Present Laughter at the Old Vic: Old Timey Fun, for the Most Partby Randi / July 18, 2019As you saw in the Oman travel posts, we had a wonderful time in Muscat and the amazing sites Wadi Shab and Bimmah Sinkhole. But I know what you really care about, because it’s what I really care about (“that’s who I am, and that’s who I care about”): FOOD! and HOTELS! Specifically, how easy is it to eat vegan in Oman? Where should I eat and where should I stay? How many pools can one human swim in over just a few days? As always, I’m here to tell you the truth about traveling here. We ate well, as you always should be able to when in the Middle East (hello have you heard of hummus? because I am 60% hummus). And we stayed well. While our first hotel – a city-center base for the busy sightseeing days – was just fine, we then moved onto a fancypants resort for literally the first time in our lives. It was glorious. You’ll see! (“OR YOU’LL PACK!”)(anyone who says the next line gets a gift.)
First, let’s talk about the food in Muscat. It’s not exactly a vegan hotspot, but as I said, it’ll be semi-easy to find your standard Middle Eastern classics. You definitely won’t go hungry, but, like so many places that aren’t European cities, knowing some good tips will help enormously. My first tip is the most important one, and really the only one you need if, like me, you’re happy to eat hummus at every meal. Your first order of business when you arrive in Muscat is to find Arax, a small regular-ol’ falafel joint in a shopping center. It’s literally my favorite restaurant in Oman. We tried basically the entire menu (and it was a pretty extensive menu for a counter-ordery place, like a kebab shop. I mean I guess it is a kebab shop).
I can think of nothing more appropriate branding-wise considering how loudly and often I sneeze
would people buy laughfro tissues y/n
Arax lives in the Oasis Centre, Shatti Al Qurum, a shopping center right on the beach that’s filled with restaurants, shops, and even a Costa Coffee! Just like home! Except for the beach part. Oasis’s parking lot is a nightmare, since the center (centre) is basically tons of shops and restaurants around a giant, cramped parking lot and drivers here aaaaaare aggressive, so be warned. Since our first hotel (below) was right next to the shopping center, we thought it would be easier to walk there, but we forgot that this region in the Middle East is often not made for pedestrians. They really don’t expect people to walk! I guess because of the heat? But still! Let us walk! So frustrating. It was like trying to leave a Vegas casino, trying to walk what should have been 5 minutes just next door.
We checked the menus at every restaurant in the centre, and while most had vegetarian options, few were actually vegan-friendly. Enter Arax, with its reliable staples of hummus, pita, falafel, foul, everything you could want. The falafel wraps were good, the hummus is good, the fried cauliflower and pickles and fries and tahini sauce and fun fresh juices, all so good. I definitely recommend the lemon mint juice they do. Pictured below is one of the amazing-looking-but-too-sweet-for-me color-blocked mixtures of like orange and berry smoothie topped with avocado. Pretty cool!
We went to Arax several times since it was so convenient, cheap, and delicious. We would have gone one last time on the day we moved to the resort, but they were closed for prayer. I never got to say goodbye!
Instead, we went next door in the shopping center to a place called Just Grilled, which seemed innocuous and decent for lunch when I just wanted simple things. They were called Just Grilled yet had a definite Italian-food theme, so it was a little odd, but I decided to be optimistic for a change. Obviously, I was right before and it’s better to be a pessimist. Even though the menu painstakingly lists every single ingredient for every dish – something I was thrilled to see so I could check veganness – the cooks finish each dish with cheese anyway, even when it’s not listed!! WHAT THE ACTUAL TWO-PRONGED FORK, GUYS.
I ordered a basic af “Mediterranean” salad that was just a small pile of lettuce and bell peppers (ew) as well as a bowl of basic minestrone and both came covered in cheese! I said to the guy, “wait these are covered in cheese? it didn’t say cheese on the menu! I can’t have cheese!” and he said “Yes it did not say on the menu, but because this is an Italian place, everything then gets cheese on it.” I SHIT you not. I was like “but it didn’t say! Anyway, sorry but can I get these without the cheese? because I can’t eat it” and he put up a fight and was like “but it’s Italian, so it needs cheese” and I was like “not to be rude but you are not Italian and like…I am, soooo let’s not argue about whether ‘Italian’ and ‘covered in cheese’ are synonyms, because they’re not” and he was so weirdly unwilling to redo the food cheeselessly! He reluctantly took it back after he finally understood that if he didn’t, we couldn’t eat there (like wtf) but what a weird hill to choose. And then of course the food wasn’t worth all that trouble. I highly unrecommend this place – stick to Arax and just wait for them to finish praying (they had originally said it would be a 20 minute break but it was well over an hour, sadly).
Luckily, other places in the Oasis Centre are much better than Just Grilled (wtf with that name). A lovely place we found was the Turkish place on the beachfront right next to the Costa; I think it’s Twins Turkish Cuisine. (I mean you can’t miss it; it’s the Turkish place on the beach next to the Costa.) Although their menu was divided in the traditional animal-products-heavy manner, they had a fantastic ‘salad bar’ selection that was all the traditional cold and hot mezze of that region’s cuisine. I had all my favorite hits: the best ever dolma, sauteed spinach, stewed eggplant and tomatoes, enormous salads, and lots of amazing fluffy bread.
I was thrilled with this turn of events! This salad was HUGE and really good! I love having giant fresh salads when traveling. We had a crazy amount of really good veg-heavy food here. It was nice to sit out on the beach but that means that jerkos were smoking a lot, which sucks. I guess you can’t really get away from smokers outside/in the Middle East/anywhere in the world really, so I still recommend a visit.
I also definitely recommend a visit to Bait Al Luban, a more upscale, very touristed (like the first Western tourists we saw) restaurant right on the water, so you can stare at the sultan’s pleasure yachts (biggest yachts in world? cool use of money). We stopped by the restaurant early in our trip to make a reservation, since it’s quite popular. It’s pretty centrally located so it’s not inconvenient to do that. (It’s right on the Muttrah Corniche.) Outside it kind of looks like a weird bank, but inside it’s really nice, with very ‘fancy traditional Omani for tourists to enjoy’ vibe and decor. We sat outside on the terrace to look out on the water, but it’s pretty dark out there so you only really see the busy street and the fish market; maybe it’s better to sit inside. It was also really stressful outside because there were lots of wild dogs who kept running across the busy street! I was so unbelievably nervous for them to really focus on anything else.
Bait Al Luban is used to/made for tourists, and they have a well-marked menu for vegetarian dishes and enough knowledge to help determine which dishes are vegan. I started with the house specialty salad called Gheleambe, “a healthy salad from the Sharqiya” so I was in even though I don’t know what the Sharqiya is. It was a mix of watercress, shallots, and cherry tomatoes in a dried Omani lemon dressing. You know how I feel about salad! It was really good!
For mains, they have a whole page of vegetarian curries, casseroles, even an okra stew. I was tempted by my old faves like the fava beans and the okra but Z pointed out that I have those all the time, so I took the waiter’s suggestion and had another specialty, the Mahrage, which is red kidney beans in coconut curry. It was great!
Of course we also had a basket of pita! They don’t have vegan desserts (or maybe they had like fruit and sorbet but I’m forgetting because I don’t count that) but husbo’s coffee came with a plate of dates! So I won!
So definitely book a nice dinner at Bait Al Luban while in Muscat. The whole lovely traditional vibe is worth it since we didn’t see much of that elsewhere, but the food is really good too.
We also had lots of luck in the chain of supermarkets called Lulu Hypermarket. There’s one big one in the city (well they’re all big; they’re called hypermarkets!) that we went to several times to stock up on giant water bottles (a must-do when traveling so you don’t have to buy little craps when you’re out and about, wasting more plastic and money) and snacks (and tons of good dates to bring home!). We also went to a big one outside the city on the way to Nizwa, so we could get lots of prepared food for a lunchtime picnic. We got pita and hummus (obvs) and a ton of little salads and veggies from the prepared section. There were so many options and honestly it was all really good! The Lulu’s on the way to Nizwa is in a gigantic shopping mall-sort of building with bathrooms too so I was happy. The perfect rest stop on the drive if you decide to go to Nizwa (which I guess I did advise against in the previous post but you do you).
HOTELS
As I said in the Muscat post, we stayed at first at the Intercontinental Muscat, which you know now is next to the Oasis Centre with your new favorite falafel joint. We knew that this hotel was being renovated and that, though clean, the rooms were outdated and nothing special. This was true, though the lobby was pretty cool.
The hotel was nice enough, but we didn’t mind a lesser-than room since we were going to be so busy with sightseeing. It was still rather expensive for such a blah room but that’s Muscat, apparently. But the location was excellent, and even though we weren’t lounging around the hotel all the time, we did manage to enjoy the pool! You know a pool is my favorite thing.
The IC Muscat also had a great gym, probably one of the best hotel gyms I’ve used, which means of course I didn’t take a picture for some reason. Oh it was pretty crowded with Omani men; that’s probably why. Several asked me what sport I played which is hilarious. There are a lot of restaurants on the IC grounds too, because I guess it’s a resort, including a Trader Vic’s (which has nothing vegan) and a pizza place (which looked good but we always have pizza at home). I think it would be a great choice for a sightseeing base now that the rooms are (most likely) refurbished. Overall though it was fine.
But once we were done sightseeing, we made a prettayyy prettayyy good move to one of my favorite new places.
The Shangri-La Muscat. OH DIP! It’s pretty far outside the city center, because people who come here are not sightseeing anymore; they are staying put and enjoying resort life. Husbo and I have literally never done ‘resort life’ before this, but everyone said to take a few days to relax and enjoy it, so we did. We had two nights and two days here – that’s really all we could muster, given that we are not the laying on the beach doing nothing type (and really all we could afford). The grounds were endless and so gorgeous. There was so much endless luxury to enjoy and appreciate. (However, we agreed that the Four Seasons Dubai seemed classier and more luxurious.) It seemed like it was situated it its own private world, backed by a mountain on one side and the ocean on the other. Our own private ocean fortress (shared with hundreds of strangers)! It was pretty amazing.
We had to wait about a half hour for our room, so we wandered the grounds and took pictures. Everything was so beautiful and even though there were tons of people there, nothing seemed too crowded. There were also like, five pools??!! I swam in so many pools! Oh so the Shangri-La is actually made of three resorts: the main one, the family one (Al Waha), and the super-even-fancier-one-for-super-rich-people-who-need-their-own-elevators (Al Husn (which we had fun saying because it’s how my nephew said his name at the time)). These are rough guides, because there were kids at ours, fancy people at the kids one, &c. They’re all connected and they share (most) amenities, so it’s not really strict. We were at the main one, the Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa. We saw the Al Waha a lot, since some of the restaurants and beach activities we experienced were closer to their end of the beach, and it was nice but definitely better for kids. It’s closer to the more kid-friendly pool and the busier beach end, things like that. (We weren’t allowed to see the fancier one, which I think is just part of the main building but with all private entrances and stuff. Well who really knows what else they have up there.)
But regardless of what they have over at the Al Husn, I loved the Barr Al Jissah, and it’s probably because things kicked off on a super high note. So I’m always that person who is like “wahhhh I’ve never been upgraded on anything why don’t I ever get an upgraaaaade let’s tell them we’re on our honeymoooon” and Husbo, being a Decent Person, is like “no we aren’t lying” and I’m like “fiiiine lying is wrong FINE but I want FANCY THINGS, GOD UGH” so anyway we arrive at the Shangri-La check-in (the fanciest check-in area man alive) and well first we have to wait and we take our photos of the grounds and we explore the interactive computer screens telling us what’s going on and we see THIS hilarity:
And when the check-in staff called us back over to the desk, the guy was like “are you celebrating any special occasion”? And husbo and I had a legit ESP-style discussion where I was saying “OMG no one ever just sets us up like that, we HAVE to say yes” and husbo was like “no we’re not lying” and I was like “but he’s asking for it!” and before he could ESP answer me, husbo told the guy “no we’re not, just here on holiday!” and I said “dammit!” (internally) but then the gods rewarded us for not lying because I am not even joking when I say the LEAST likely turn of events happened next: The staffer said “well, since you aren’t celebrating anything special, we want to ensure you remember your time here as special so we have upgraded your room.” I mean, WHO DOES THAT? What are the odds? I was hysterically laughing. Like come on. That doesn’t happen. I’ll take it.
The standard room we had booked was still very expensive, so getting a GODDAMN INCREDIBLE SUITE felt like some kind of sweet justice. It was awesome and ridiculous.
They also did my favorite hotel activity of leaving me edible gifts! We got daily fruit bowls and a lovely box of dates.
So yeah I was a little overexcited you could say! I love a nice hotel room that’s bigger than most apartments I’ve lived it! Man alive.
The Shangri-La never stopped surprising us with hilariously over-the-top amenities. The best by far was that the Al Jissah resort was linked to the Al Waha at the other end of the beach – by a lazy river. A LEGIT LAZY RIVER between the two hotels, from one pool to another (with 3-4 other pools around the grounds, of course). AMAZING.
We lazed on the lazy river so many times because when are you ever going to be staying in a place with one again?? We also swam in all the pools, went in the ocean, lounged on the beach, swam in more pools, explored the grounds by lazy river, explored by foot, and lather rinse repeated everything…and that was the first afternoon and we were like ‘okay now what’. We aren’t used to being resort people!
We decided to take advantage of literally every aspect of this experience, starting with…the turtle ranger! The Shangri-La has an on-site expert dedicated to the protection of native hawksbill and green sea turtles, and he’s called the TURTLE RANGER and he gets to live here and do this and man does that sound amazing. We went to his evening guidance jawn and made plans to go snorkeling with him the next morning to look for turtles in the ocean!! We were the only people interested the morning we went so it’s like we had a private snorkeling session and sea life lesson all for free! I obviously don’t have pictures of that experience, but it was incredible. The three of us met on the beach in front of the Al Waha section of the grounds, snorkeled up, and swam out under the resort’s ocean barrier ropes, around the cliffs, and out into the ocean out of the view and out of the safety of the resort. Now, I’ve been swimming my whole life, but not like, TO SURVIVE. Just for funsies! This was HARROWING. Have you ever swam, like literally swam doing swim-class strokes, no treading or bobbing or touching down, in the ocean for an hour? It is HARD! I was so not used to using a snorkel to breathe and so not used to swimming against ocean currents, so I was focusing so hard on Not Dying that I missed seeing the sea turtle! Sads! I saw a lot of beautiful fishies though, and like, didn’t drown, so I’m happy overall.
Those of you who read about our amazing spa exploits in the Dubai post will know what’s coming next: more spa exploits! It is called “Resort & Spa” for a reason! Sadly, there was a tennis court we didn’t make use of (tear), but we did use ALL THE THINGS in the spa, which is located outside a gate near one of the pools; you need your room key to get to the spa and fitness area. Like the Four Seasons Dubai, the Shangri-La spa had a jacuzzi, steam rooms, weird rain shower areas, weird air shower areas (I still don’t get these but every future spa requires them), a lovely lounge area, and lots of rooms for massages and treatments if you so desire. We had fun just skipping from random feature to random feature.
They also had a very good gym, which seemed to be in a legit fitness center like open to outsiders? Or else it was just surprisingly busy! They had a lot going on – yoga center, classes, I wanna say a squash court?, as well as an outdoor mini-golf course! I used the main gym floor and the upstairs studio when it was not class time (I put videos on Instagram in the Muscat highlights section!). My only complaint is that the rowing machine wasn’t properly secured to the ground (I was like legit rowing across the room this way) but now we’re getting into niche complaints, which means we’re done with this section.
Since we were staying in here for a few days, that means we ate all our meals inside the grounds, as everyone does. There are lots of restaurants, and you have to make reservations for them since there are hundreds of guests looking for dinner at the same times. There’s the main hotel buffet, which looked good with decent vegan options, but it was expensive considering I’d be eating the cheapest food. Like, don’t charge me $60 when I’m going to be making a salad. Vegans should get buffet discounts! Regardless, the main buffet is pretty much what’s open for the (included) breakfast, so I got to try all the greatest hits anyway. We checked all the menus of all the restaurants, and hilariously, the seafood restaurant had the best vegan options!
The seafood restaurant is about halfway between Barr Al Jissah and Al Waha on the beach. They offer a chef’s marketplace salad and grilled asparagus as starters, and veggie paella, three bean casserole, and tortellini for mains. I know it doesn’t seem like a lot but I’m telling you, finding a restaurant at this resort with beans felt like a huge success.
I had the salad (obviously) and the beans, and they were really good! The chef’s salad said it would have caramelized dates in it, though, and mine clearly didn’t. I didn’t actually care because I was so full of dates by this point in the trip, but I’m annoyed at the misrepresentation.
For my main, of course I got the three bean casserole. The only thing better than a bean is three beans! It was actually really good.
A friend who had stayed here before told us that the breakfast buffet was seriously fantastic, and I was like “sure Jan” because I’m not a hotel breakfast person, but man alive! Just look at everything available at the breakfast buffet:
The breakfast buffet had a whole Arabic foods section! After I had all the fruit and juices and cereals (with soy milk on display!) and a plate from the enormous salad section, I could eat all my best friends – the hummus and the foul and the salads and the pita!!
And then I found this:
On the bread wall (yes there was an entire wall of breads) there was a soft pretzel box!! It’s like they saw me coming. There was also a diy soft-serve machine – yes, at the breakfast buffet – but of course it was not vegan. It’s okay I’m okay!
Honestly though, my favorite meal was room service! True, this could be because it was truly incredible food, or because it was actually the most economical option (and cheapest room service I’ve ever seen!), or because it was my first time ever getting room service (I KNOW!). It could also be because we got EVERYTHING vegan on the menu! And it was so nice to have a reason to use our fancy living room! The staff who brought it and cleaned up (you just call a number when you’re done and they come back and take the table away it all just folds up it was like magical) were really great, and even though I was embarrassed at how much we ordered, they were like ‘what’s up have fun’. So much food, so amazing.
We got lentil soup, we got curry, we got rice, we got dolmas, we got hummus and pita, and we got fattoush and another salad thing and a basket of rolls and some kind of vegan spinach puff ball and man alive this was a lot of food now that I write it all out knowing I’m forgetting something additional. (That coffee pot looking jawn is the lentil soup container lol.)
The morning we flew back to London, we had to leave the hotel at like 6 am (egads and oh no). Since we would be missing breakfast, the hotel sent us off with a bag stuffed with tropical fruit containers and salads! (Sure the salads had feta but I could eat the fruit! So nice!)
This was an incredibly special holiday as you can see, and not just because I had my first upgrade (yasss), or my first room service (yassss), or because I didn’t drown in the ocean. Muscat might not be a vegan mecca, but it has a lot to offer tourists in terms of history and culture and overall great experiences, and vegans will definitely be more than fine. And if you read this whole thing, you deserve a stay at the Shangri-La.
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Vegan Michelin Series: Il Gallo d’Oro in Funchal, Madeira
During our stay in Funchal, Madeira, the beautiful Portuguese island, we had a fancy dinner one night at the island’s most celebrated restaurant – Il Gallo d’Oro. It has been awarded two Michelin stars and they told me they could arrange for a vegan tasting menu, so we went for it. Located in The Cliff Bay resort hotel (one of the three PortoBay properties), Il Gallo d’Oro is not only considered the best restaurant on Madeira but it’s also awarded that title for all of Portugal sometimes. So while I knew the food would be great, my vegan expectations were still tempered because these fancy restaurants sometimes just don’t have the experience or knowledge for creating vegan menus that are at the same level as the regular ones. As usual I was right. The food was super lovely and delicious, and I’ll probably be describing each component as ‘lovely’ because that’s really all there was to it. But it was missing that expertise that a veg chef could provide. And while dining here is a nice event for a special occasion, it’s way too expensive for what you get.
The Cliff Bay hotel was decorated for Christmas (it was almost that time) and it felt cozy, even though it’s super weird for me still to reconcile that Christmas can happen in warm or even tropical locales. But I was glad we had chosen to stay at the Porto Mare as this hotel seemed a little less…fun than ours. The crowd was all older and we were clearly the youngest people dining at the Golden Cock (what it means) that night.
After we were seated in the dim, modern-chic dining room, a waiter asked if we would like champagne. He was already holding it, so husbo said sure why not. I asked for a non-alcoholic option and they brought me a tall pink drink that wasn’t too sweet, so that’s nice. It was topped like the makers had just watched ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ and didn’t realize that Jason Segel was making fun of how much unnecessary garnish bartenders put in drinks and instead they were like ‘this seems smart.’ Mine had a wedge of pineapple, cucumbers, a cherry, and twirly herbs dangling from the whole shibang. I would have eaten all of it too but I was trying to behave properly.
We found out at the end that they charged 18 euro for the champagne, which was presented as if it were a gift or already included with the extravagant price tag, so that’s kind of/super shirty. You don’t want to go to a supes fance place like this and feel like they’re overcharging you and nickel and diming you, and 18 euros is more than a dime.
It is super pretty though right?
As usual, when they asked for our water preferences I said still and husbo said sparkling because that’s how we roll. They brought us fun bourbon-bottle-looking-mufas of our waters. We found out later that they charged 5 euro for water. I mean. Guys. Include water in your ticket price! This is an unacceptable charge in my book at any restaurant or cafe or place in the universe, let alone a two-michey.
Those are my big complaints, though, and the rest of it is pretty positive. Like I said, the food, while not as innovative as I’d like, was elegant and delicious. And they brought me olive oil in a dish shaped like the island.
A dish of olive oil means I get bread!
what a motley crew
My first course was a little salad of fennel, baby corn, super super thinly sliced tomato, and cherries. I know, literally the most random assortment of ingredients you could throw together, but they somehow complemented each other. It was simple and refined.
How pretty is this! Doesn’t it look like little egg tarts or something? It’s little seed cuplings with a piece of yellow tomato. At least I think so. I’m having trouble remembering but I remember liking it and more importantly IT’S SO PRETTY.
Now this bitch I know! Ugh this was so good. One of the best things about Micheliny restaurant tasting menus is that they ALWAYS throw black truffles at me. For regular diners, these fancy restaurants try to make it worth the price tag by serving expensive meats and rare cheeses and I don’t know hand-churned butter? Shit like that, to make you feel better about the cost. But they can’t give me expensive meats and there are just not expensive vegetables they can throw at me, so they try to make my menu fancy by throwing truffles at me. It was weird to have a slice of raw truffle instead of using it in an oil, a cream, or a paste, as I’ve had in the past, but mushed into this cozy and comforting little stew, it was quite delightful. It was exactly the kind of bean, grain, and veg stew I’d make at home for a winter time dinner, but elevated with that truffle. And the little flower. I never eat flowers at home.
and so we meet again
So, as you can see, the next dish was kind of similar to the last. And by similar I mean the same. It seems the restaurant figured out a few good vegan dishes, but since the tasting menu requires a certain amount of dishes, they just repeated some? I mean it was good, and heartier than the usual tasting menu offerings, so I wasn’t complaining. But it showed a lack of planning for me, or a lack of care.
edible silver
And then we were already onto dessert! Here was a little bowlful of jelly (not in a Cosby voice! We don’t do that anymore!) with hazelnuts, and one hazelnut was coated in edible silver because of the aforementioned attempt to make my costs seem higher. My absolute favorite part of the entire experience was that one of our waitresses, my favorite one, pronounced it ‘wizelnuts’ in her little accent and it was THE BEST. Hazelnuts played a big role in several of my dishes and she kept talking about it and saying ‘wizelnuts’ and I forking loved it. Always say wizelnuts.
My second dessert was great. I had a beautiful little vanilla pudding, or more like a flan I guess because it stands as a solid structure. Is that what separates pudding from flan? I have no idea. Anyway it was delicious, and it was a very special treat to not get sorbet or plain fruit. As you can say, they went a little overboard with the gold leaf, trying to up my costs again I guess but like, for no reason at all! It makes me laugh. Like plain bits of gold leaf do not taste good, and having so much of it doesn’t magically make me think ‘oh this was a well priced meal after all’! Nonetheless, it was a better than average dessert.
So overall, it was a very nice meal, but it would have been a nice meal for a regular restaurant, not necessarily one with two Michelin stars. Each dish was great, but not worth the money. Unlike most of the Michelin restaurants we’ve been to, they didn’t give us a souvenir menu at the end, but hopefully my memories are correct. If they are, I’m confident in saying that Il Gallo d’Oro can provide a lovely dinner for a special occasion while on holiday, but for the price it’s a better choice for the white-haired folk vacationing on Madeira who aren’t vegetarian.
IL GALLO D’ORO, MADEIRA, PORTUGAL, EUROPE
Water speed: A little slow.
Service: Very fun mostly because of the wizelnuts 🙂
Bathrooms: The bathrooms were outside the restaurant and in the hotel lobby, so since the hotel was super nice, the bathrooms were too. Very like.
Food: So the food was delicious, but I basically had the same main twice so that’s a little magoo. And overall it was overpriced for the vegan menu.
Bonus: Great to have a fancy restaurant on holiday.
Water speed: A little slow.
Service: Very fun mostly because of the wizelnuts 🙂
Bathrooms: The bathrooms were outside the restaurant and in the hotel lobby, so since the hotel was super nice, the bathrooms were too. Very like.
Food: So the food was delicious, but I basically had the same main twice so that’s a little magoo. And overall it was overpriced for the vegan menu.
Bonus: Great to have a fancy restaurant on holiday.
London VegFest Weekend: So Much To Eat! So Much To Do…& Eat!
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.
