Genesis in Shoreditch: Good, Interesting, Overpriced Vegan Food

     Not that I’m an expert on what the cool kids are up to, but when a restaurant is a) in Shoreditch and b) has at least an hour wait even on a Tuesday evening, I’m pretty confident in calling it the hippest. Especially when the majority of people in the mass waiting in line to get in are wearing jean shorts and black tights. So hip in these parts. 

And Dishoom in Shoreditch (it also has two locations more westerly but East London is for the cooler people) is actually worth standing in that queue for. Billing itself as a Bombay Cafe, its spectacular street-food inspired-ish Indian food stands out in the sea of Indian food that composes East London. Unlike the majority of nearby Indian restaurants, you can feel secure as a vegan that what you’re ordering is, in fact, vegan. (I’ve had too many restaurant hawkers on Brick Lane (what are they called?) tell me a little too assuredly not to worry about the ghee.) The first time I went to Dishoom, when I asked my waitress what I could have as a vegan, she whipped out a pen and marked up my entire menu with her notes. It was hilarious and so sweet! Now, I’ve discovered that they have a whole separate dairy-free menu, showing items that are already dairy-free and what could easily be made dairy-free, so it’s a breeze to use that menu and just look for the items marked (v) for vegetarian. Yayyy fun game. 
      The thing to know about eating at Dishoom is that, if you are doing it right, your mouth will be on fire. Or at least by London standards. It’s hard to find legitimately spicy foods at mainstream restaurants here — they’ll be like, are you sure you want the 3 bells level of spicy wow it’s so spicy, and then it’ll be something you barely taste. And I’m on the wimpier side spicy-wise, so I’m not exaggerating. But Dishoom gets it so right. Some of the stuff (like the gunpowder potatoes, aptly named) is pretty killer, yet the taste of the spice outshines the heat of the spice, which is so important. So good! Oh, also, the other thing to know is that it’s pretty much the darkest restaurant I’ve ever not seen. Like scary ridiculously goth dark, so my pictures are even worse than usual if possible! Wheee! Let’s see what to order. 

       First off, the drinks. When you’re about halfway through your wait, you’ll probably have made it to the bar waiting area, where you are given beepers that beep when your table is ready beep beep. Dishoom’s bar has a pretty lovely non-alcoholic section, mainly because it exists, which is rare here. Do yourself a favor and get the watermelon sharbat, which is fresh watermelon muddled with mint, lime, and sea salt and served over ice. It’s REALLY good, and it’s not very sweet, which is perfect if you are a respectable person with a pink drink and not a drunken foo’ on a hen party with a pink drink. Do yourself another favor and DON’T I repeat DON’T be tempted to get the Kala Khatta Sharbat, even though you’re intrigued, even though the bartender LITERALLY  tells you that he doesn’t want to make it for you because you will hate it and how can you ignore how tempting that shit is, even when he really begs you and your friends not to try it, even when he begrudgingly concedes that it’s his job to make what you want and that you can try it if you really want to but that you will really still hate it. He’s right, yall. IT’S AWFUL. It’s kokum fruit juice which apparently is in the mangosteen family according to webs but I’d believe it was part of the this-tastes-like-burnt-wood family, chilli (yes, in your drink), citrus (that’s okay), and FREAKING BLACK SALT. Yeah, like the crap we vegans add to shit to make it taste all sulphury like freaking disgusting eggs, they put in this drink. That’s not even the best part: the menu says this mishmash of ingredients better served for making a table are “left to rest” before being strained over ice. It “will take you straight back to Chowpatty beach”, they promise, which now I believe is a threat. Moral of story, don’t get that, even though I’m pretty sure you’re going to try it now because human impulse. 

    Moving on. The best things, as in any restaurant, are the starters. I will always start with the same things at Dishoom because they are so good: the veg samosa, obviously; the okra fries, even more obviously; and the bhel, not obviously at all because what even is that? My friend the Wayfarer (who is Indian and therefore an expert on Indian food and she really liked Dishoom so there) ordered the bhel one time and I’m obsessed now. It’s like a really interesting bowl of cereal if you added both sweet and savory things and were like, what am I doing, this makes no sense, but it’s delicious. It’s puffed grains with pomegranate seeds, which sounds perfect, but then onions and tomatoes, which is like whaaat, and then lime, tamarind, and mint seasonings and the thing’s just crazy enough to work. It’s really addictive! I would never have thought to try such a messed up bowl of cereal but I’m so glad I did. As for the samosas and the okra fries, come on, it’s fried goodness, get like 4 orders of each and you’ll be okay. Oh also the menu description for the okra fries reads “Fine lady’s fingers for the fingers”. So that’s a plus, I think.

     I also have enjoyed the Far Far in the past, which is described as “carnival snackery”, colorful fried crackery things that are salty and somehow lemony. But they are easily found in my nearby ethnic groceries so they’re not my restaurant constants. 
     The fun continues with the more-substantial-but-still-small plates. We get to eat vegetables now, with both kachumber and ‘a bowl of greens’. The bowl of greens is usually too overdressed and vinegary and salty for my taste, but I get it every time because I need greens at every meal or I get grumpers. It’s spinach, snow peas, and broccoli with lime and chili, and sometimes it has too much lime, sometimes too much chili. It’s not the most consistent dish on the menu, but it is the most green. 
   The kachumber is the classic salad that every Eastern culture has, what I’ve always known as Israeli salad but everyone knows as someone else’s. It’s tomato, cucumber, and onion chopped up. You know it. It goes well in falafel wraps. You’re probably thinking, oh kachumber is a cute name that kind of sounds like cucumber, I see why they chose it. No, it actually means beating someone up nicely. Okay monster man. 

     I’m pretty sure the most-ordered item at Dishoom is the gunpowder potatoes. I am not basing this on any research or you know even asking an employee, just going by what I believe in. Potatoes are good. These are super spicy potatoes, skins on, smoky and grilled till they crack apart and then tossed with seeds and herbs. They are normally tossed with butter as well, but the dairy-free menu assures you that they can be made without. Given the strength of the dry heat the potatoes give off (like Austin!), I bet butter helps calm the spiciness. If I’m right, that means the dairy-free potatoes are even hotter and more gunpowdery, so vegans are badasses. Nice. 

       So as you can see, the small plates at Dishoom are pretty great and numerous. Unfortunately, there’s really only one entree for vegans, but it’s really delicious: the Rajma-Chawal. It’s a little cast iron pot (but an enormous portion) of slow-cooked and deeply spiced red kidney beans in a thick, dark red sauce, served over basmati rice and topped with fresh herbs. It’s really good, considering it’s what you’re kind of forced to order. I’m still not upset about the lack of entree options at Dishoom because these damn beans are so delicious, and because by this point in the meal I’m stuffed to the gills anyway of fried littles and random tomato cereal. What I am upset about is that the basmati rice is the only rice or bread accompaniment that is vegan-friendly. No naan here. But that’s okay when there’s a decent offering of vegan dishes at a place where all your omnivore friends will be dying to go, and that’s the best part: Not only is Dishoom the place to see and be seen, maybe, at least regarding hipsters, but it’s the perfect place for a mixed group of eaters. 

DISHOOM, SHOREDITCH, LONDON
Water speed: Oh London, please stop it with these little tumblers that are the length of my pinky. 
Service: Decent and helpful, but they are hard to flag down because this place is always super heaving with a constantly moving crowd. Such crowd.  
Bathrooms: There’s never a line (yay) because there are at least 5 stalls, but they have that weird England-basement-but-sort-of-also-the-camp-kitchen smell.  
Food: Good, fun, spicy. 
Bonus: It’s like being in an ad for Topshop with all those stockings and shorts combos and all those big floppy hats even at night and all those men with ironic beards and my god I’m surrounded by hipsters. 

Recently, we traveled to Manchester England (England) (you can’t not sing it, right?? well I can’t not) in order to dine at the famed vegan restaurant The Allotment. We spent the weekend in the city, but dinner here was our primary purpose for the trip. We’ve heard only amazing reviews about this restaurant, which was named the Best Vegetarian Restaurant in the UK several times over, and the chef is acclaimed for having delivered fancy vegan fare to Manchester (England England). When the restaurant moved from outside the city, in Stockport, to the Manchester city center, we booked in immediately, ready to be blown away, or at least to enjoy a great meal. I hate to say it, but I assuredly was not and did not. 

The quality of the food at The Allotment may have suffered in the move, as they’re only two months into the new space. Maybe they’re still getting settled. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that two days before our dinner, it was announced that the head chef and the man responsible for all the restaurant’s success, Matthew Nutter, was leaving. It was unclear when he was leaving, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an immediate resignation, because I don’t think that acclaimed wonder of a chef was cooking my food. It was very nice to have a fancy dining option outside of London, and it was great to have a relatively affordable tasting menu (£65 for ten courses is prettay prettay amazing in the tasting menu world), but the food was not up to standard. In general, the dishes that tasted good were basic and uninspired, and the dishes that showed creativity and invention didn’t taste very good. It’s a disappointment and I hope that they find their footing again. 

Before we get into the food, I’m gonna snob out and say that including the amuse bouche – usually a gift from the chef – as one of the ten courses is kind of bullshirt. At any other restaurant where we’ve had the tasting menu, the chef would send out amuse bouches (amuses bouche?) just to say hayy. Since this meal was quite cheaper than those, it’s fine and makes sense that we didn’t get extra dishes, but like don’t even call it an amuse bouche on the menu, seems a little ‘ya basic’ ya know?

Okay, speaking of that amuse, it was a yummy Fried Ball. Like a cheeseless arancini, made with wild rice. It was one of those times when you’d quote Jon Lovitz on Friends and be all “I could have 100 of those!” but you just get one, to amoos you (if I spelled it right you wouldn’t have understood how to say it okay), and you get over it because after all it was just a Fried Ball.

Our first real course was roasted butternut squash soup, with a topping of porcini mushroom pieces and toasted chestnuts. This soup is the prime example of one of the dichotomies I stated above: it tasted good but basic, so basic I even said to it “ya basic…that’s devastating, you’re devastated right now.” Don’t get me wrong, it was a fine soup, but I’ve made the exact same thing (or more interesting) 100x. To make it worthier, there should have been 5x as much of the porcini and chestnut topping. But it was fine, and best of all it was served in an old-fashioned bowl with a handle that made us feel like we were on the Oregon trail or some such. Luckily no dysentery! 

I was very excited for the next dish, one of the intriguing, innovative items on the menu. It was listed as ‘baked plantain, jerk billtong.’ Biltong (apparently the proper spelling guyzzz) is a South African dried meat, so, gross. I love baked plantain so I was set to be impressed. Unforch, this is a prime example of the second main issue I stated above: it was inventive, but did not taste good. The first problem was that instead of baked plantain, it was plantain ice cream. I was not ready for ice cream, and the flavor was off – sweet but sharp and unpleasant. The biltong flavor was even more unpleasant, with a very sour bite that was hard to accept. The sauce that went along with everything was that same flavor and it was kind of hard to eat this dish. I commend them for the originality, but the execution is lacking. Even just losing the ice cream in favor of plain baked plantain would have improved this.  

Another inventive but lacking dish came after the biltong debacle. The celeriac shwarma, with coconut, mint, and orange, could have been interesting but the three accompanying flavors – the coconut, mint, and orange – just did not work. It wasn’t ‘shwarma’ in any way, just hunks of celeriac, and there was way too much shredded coconut on top. I liked that there was raw spinach, because I like greens, but the flavors did not coalesce in any way. 

I almost feel bad talking about the next dish, but the public deserves to know. This may have been the worst dish I’ve ever eaten in a restaurant. I really do applaud the creativity here, but the result is NG. The chicory terrine was a great idea in theory, because terrine is usually a French pate, full of gross meats, so to make a vegetable version of that shaped dish was an interesting goal. However, it tasted like Jewish deli at the end of the day. It was just the taste of pickle, of vinegar, of raw pearl onion. I couldn’t finish it. The main part of the terrine was too vinegary and off, while the giant onions took up half the space. The pickled cauliflower on the side was more of the same flavor, so I don’t know what it adds. 

Thankfully, the rest of the savory dishes all tasted fine, even delicious, but they were regular, unexciting kinds of food. However, after the terrine incident, I was happy to have some basic af food for moving on. First we have the slow roasted squash, with fried oyster mushroom rosti and smoked aubergine. There was also surprise tenderstem broccoli and amazing little tiny cubes of fried tofu. It all tasted exactly how you imagine, since no doubt you have eaten regular broccoli and a big old chunk of roasted squash in your lives. It was good, and plain. To make it better, the big old chunk of squash should have been tofu – for a vegan restaurant, there was surprisingly little protein, to our dismay. We always complain about nonvegan restaurants’ giving me tasting menus with no protein, so I expected better at an actual vegan place. 

The last of the savory dishes was confit potato, with black olive, pickled daikon, and crispy kale. This was by far my favorite dish, because the layer of black olive tapenade added a new and interesting flavor to the other basic ingredients. The only real disappointing aspect was the freaking GIANT baked potato. There’s the mashed potato on the bottom, you see? and then the mushrooms (yum!), and then the tapenade layer, and then that big hunk of a yellowish thing is BAKED POTATO. It was so much! Like why not tofu, or seitan, or beans, or anything but baked potato on top of mashed potato? I mean in a city famous for its chip butties I guess I’m not surprised but duuuudes. The crispy kale was a nice addition though, and while the daikon was wholly unnecessary and felt supes random, overall this dish was the best and I’d happily eat it again – without the giant potato. 

Another kind-of-cheating-to-count-this-as-a-course thing came next, the ‘pre-dessert,’ or what you might call the palate cleanser. Kind of a cop out, right? It was a decent water ice situation, but it was made with gin, which was disappointing. I maybe should have told them that I didn’t want straight alcohol in my food but who would have ever known that was going to be a problem. 

The first of our two desserts was ‘apple noodles, yuzu sorbet, and cumin pastels.’ I know what you’re thinking – apple noodles? that sounds interesting! And I was intrigued, before I realized – oh dip, this is literally raw apples in noodle-ish form. Like how spiralized zucchini makes ‘zucchini noodles’. So this was a gigantic pile of shredded raw apple. Don’t get me wrong, I love apples, but like, a dayum. The sorbet was decent, and I loved that they tried something creative with the little cumin gummies and the dusting of chili pepper throughout the dish, but yeesh, straight cumin in a dessert is kind of gross. I appreciate the risk but it would have been better with say ginger gummies. This is the actual conversation my husband and I had during this course; I took notes so I know it’s accurate:

Me: How do you feel about the cumin? I think it’s weird.
Husbo: Yeah but I do think you need to liven things up, otherwise it’s all very same same.
Me: But they could do that with like crystallized ginger or something, some flavor that’s more desserty and less curry.
Husbo: Yeah. And they would need to mix something all through the dish, not just on top, because otherwise you’re just sitting here like an asshole eating a pile of apples.

Lastly was the warm whiskey cream over chocolate mousse, with chili and hibiscus. This dessert was pretty delicious. The chocolate mousse was wonderful, sturdier than your average mousse which I liked. The tangerine slice was random but I’ll let it slide. The ice cream I think was the hibiscus? It’s hard to gauge that one, but the honeycomb bits and the mousse were good enough. The best part was that it came with a little pot of the whiskey cream, which did not taste like whiskey (yay) really, but just like warm vanilla-y cream sauce with a punch. It was really good! 

So, overall it was a very interesting meal, with a few delicious dishes, a lot of weirdness, and some questions, like, what are they smoking back there? Is anyone trying the dishes as they make them? Or oh, is this like when Sookie didn’t know she was pregnant and her tastes were all over the place and all the food she sent out of the Inn’s kitchen was a mess like some were overly seasoned to the point of inedibleness and some were unsalted and it was all off and then she was like NORMAN MAILER I’M PREGNANT that might have been a different pregnancy, Sookie was preggers a lot, but you get what I’m saying. Something was off, and I am disappointed to have missed out on a visit to The Allotment that was on par with its illustrious history. Maybe next time, maybe next time. 

The Allotment, Manchester, England (England)
Water speed: They brought carafes and were pretty good about it. 
Service: Pretty nice. I thought the dishes were well timed. 
Bathrooms: Fine, clean and bright (small and whiteeee)
Food: Decent, but finding its footing. 
Bonus:  It’s amazing to have an all vegan restaurant outside London, and one with a fancy tasting menu to boot.