probably just me who thinks this is weird. And if that’s the case, well here’s a really easy recipe so you can see whether you like it or whether you agree with me that it’s the currywurst.
My first mistake mayyy have been buying something called “soya chunks” from the somewhat shady Indian grocery around the corner. They looked like an interesting sort of dog food when I saw them in the store, but they were cheap and I didn’t feel like spending a lot of money on ready-made vegan sausage. Sometimes it is better to spend more money on things you are going to eat. Anyway, I had high hopes that they would be better once cooked. These hopes were quickly dashed once I opened the bag and smelled, again, the smell of an interesting sort of dog food. I soaked them in water for several hours, which successfully engorged the nuggets but sadly strengthened the weird Kibbles-y smell. So, no matter how or how long I cooked them, they were likely never going to be delicious. But let’s try it anyway, I said! (Or you should just use a better sausage substitute. Like anything.)
CURRYWURST
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Ingredients:
Directions:
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 The last time everything was OK.  Sure, like adding another squirt of ketchup is going to help  Oh sure add more curry powder, that’s going to make a difference. |
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How do you feel about currywurst? I would honestly love to know. Have you ever had it in Germany? Have you made your own? What should I do with the rest of my bag of soya chunks? Should I ask for a refund? Enjoy!!!!
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Dinner at Plates: East London’s Plant-Based Craze Gets Fancier
Dearly beloved, we’re gathered here to discuss East London’s relatively new fancy joint named Plates. I know, it’s getting hard to keep up with all the new vegan dishes, stalls, and restaurants in London, with something exciting seemingly popping up on our radar every day. I’m not that hungry guyzzz can we take it down a notch? My husband thinks I’m weird because I prefer cooking my own food or eating salads (and he thinks I’m extra weird because I’m okay with calling just a bowl of lettuce a ‘salad’ and he says that’s not okay that’s just lettuce anyone have an opinion on this nope okay moving on). But then on the other hand, well on my other hand right now I have a cut from where I knifed myself while making some of my aforementioned ‘own food’ which I guess is a point in the column for ‘going out more’ but ANYWAY, on the other figurative hand, I do want to try everything because as I recently explained to aforementioned husband about why I was forcing him to watch the worst movie ever written, “Sex & the City 2”, you can’t complain about things you haven’t seen. Applied to the topic at hand: you can’t recommend things you haven’t eaten. The former argument is more my speed because y’all know how much I loves complaining (LOVES IT) but the latter is nice to do too, and although I have some caveats about my recent dinner at Plates, I do recommend trying it for yourself.
You need some background info before just rocking up to this place, because well you can’t do that. To build off of the uncanny and undeniable feeling of exclusiveness that most of Shoreditch and the near surrounds gives off (not to mention the ‘you can’t sit with us’ vibe that seems to emanate from the invisible pores of most of its inhabitants), Plates is open to plebeians like us only on Saturday nights, only at three seating times, and of course only by reservation. From the sibling duo of Kirk and Keeley Haworth, Plates is one of the few places that is entirely vegan and doing fancy tasting menu dinner, the kind we see usually at Michelin starred places. That makes sense, because head chef Kirk (“God bless Kirk!”) and artistic director Keeley clearly learned something from their father, renowned Michelin-starred chef Nigel. Plates is also one of the many places nowadays that doesn’t use the word vegan, because it scares people, and instead calls themselves ‘plant-based’. I despise the phrase plant-based for many reasons, and while I do understand that it’s less intimidating to the ignorant masses, it also is unclear, weaselly, and ripe for corruption. In fact, I’ve seen corruption already. Companies have learned that ‘plant-based’ has the healthy allure of veganism without the aura of strictness that turns some idiots off and so I have seen goods and products with the ‘Plant-based!’ stamp on them that happen to have a plant ingredient but aren’t vegan. Like they’ll contain apples or spinach or oats or something but then also milk and egg or whatever, so they are technically based around a plant –> plant-based. I KNOW! God I hate people. Luckily Plates is entirely vegan so this rant is unfair to put in a review of their food but I just really want that phrase to stop being such a little bitch. Well most of all I want people to stop being afraid of the word ‘vegan’ but let’s try to keep our wishes realistic.
Anyway so we heard about Plates and we were like we love fancy dinners (see e.g. the Vegan Michelin series) we gotta go! We booked our table via their website, which as you can see is the type where you book your table by paying for your dinner in advance. I know that sounds terrifying (what if you can’t go after all and you’ve already paid ahhh) but it is really awesome to finish eating and then just get to leave, especially in London where customer service is hilarious and you can wait for hours trying to get someone’s attention just to be able to GIVE THEM MONEY. Anyway, so I approve of the pay-in-advance system Plates is doing. We ironed out details with Keeley, who is very responsive over email which makes a nice change from well everyone else in the world, for their first offered seating – 8pm. I know, I had to eat dinner like a normal young-ish person living in a big city and not like I already moved to Boca.
Plates is located in a lovely little upstairs room on Kingsland Road right near the Hoxton overground station. The entrance is down a little alley off of Kingsland, actually, but luckily a waiter was at the entrance and saw us looking into a salon confusedly and saved us. There’s lots of steps up to the dining room, and I forgot to ask about accessibility but given how most of this city is, I doubt it. It’s a clean and simple space, as you can see in the picture above. Everyone eating there seems a whole lot cooler than you, as is usual in this area. One girl was literally wearing a long thin black robe like they give you when you get a haircut and I was like um hon but then it had a designer name emblazoned across the back and so I was like ‘oh I bet she’s an artist’ and I bet long thin black salon robes become the next big thing.
Because of the whole pay-beforehand thing, you also pay for whatever drink pairing you want in advance. Husbo P had a wine pairing and I had a soft pairing. Although I am content to always be drinking water, I forking love it when restaurants offer a soft drink pairing for those of us who don’t drink and/or think wine tastes off. They brought us tall glasses of yellow juice to start, I think mine was pineappley and Z’s was the same but with alcohol, and it was nice and refreshing. Most important, they brought this:
THAT’S RIGHT BITCHES I GOT A PITCHER OF WATER! My favorite thing. I don’t know why some restaurants think it’s fine to give a thimble of a water glass and then disappear for the entire meal but luckily Plates is doing things the smart way. And they were very good about replacing it, so huzzahs are in order.
Our first course was what I think is called their Plates Slammer – a sharp shrub-like beetroot shot with a tiny wedge of pineapple and basil salt. You’re supposed to eat the pineapple and then drink the vinegary juice…or maybe you’re supposed to drink the juice and then sweeten down with the fruit. We both heard different things so we ate this in different ways so one of us was wrong but we both liked it. It’ll definitely wake you up, which at 8pm I needed.
This intro course also contained little potato bites – it was heritage potato (yes thank you my heritage is potato), pickled shallot, avocado, and nori. I definitely got potato and I definitely got pickled shallot, and while I definitely don’t get why these two items were paired together when they don’t really go together, they were all pretty good! As you’ll see, the plating was beautiful and even more, the plates themselves were gorgeous. When we mentioned this to each other Z was like ‘well yeah in a place called ‘Plates’ the plates better be good.’ True true.
Next was a mixed up little dare I say salad of young leeks, green grapes, and cress. I love the addition of tiny little sour grapes here to offer some bite. It was a lovely little light green pile, my favorite kind of food pile.
Next came my other favorite food, bread. Actually, it was licorice bread, with a subtle hint of that flavor, just enough to make things interesting but not enough to be weird. It was really nice and it was still warm. The bread came with a carrot puree, which I love using instead of butter or oil because why not get another vegetable in there, and some crackery flatbread jawn that was fine but nothing special and I would have eaten more licorice bread instead if poss.
As you can see, the drinks in my soft pairing were beautiful in color. This one was probably my favorite although I can’t tell you much about it other than it was pink. And it probably had beet?
Next was their take on the soup course. We had a bowl full of peas, mint, and spring leaves, and the waiter came over with hot dashi (a seaweed) broth and poured it into the bowls. I love table-side theatrics! We both really love fresh peas so we were pretty pleased when we realized that there were more than just the few that floated up to the surface, there were a ton in the bottom of that bowl. Yay peas! It was a very tasty, very simple, kind of refreshing little soup to have before the heavier main.
The main was a ‘pot roast cabbage’, braised and cooked into a meat-like hunk of…hunk of…burning love served with a crispy little layered potato and various purees. The white chunks on the side are I think turnip, which this country forking loves, or parsnips maybe, one of those nips. The green sauce was great and though you can’t see it under that awesome crispy purple latticework, the cabbage was really good. If I’m at a restaurant and they tell me my main was going to be a giant slab of cabbage I’d probably be concerned or angry but this was surprisingly delicious and satisfying. We were both impressed. The little potato jawn was the best part because was the exact size and shape of a Kit Kat, complete with the similar thin little layers. Lots of attention to detail there. The menu says there is ‘butterbean’ in this dish somewhere but I’m not sure where. In the sauce?
And that brings us to the main problem I had with Plates – the lack of protein. Yes they are focused on presenting vegetables in tasty, beautiful ways, but without using beans or tofu or seitan or tempeh or even really nuts, it’s clear that something is missing. This meal looked, tasted, and felt in every way like many of the Michelin-starred meals we’ve eaten over years. In fact, things were extremely similar to our latest two (which I haven’t written about yet because I haven’t written those travel guides yet), Wickens in Tasmania and Il Gallo d’Oro in Madeira. All of these were fantastic meals so this is overall praise for Plates, but at those omnivorous restaurants going out of their way to accommodate vegans, you expect that they will present plants in incredible ways but won’t be able to do too much protein-wise. (I know, I’m extremely generous with people who are forking Michelin-starred.) But when it’s a restaurant specifically for all vegan food, it seems like an obvious gaping hole to overlook that. So part of me is surprised, because this is an entirely vegan restaurant that should know better, but most of me is really not surprised because this isn’t coming from traditional vegan chefs (or, to my knowledge, even vegan people). They set out with Plates to create plant-based creative cuisine, and they really did focus on that ‘plant’ part. Maybe that’s why they are avoiding the v word and just saying plants plants plants. And they do really nice things with vegetables, but when veganism has made the leaps and bounds it has in the past decade, with omnivore-fooling sausage and pourable vegan eggs just to name things from the past week, this kind of food feels dated. It’s delicious for the most part, but it isn’t exciting in this current age of veganism. It’s what similar calibre restaurants have been doing for years.
Fortunately, dessert eased some of my disappointment at this realization. The coconut cacoa trifle was my favorite part, and it was almost like they heard my complaints and whipped up a dessert that was better than that at most of the aforementioned fancy meals. It’s not much to look at in the first picture so I’m sharing an inside look.
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You know what I usually am given, right? If you’ve read this blog you know all about how vegans are usually given fruit sorbet, or fruit AND sorbet, at fancier restaurants. (It’s not cute.) So getting chocolate cake covered in coconut cream was a real treat! And, it was delicious. It was served on a bed of rhubarb goop and meadowsweet, which I learned in Aussie is an herb, and it was good but I would have been fine with just the cake and cream. They did a really great job here, and maybe I’m just over-excited because it was not sorbet and it was chocolate, but still, ace.
Dinner at Plates was lovely, and at only 40 pounddollars it’s a pretty good deal for such fanciness. The protein issue is a real issue for me, it being a vegan meal. But if you treat it like other similar non-vegan fancy places, it doesn’t disappoint.
Plates, London, England, United Kingdom, Europe for right now
Water speed: They gave me a pitcher, and refilled it promptly every time I emptied it. I am happy.
Service: Nice overall. They didn’t talk too much about the food or drinks which is fine, but sometimes seemed too little.
Bathrooms: There is one stall for men and one for women with a shared sink and it’s the tiniest sink I’ve ever seen but they were clean and nice so okay. And they had paper towels which is a nice change. I know it’s bad for the environment but sometimes I don’t want to stand for a minute at a hot air machine okay.
Food: Very nice, creative use of vegetables, and not enough use of protein. The menu apparently changes often so perhaps if you go it will be better.
Bonus: It’s really cool to have a place like this, fancy but kind of casual at the same time, with nice food for not too much money. That they only serve people once per week makes it seem very exclusive and important to catch.
Dinner at the new fully vegan Alter London
This week, we had dinner – out – in a restaurant – for the first time since, well, you know. All this shiz. It was our wedding anniversary, so a fairly decent reason to risk our lives for a great meal, I guess. Last week or so I wrote about our return to the theatre, and how thank god it was a great show because if we’d risked our health and well-being for a piece of shit we’d be really mad. Well, same for this wonderful dinner. Alter, the latest hottest all-vegan restaurant in London’s ever-increasing vegan scene, delivered the goods, and I cannot wait to go back and try the rest of the menu.
Alter is the brainchild of chef Andy Hogben, who has cooked at several trendy place and has done a number of popular pop-ups in recent years and finally has a restaurant just a few blocks from my flat (the most important detail). Fun fact, a few years ago, he did a special dinner at The Frog Hoxton that we had tickets to, and then I got sick (pre-Covid), so husbo went with a friend and sent me pictures and it was torture. I was all (Sherie Rene Scott impression coming) “thissss shoulda been myyy tiiiime” but finally MY TIME HAS COME.
Alter’s whole concept reflects Andy’s sort of veganism (which is I think fairly recent? I could be wrong, it’s happened before, also what is time) – less focused on meat substitutes and the kind of “fun” food we find in abundance as a result of London’s obsession with vegan junk food bars. The menu focuses instead on fascinating flavor combinations from various cultures, especially those that are Not British. It’s very Thai-Malaysian-Chinese-other South Asian fusiony made hipster but in a great way. As my tastes go more towards vegetables than burgers, this is my kind of place for sure. Also, husbo and I debate a lot over the very stupid topic of ‘if you had only one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life what would it be’ and we usually narrow it down to Chinese and a few South Asian contenders, so this combo of all the bests really speaks to us.
Okay enough rambling. You know how much we love overordering, and if there were maybe 2 fewer items on the menu we prob would have just been like ‘BRING US ONE OF EVERYTHING’ which was my family’s favorite pastime at V Street in Philly (RIP). (Good thing we didn’t; we still brought leftovers home.) Instead, we finally decided on 3 from Column A (the small bites), 3 from Column B (the starter sizes), and 1 from Column C (the mains). Most of the dishes are shareable, or everything is if you’re with someone you don’t have to stand on ceremony with. I think we ordered a good amount, but there are a few changes I’d make for next time.
COLUMN A
Our superb waitress (thankfully wearing a mask, although the too loud music made it hard to hear her despite how hard she was trying to yell; please lower the music so your staff doesn’t go hoarse! (also we couldn’t really hear each other either and we are NOT OLD I SWEAR)) recommended the Kung Pao crackers, so we got those as well as the rice-fermented mustard green miang laos and the salted watermelon and coconut miang khams. Now I don’t know what miang means and it seems important, so I’m going to look it up: Oh just as I predicted it means FORKING DELICIOUS LITTLE PIECE OF HEAVEN.
Let’s start with the salted watermelon miangs, because they were my favorite. Well, everything is my favorite here. But I really loved these because, if you have ever eaten with me, you know my favorite kind of food is food that I can put in a raw leaf of some kind. You might think that limits things but I have put literally every food on lettuce, no joke. Anyway, this little parcel of goodness was I think a betel leaf? or like that? because it reminded me sooo much of all the best things we ate in Burma all those years ago. Luckily, unlike the great things I ate in Burma, this little leaf jawn did not make me sick for 3 days in a hotel room on stilts on a lake. Anyway, they were AMAZING.
Next up to bat, the Kung Pao crackers were also incredible. I was picturing those little soy-sauce-flavored rice crackers that taste like salt but also cardboard, so I clearly had no idea what was coming. This lovely light rice cracker was filled with shredded green stuff and white stuff and flavor wondrousness, honestly I have no idea but it was SO GOOD. Along with this, they sent out extra treats of rice patties topped with spicy goodness, again, no idea what it is, just put it in your gd mouth.
The little miang laos balls were also like my favorite thing of putting food on a green leaf but instead of an open taco, it was all wrapped up neatly. Thanks friend! This was cold, which I didn’t expect, and a nice contrast from the other bites. I think this was super spicy too? and delicious, I know that much. Guys, I’m sorry, I did not take notes, I forgot that that helps, it’s been so long, also I was too busy trying not to freak out about the celebrity behind me (see below).
COLUMN B
(You know with these headings I’m singing Aladdin, right? good. Next time I will take the Genie’s advice and try all of Column B.)
After our plates of bites, allllll the rest of our dishes came at once, which was a struggle for our tiny little table, a struggle we know quite well due to our aforementioned sublime ordering skills, but a struggle that could be avoided if things were staggered a little. Maybe the naem het could have been served alone since it was like the true starter-y feel and the rest were super mains-y? Anyway, that dish – the crispy naem het with jaew (what did you call me) dressing and ‘erbs (their styling not mine) was a standout, and husbo’s fave of the night. IT WAS SO GOOD.
The crispy naem het was a birds nest mess of fried strands of things (mushrooms? stems?) that we couldn’t really discern from the waiter because of the music but whatever, it was delicious. You know I’m not the world’s biggest fan of fried food but this was ace. You take one of the raw green leaves (yesss), put some fried strands in it, add some of the fresh herbs, roll it up, and dip it in the sauce pot (and you got cheesy blasters, and then meatcat goes off in his um spaceship). At least we thought those were the instructions we were given – later, our waitress said something that made it seem like we had no idea what we were doing. Doesn’t matter, whether we did it right or wrong it was forking amazing. So much flavor, so many different flavors mixing together in a surprising and wonderful way. A must get!
Another absolute must-get is the charred jordan cabbage, with kolae coconut curry. This dish is only £9 and what a value – on a normal night eating at home, this dish alone would be enough for the two of us, maybe with some rice. I’m serious, that picture doesn’t show how big that hunk of cabbage is. Without a knife (only chopsticks and spoons on the table), I was worried that I would have to pick up an entire head of cabbage and bite into it head first while wearing a dress, but of course that wasn’t the case. The cabbage was so tender and the leaves separated at the touch of the chopsticks. This is the dish I am going to try to recreate at home, and fail miserably I’m sure.
The coconut curry that surrounded the cabbage was one of the best curries I’ve had. It was perfect in every way, salty but not too salty, coconutty in that great way but without any visible overpronunciation of coconut milk, just a surprisingly treaty, complex dish for something that seems so simple. I would truly pick this up every week and eat at home with rice.
We also really enjoyed the Chengdu street tofu, not that it was like any tofu we had on the streets in Chengdu (you couldn’t eat this and walk at the same time! also it didn’t burn our faces off!). It was a soupy dish that was best eaten with a spoon out of the bowl rather than putting on your own plate. The flavors were on the mellower side so the dish was almost comforting, like a soupy sales should be.
COLUMN C
The only disappointer was the Xi’an-style knife-cut noodles. It’s not that they were bad at all, they just were not impressive like everything else was. (Also the fact that they are ‘knife-cut’ isn’t really much of a selling point; I mean, you cut the dough with a knife instead of what, scissors? teeth?) The flavors didn’t really hit; the dish was sort of bland, a little plain. Maybe we are just spoiled because we actually had noodles in Xi’an (omg the Xi’an night market noodles…and the spicy tofu…and the fresh jackfruit…omg and that coconut milk…dammit now I’m remembering all this glory). But this dish, unlike all the others, was missing a punch. It was the only thing that wasn’t a ‘wow’. Of course it could be your fave dish, no harm no fowell (to quote Estelle), I guess we prefer noodles that burn our faces off (we really like things that burn our faces off). I’ve heard really great things about the laksa, so next time we will definitely be trying that instead.
Even though we were stuffed to the brim, we had to try the dessert. Alter has just one dessert, but it’s a good one – mango sticky rice.
This was a really lovely iteration of a classic, kind of saltier than normal but in a way that really really worked. And I am a sucker for edible flowers. So pretty! You can’t go wrong with mango sticky rice and this was delicious and the perfect size for sharing. Mango sticky rice is just the best, right? In Thailand, at the annual Vegetarian Festival, I had it from a cart that stored their cut-up mango next to their cut-up durian, so the scent of the durian, that overpowering devil’s anus scent, had infiltrated the taste of the mango. And it was still DELICIOUS.
So, overall, dinner at Alter was a huge win. I cannot wait to go back. It’s the kind of small plates fine vegan dining that London needed, one that focuses on flavors and vegetables rather than burgers and fries. It reminded me of a Michelin-starred restaurant we ate at in Cambodia that I can’t remember the name of. My god I am dropping a lot of travel brags in this post; I sound like a full-on Gwyneth, sorry I just miss traveling.
Alter is located inside the Leman Locke hotel, just south of Aldgate East tube station. There’s a cafe on the ground floor (with great sounding smoothies, which I live on even more than food wrapped in lettuce), and a spiral staircase (and elevators) up to the second floor (I’m sorry, “first floor”) where Alter is located. We actually had dinner in this space a few years ago but it was a different, less-entirely-vegan restaurant, so I hope Alter stays much longer – like forever. Because I’m gonna be a regular. (Well, within reason; I still am into hermit life.)
ALTER, ALDGATE EAST, LONDON, ENGLAND, UK, CRUMBLING WORLD
Water speed: They do the stupid thing nearly everyone does where their water glasses are freaking thimbles, but they give you the carafes and the waitress was EXCELLENT at refreshing our carafe. She had to do it at least 12 times because I drink so much, but I didn’t once need to dip into my liter in my purse, which is rare in restaurants so really speaks highly of her attention.
Service: Our waitress was great! Top marks.
Bathrooms: There are two single-serves through a hallway behind the bar. They are really spacious and modern and clean and they smelled so good that I took a picture of the fragrance stick jawn. It is SUPER confusing when you come out because there are doors on each side of the area but one is locked, so you will eventually find your way back to the restaurant space.
Food: Soooo good, a great new addition to London’s incredible scene, whether you’re vegan or in denial.
Bonus: Alfred Enoch was sitting behind us. If it’s good enough for celebrities it’s good enough for you! Everyone there was sooo hip and cool and it made us feel simultaneously not cool but also like we were getting cool by osmosis, which is interesting.
