"Sunset Boulevard" in London: Glenn Close is Amazing, That's All That Mattersby Randi / April 5, 2016
There’s an exciting new pop-up to look out for, London! The Vegan Nigerian, a.k.a. Tomi Makanjuola, held her first vegan pop-up dinner last night at La Suite West Hotel in Bayswater, a.k.a. west AF but worth it, and with any luck it’ll be the first of many such events, if not the prequel to a café or restaurant, although pop-ups do have the benefit of seeming so cool and exclusive and everyone knows I like to pretend I’m cool. This meal had some kinks to work out, and there is room for improvement, but it showed so much potential for the future and I can’t wait to eat more.
2 minutes in and I already bent the restaurant’s flyer on the table
The dinner was held at La Suite West’s restaurant called Raw, a vegan-friendly place where I believe Tomi is a chef and they have a vegan English breakfast (the food not tea) that rightly doesn’t cost more than the non-vegan ones and so a trip there is in order. It was nice to have the fancy space available for this and not be in someone’s living room; it made it all seem very professional. A hilarious waitress came around with water and spilled mine and then told us how nervous she was, and we immediately said let’s all be friends since we’re clearly kindred spirits. A great start (not sarcasm). Then boxes of mango and pineapple juice were brought to our table (but no additional glasses; maybe they expected people to choose between water or juice, and like hell if I’m gonna ever limit my liquids!) which was kind of adorable. The wait for the first course was somewhat long, so having whole boxes of juice per table really helped the time pass/contribute to a terrible sugar rush.
At least it’s not the dumbest time I ever ordered a salad, not by a long shot.
For the first course, you had to choose between the vegetable peppersoup and the okra and sweet potato salad. Me, being dumb, I thought “Oh I’ve had vegetable soup for dinner for like 3 nights in a row, who would want it again” and got the salad. It was fine, but I tried my friend’s soup and it was SPECTAC. So I chose wrongly and I’ll never forget the regret. No just kidding, the salad was fine, a little misleading as it was mostly warm sweet potato chunks with very nicely seasoned okra. Two foods I love, and the okra was really good, but it was mostly sweet potato, and pretty plain at that. Like a whole big steamed sweet potato cut up on a plate with some okra. I may have just gotten unlucky with my plating favoring the potato more than okra and maybe others had a more balanced mix. It was fine, but that much sweet potato needed a sauce or a marinade maybe. Or just lesser amounts. Fine, though.
MAGICAL SOUP OF FAERYS
But that soup was really fantastic, a stand-out. The first thing I thought was that I need to find out how to make it because I want it for my next possible dinner, and I want a lot of it and I don’t want to have to steal it from my friend. It was a clear broth, which was unexpected (you hear pepper soup, you think like pureed red pepper or something (gross), but the one-word version of peppersoup tells you otherwise or something), with a mix of some chopped soup vegetables in there (potato and zucchini I think I saw? I don’t know I didn’t eat it), and then the whole thing was freaking doused in pepper, so much that it burned my throat going down, and chili pepper I assume, and of course other spices and yes I need to do some serious research before I try to make it myself, and anyway it was glorious. I feel like even though it burned so much, people who don’t really like spicy food would still enjoy it because the flavor was so sophisticated and interesting. Or maybe that’s a dumb thing to say, but it’s also dumb not to like spicy food. I’m really joking. I really can’t believe how much I’m going on about a freaking vegetable soup like I’ve lost my mind but my goodness, it was so good.
We also got a little basket of bread and the bread was good. I can say bread in Russian now. In semester 2 of this $!*(#)&$%^(!#*) language and I can say bread, at least.
Passing Strange
Choice was over after this course, which I appreciated, having made the wrong choice so early in the game and having lost all confidence in my ability to choose from that point on. Don’t know how I’m going to get dressed tomorrow. The main course was coconut rice with efo riro, or spinach stew, with baked plantain. I tried to make coconut rice once from a recipe online. It used a lot of full fat coconut milk, and so might have been good for a rice pudding, but it was too sweet for me for savory food. Because of this bad experience, I was hesitant about the pairing here. Of course, this being a professional chef, the coconut rice was just subtle enough to tell something cool was going on and formed a great complement to the stew. I would have liked more stew to balance the stew-to-rice ratio (my plate was clean when I finished, no traces of sauce, which seems odd when you’ve just eaten a stew), but what we had was very nice. You know how most spinach stews, or curries for the most part, feel very heavy in their spice profile, like everything is dark and deep and low on the chart of some unknown quality, like just totally warm but heavy? I don’t know but anyway, this one somehow felt bright, which was really cool. It had all the interesting warmth you want from a stew yet accomplished it without the heavy tones. The plate was encircled by smears of a delicious and thick red pepper sauce, a great addition to the mix. And then the baked plantain slices were placed on top. Plantains are great, and although these seemed a little dry from what I’m used to (probably because they were baked not fried), they were still plantains, so, good. In a nice gesture from the kitchen, the kind that makes people happy because everyone likes free unexpected stuff, we also got an extra bowl of plantains for the table which I think I had more than my share of, sorry tablemates.
By this point I think we were already two hours into the dinner, which is extremely slow. I have a feeling the waitstaff just comprised friends of the chef who volunteered, and it was the first such pop-up, so delays are understandable but definitely something to work on. You don’t want people getting antsy. Luckily, they put a whole pitcher of water (cucumber water!) down for the table, so that was a spectacular move. People who work in restaurants or know people that do: ALWAYS give a table a jug of water, or at least the option to have one, ESPECIALLY if your place uses those bullshit glasses that fit about half an ounce of liquid in them and after every sip you need to flag down someone for more water but since this is London they never come. Those glasses are bullshit and should never have been made legal. So, pitchers are great, and every restaurant in the history and future of the world to ever exist should learn this.
a non chocolate dessert that I enjoyed
Here is the same food pictured directly above just now unnecessarily shown from another angle I’m like a real food blogger now
Lastly, we had dessert, because that’s usually when people have dessert, except for one really strange fashion editor I worked for one summer in NYC who had dessert before her meals. She was strange for other reasons. Anyway, dessert was apple and papaya crumble with malt and vanilla coconut cream. We had some disagreement at our table as to whether the coconut cream would be ‘malt and vanilla’ flavored or whether the malt was a separate ingredient. I thought the latter and I was right, which restored some of my faith in my ability to make decisions. I think the malt aspect was a tiny bit of molasses-like syrup dotted on the crumble, or it could have been the flavor of granola-like topping. We can never be sure, though, because malt isn’t actually a real thing. It’s just something American candy makers and old-timey ice cream shoppes would advertise as a way to charge an extra 5c but it was really a lie. Malt is a lie. No I’m just joking I’m sure it’s a real thing I just have no idea what it is because I never liked those malted milk balls as a kid and I would never order a malted milkshake when a perfectly good chocolate milkshake was perfectly good without it. So I just don’t know. Anyway, dessert might have been the best part of the meal. Well no the soup that I didn’t have was my favorite, but the crumble was next. We were surprised at how well papaya worked to break up the apple flavor, especially because baked papaya seemed to have a lot more flavor than raw papaya. A wonderful combination. On the side was a separate cup of perfect coconut cream, like an actual cup. It was so much! It was probably too much but I will never look a gift coconut cream in the mouth. It was so decadent and smooth and light, the perfect consistency and flavor. Coconut cream is RG.
Before we returned to the somehow freezing again weather, Tomi’s friend made a speech that was the cutest, sweetest thing except when he said he thought vegan food was terrible at one point in his life, before her. Get a new story, omnivores! Y’all are a broken record! No but it was really sweet and it just seemed like all the guests at this first pop-up were nice people who wanted to support this nice person. There were some flaws but for the first go, it showed so much potential and I’m excited to see (eat) what’s to come.
VEGAN NIGERIAN POP-UP AT RAW
Water speed: Took a bit to get water, but when it came, it came in a big pitcher. That’s the way uh huh uh huh.
Service: I’ll give a pass since they were friends volunteering I think, and that’s super nice. One thing to learn next time is to bring the food for everyone at one table at once. Guy would come out with four plates, give two to the table next to us, and then two to our table, leaving another two at our table to wait for like 10 minutes for the next batch, and we aren’t heathens so we’d wait, and it was supes awk.
Bathrooms: The bathrooms are down a hall of the hotel (very close to the space) and SUPER DARK. Like, I didn’t know how to exit the first time. It was kind of scary dark, use the flashlight on your phone dark. I also got stuck in the stall once because I was pushing out but it’s a pull-in door. Dumb.
Food: Very enjoyable and shows a lot of potential.
Bonus: New nice-seeming person to look out for!
Water speed: Took a bit to get water, but when it came, it came in a big pitcher. That’s the way uh huh uh huh.
Service: I’ll give a pass since they were friends volunteering I think, and that’s super nice. One thing to learn next time is to bring the food for everyone at one table at once. Guy would come out with four plates, give two to the table next to us, and then two to our table, leaving another two at our table to wait for like 10 minutes for the next batch, and we aren’t heathens so we’d wait, and it was supes awk.
Bathrooms: The bathrooms are down a hall of the hotel (very close to the space) and SUPER DARK. Like, I didn’t know how to exit the first time. It was kind of scary dark, use the flashlight on your phone dark. I also got stuck in the stall once because I was pushing out but it’s a pull-in door. Dumb.
Food: Very enjoyable and shows a lot of potential.
Bonus: New nice-seeming person to look out for!
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Gimme Some of That Suite Tea: Vegan Afternoon Tea at La Suite West Hotel
Magic is happening every day in London, people! As you know, the vegan scene in general is off the chizzy, and with that has come a storm of vegan afternoon teas. Okay storm is probably the wrong word to use to describe something so damn posh and genteel but man, every decent place worth their salt seems to be advertising their ability to do a vegan menu, like we saw recently with The Ritz Hotel. But nothing beats being able to go for afternoon tea and not waste precious brainpower worrying about their ability to accommodate you, to just relax and trust that they will be able to blow your minds with their vegan food because they are a fully vegan business. Fortunately, you can do just that at La Suite West, London’s first entirely vegan hotel, and their on-site restaurant Cafe Forty One.
I recently got to enjoy a lovely afternoon tea at Cafe Forty One with husbo along with friends Jojo and Nick from Ethical Vegan Life. For all of February, guests for tea will enjoy a special Valentine’s Day menu, which is served daily from 12pm to 5pm. Fancy tea seemed like the perfect lazy Sunday activity so off we went, expectations high and tumnuses rumbling.
I love a clean hotelWe booked our tea for right at noon, when they open the restaurant, so we had to wait five minutes or so while they finished setting up. It wasn’t a big deal though, since it’s a nice hotel and they have a bottle of water and glasses on the reception desk. Every hotel should do that! When they led us in, the restaurant, small and beautifully decorated (I’m so into the rose and copper palate), looked chic but welcoming.
They welcomed us with glasses of ‘non-alcoholic fizz’, literally that’s what it says on the menu, no more detail, which I found funny, but it was basically like ginger ale, maybe with a touch of elderflower (they do love elderflower in the UK). They also had a carafe of water at the ready which, as you know, I fully appreciate (and you can see that it was almost empty by the time I took my first picture!). Unlike my last afternoon tea experience where the waiters seemed a tad confused that I wanted water and not just tea (but you have tea! that’s hot dark water!), they were great about bringing us more water throughout the afternoon.
Honestly, I’d be happy to forgo the ‘tea’ part of afternoon tea – we’re there for the food, right? I ordered a pot of chamomile because it’s the most benign of teas. I loved the little glass teapot almost as much as I loved the rose gold candle holder with its planet rings (I thought they should be spinning but I realize that is probably scientifically impossible just yet; also it’s best if you keep my hands from getting into the candle wax at fancy places (also I happily went a day without burning my fingies)). The afternoon tea menu comes with ‘bottomless’ tea and coffee, good water service, and that welcome fizz so I was really happy to have so many different liquids at the ready! I love liquids!
But you don’t care about the liquids; you’re here to see the food. They brought our beautiful tiers of food glorious food out promptly – the bottom layer of sandwiches, the middle patisserie layer from their acclaimed pastry chef, and the top layer for the scones, which every tea requires.
I’m always most excited about the sandwiches, because Joey was right and sandwiches are the best. What’s your favorite food? Sandwiches. I always anticipate what would happen if I asked for more sandwiches (MOAR SANDWICH) at these things, because I assume I’ll want an endless supply, and more than that I assume I will be able to eat more than one round, which is a lot of assuming, and you know what happens when you assume. After you have your first pot of tea and your first two liters of water and your mocktail, it’s pretty clear you’re gonna be full real fast, and ho boy, I was hurt before I even made it to the scones.
FYI, each tiered serving tray is for two people; those are not all my sandwiches. We had:
- chipotle cheese with caramelized onion chutney and rocket on rye bread
- brioche roll with cream cheese and smoked carrot salmon
- BLT with aubergine bacon and garlic mayo on sourdough
- Mediterranean hummus and cucumber on farmhouse loaf
Three of the four sandwiches were wonderful. My favorite was the BLT, which is no surprise to me. I loved that the bread was kind of oily (not mushy or soggy, just like (bear with me) moist), and I loved the filling. It was a nice, delicate take on the BLT for an afternoon tea setting. My second favorite was the chipotle cheese one (the darker seeded bread). The cheese they made was killer and it was so smart to have it on the sturdier bread. The flavors were amazing. The cream cheese and smoked carrot salmon was also great, as was the brioche roll, and it’s amazing to get to try legit vegan brioche. However, the ratio of the bread to the filling was way too off. Each component was wonderful, but every bit was mostly bread, since it’s so big and fluffy, and the filling was easily lost. MOAR FILLING PLZ. Or use the brioche for something stronger.
The one bad sandwich was the only low point of the entire experience: the hummus on white bread. They tried to fancy it up on the menu calling it “Mediterranean” hummus on “farmhouse loaf” but it was bland af paste with cucumber on white bread. Not a fan. In fact, we had an extra and no one ate it. I’m surprised at the lack of taste, really the lack of anything interesting going on with this sandwich since everything else was so wonderful.
By this time, I was hella full and awash with tea, but I powered through to the scones. They were GREAT. Buttery and a good solid texture without being too hard, the scones were quite impressive. Happily, Cafe Forty One sends out the best accompaniments with their scones: homemade berry compote, and also coconut cream (they call it clotted cream but it is plain old coconut cream (that kind of loses its form the longer it sits on your table but that’s to be expected, it’s coconut cream)), and vegan honey! Or, to be precise, Vegan Honea, the product on sale in the UK. I thought this honey was super convincing. The texture was right on and the taste was pretty accurate in my opinion.
I think a berry concoction that is more jam and less compote would be better here, because it was a bit too loose for scone placement, but it was still good. In an unexpected turn of events, I actually though the raisin scone was better than the plain one! I usually hate raisins in things – they look like chocolate chips and then they REALLY AREN’T – but here they were great. I believe scones may be the one food where raisins are now permitted. Excellent stuff.
I was fin’ to bust at this point but that pastry tier looked beyond incredible so I had to try at least the items that wouldn’t keep if I had to take anything to go.
I mean wowFor the patisserie offerings, we had:
- Black forest entremets, Griotte dark chocolate and vanilla Chantilly (I don’t know what half these words mean)
- Pistachio and milk chocolate brioche
- Pecan and almond cookie
- Red currant macaron
- Shortbread with chocolate cube and caramel creme (and goooold)
My favorite without a doubt was that sweet brioche. It was NOT pistachio flavored – none of us could sense any pistachio in it, although that cream was green – and there was barely any chocolate either (you can see the very light decoration), but if you ignore the name of it, it was perfection. It’s an absolutely delicious moist (sorry again) little brioche cake with its roof cut off and reattached with a light barely sweet cream, and then the base of it was filled with a vanilla custard and just wow, I could eat 100 of them. I want it as a giant cake. If La Suite West is reading this, can I have it as a giant cake?
I also adored the black forest creation, the dark berry-chocolate custardy mound on top of a perfect, bitter chocolate cake base. It was hard to lift this one off the tray – they should put a tiny paper under it – but man it was remarkable. Entremets apparently means delicious gooey stuff. Okay I looked it up and all I could find is that entremets means multi-layered mousse based cake, which this kiiinda is, I guess, or it just means ‘between courses’ which no.
I really loved the shortbread cookie too, but especially the chocolate cube and the caramel custard and little white cream on top. These three components were applied with a sewing needle, I imagine – so so tiny!!! Not that I could have eaten more, but I would have loved more of that custard and cream and chocolate.
I was v. v. hurt at this point so we packed up the red currant macaron (one ‘o’ on the French sandwich jawn, two for the coconut thing popular at Passover) and the shortbreak cookies with my leftover scones (I couldn’t finish them either) and ate them the next day and they were still great. They’re not as impressive as the more complex French patisserie, since I mean I make amazing cookies and there’s only so amazing a cookie can be (there’s a threshold I think like with falafel) and macarons are the most overrated food in existence (so much work! so little payoff!) but it was nice to have a macaron and a good solid cookie and everything was beautiful.
Overall, this was an excellent experience and I highly recommend Cafe Forty One for a lovely vegan afternoon tea. It costs £35 per person, so still perfect for a special occasion but less expensive than most of the offerings in central London. I can’t wait to go back to try the rest of their regular menu; it sounded amazing and from what I could gather from the other tables who weren’t doing the tea, it looked amazing too. I also want to try more of their desserts (*cough* and please give me a whole cake-sized version of that brioche *cough*). It’s unbelievable how advanced vegan patisserie has become. HOW LUCKY WE ARE TO BE ALIVE RIGHT NOW.
Cafe Forty One at La Suite West, London, England
Water speed: They brought carafes allll the time. Highest marks!
Service: All the waitstaff was very nice. There was an issue when my friend’s specific allergen-free sandwiches weren’t sent out with the rest of ours, and it took a while for them to send out the right plate. That’s more a kitchen mishap than a service issue, but considering all the prep we had done to make sure they knew about the allergy, it’s surprising that it wasn’t all set.
Bathrooms: As you’d expect from a nice hotel! They were very dark but nice. The gender symbols on the doors are the forking TINIEST I’ve ever seen I’m obsessed.
Food: INCROYABLE!
Bonus: A decently priced afternoon tea with extraordinarily high calibre French pastries??? FIRE THAT SUCKER UP AND THROW IT AT MY FACE.
Sunday Night! Pizza Night! In America! – Al Roker
While most people were watching football today (American football, where the foot rarely touches the ball), I decided to celebrate Pizza Night In America (as Al Roker announces every week…right?) by breaking in my brand new pizza stone! Yes, thanks to my bestie known around here as The Bean, I can no longer complain about not owning a pizza stone! (And after buying myself a Vitamix for Christmas, I’m running out of equipment-based things to complain about. Not that I’m complaining.)
Blessed with a few rolls of Field Roast sausage waiting to be used, I decided to top a bean-spread-based pizza with it, along with roasted cauliflower, a ton of roasted garlic, and some greens I had lying around. As you may know from my past pizza-making expeditions, I’m a big fan of replacing cheese or cheese-like substances, and sometimes (like now!) even sauce, with bean spreads. White beans are really the tofu of the bean world (I guess aside from soy beans…), waiting to be turned into anything you want. Except for brownies. Seriously, chill with that noise.
I’m pretty sure the pizza stone ranks as one of the smartest inventions in human history. The crust slid right off the stone, it browned nicely all around, and even though I used about twice as much dough as I should have (you can’t really tell, but I redefined the term ‘deep dish’ – and so can you!), it cooked perfectly throughout the massive folds of bread. Delicious!
Obviously, this will work with a wide variety of items you might have on hand, but I have to recommend following my lead with spinach and pre-sauteed Brussels sprouts. Or, better yet, arugula and spinach mixed together. I’m not a huge fan of arugula eaten raw, but it’s great on pizza.
Sadly, I realized that I was out of nooch. I KNOW! Perish the thought. This is a really serious problem. Please, everybody, to avoid a fate similar to mine, please make sure that you have a backstock of nooch. Don’t fail your future self. Keep nooch well-stocked as if it was the only way to thwart a nuclear attack. Happily, I realized that I can make a cheesy white bean spread without nooch. (Not that I’ll ever do it again.) So the below recipe is great for those of you who didn’t prepare well, or who don’t like nooch.
I’m pretty sure the pizza stone ranks as one of the smartest inventions in human history. The crust slid right off the stone, it browned nicely all around, and even though I used about twice as much dough as I should have (you can’t really tell, but I redefined the term ‘deep dish’ – and so can you!), it cooked perfectly throughout the massive folds of bread. Delicious!
Obviously, this will work with a wide variety of items you might have on hand, but I have to recommend following my lead with spinach and pre-sauteed Brussels sprouts. Or, better yet, arugula and spinach mixed together. I’m not a huge fan of arugula eaten raw, but it’s great on pizza.
Sadly, I realized that I was out of nooch. I KNOW! Perish the thought. This is a really serious problem. Please, everybody, to avoid a fate similar to mine, please make sure that you have a backstock of nooch. Don’t fail your future self. Keep nooch well-stocked as if it was the only way to thwart a nuclear attack. Happily, I realized that I can make a cheesy white bean spread without nooch. (Not that I’ll ever do it again.) So the below recipe is great for those of you who didn’t prepare well, or who don’t like nooch.
SOME PRETTY GREAT PIZZA
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Components:
Ingredients for pizza dough:
Directions:
Ingredients for white bean spread:
Directions:
For the Brussels sprouts:
Directions:
For the cauliflower and garlic:
Directions:
Assemblage:
 Brussels, cauliflower, and garlic successfully placed.  How good is Field Roast. This kind was pretty darn spicy. Love it. |
 Now that is some crust.  I love sharing pictures of my yeast jumping because it is magic!  Look how pretty my new stuff is! Thanks brotherrrr.  Beans & cashews & other things oh my!  I want to go to there. Not to a saucepan. To Brussels. I love that statue of the little boy peeing. I don’t know.  Objects in picture look a lot bigger than they actually were.  GLUTEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I made hummus in a blender, look at me I’m a rebel.  Aw man it kind of looks like my pie mousse. It’s not!  Spinach! We’re movie clockwise here.  Cooked & shriveled. |
Enjoy! It’s real good.
Is there anything better than Pizza Night? I might have to make this a regular weekly or biweekly fixture now that I have a Stone. So exciting! What are your favorite pizza toppings? Is pizza your favorite food? I went to a casting call when I was like 11 (just for shits and giggles) and about 30 girls were asked “What’s your favorite food?” Every single one of us said pizza, except for one girl, who said “raviolis”. I said to her, “Um that’s not a word. Ravioli is already the Italian plural form.” She got a callback. Bitch.
