Veganizing “Friends”: The Moistmaker, or MY SANDWICH?!?!?!?!            (Plus Stuffing Recipe!)

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

Monica: That’s not a question.

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

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

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

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

Monica: Why would we do that?

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

Monica: Ok, three kinds of potatoes coming up.

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

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

Bubala, a Yiddish term of endearment dispensed by elder aunts and bubbes the world over, is also the name of a fantastic new (ish) vegetarian restaurant in London. The word is a cute lil diminutive meaning sweetheart or dearie (not in a creepy Rumpelstiltskin way) that all Jews or Jew-adjacents know well, so to have a Tel Aviv-cafe-inspired joint with this name in Spitalfields is prettay prettay exciting. Serving veggie Middle Eastern food (despite the Yiddish and the Tel Aviv and the hummus, they are careful never to say Israeli because the hipster clientele would disapprove), Bubala offers a delicious spin on mostly familiar dishes that you should definitely check out, if you can get a table.

We went for Valentime’s Day (I LOVE SCHMALTZ) and the food was so good we plotzed. The menu is well curated, with several appealing dips, small plates, and slightly larger/heavier plates. You’re supposed to get like 3 per person and it’s best to share (sharing is caring), and they also offer a £30 ‘let us feed you’ menu. We almost got this set menu (they can do a vegan version) but I added up the many dishes I wanted and it was less than that so I didn’t. Also I like my right to choose. And literally everything we chose was good-to-great, so I’m really excited that this joint is right up the street from me and I can go whenever I make a booking at least 2 weeks in advance because if you try rocking up any sooner than that you will be SOL. It is POPULER…lar.

However, the service leaves something to be desired. OY VEY. We sat at our table for several minutes and no one came by to do or say anything. When I tried to flag a waitress who was leaving the table next to us (and my next to us I mean right up against our legs; it is a tiny cramped loud place and you will hear everyone’s convos but not the person you’re with), a different staff member who appeared to just be watching the scene came by and was like ‘did you need something?’ and we were like hi yes um menus maybe? Any semblance of recognition? What a schmuck. It happened a lot, our concerted efforts to get someone’s attention and them just blanking us. I’M JUST NOT IMPORTANT. Also happening a lot – waiters coming into our section of the restaurant with dishes and just stopping short and staring at every table, confused beyond words about where to place the dish they were carrying. It was so strange, like they didn’t have a system or know to bring this to table 9 or whatever? So several times, a waiter would just be standing in my eyeline looking over every table and considering “hmm, who seems like the type of person who would have ordered the hummus? No, it can’t be that table; they’re holding hands.” WTF. At least 3 times I pointed waiters to the right tables (because I had heard the other tables’ orders, of course). SUCH mishegas.

Anyway, aside from that (sorry to kvetch), our experience at Bubala was PG. We started with two dips – the hummus and the pumpkin tirshy and the laffa flatbread. The waitress asked if we wanted one or two flatbreads and we were like ‘you tell us’ and she was like ‘maybe two, but start with one and see.’ Reader, it’s the best thing on the menu so say you want one at a time to keep it warm but that you want it treated like a bottomless bread bowl to be refilled as soon as it’s empty. IT’S INCREDIBLE. It’s fluffy in the right places and salty in the right amount. That flaked salt though. Omg it’s soo good.

The hummus usually comes with burnt butter (which is the equivalent of putting sour cream in guacamole, what is wrong with people) but they can do it without for vegans. It’s really good guys. I believe there is a small range for hummus quality – you can’t get toooo bad and there’s a ceiling for how amazing it can be, but this was at the high end of the spectrum. You’ll definitely want to keep a plate of this on your table so you can nosh throughout the courses.

The second activity for our breading was the pumpkin tirshy, which I think just means dip, with harissa, preserved lemon, and kalamata olives. This was good too, very cumin-y I think or whatever spice was masquerading as cumin for my unrefined palate.

The next dish I was MOST excited about: the shiitake and oyster mushroom skewers with tamari, coriander, and maple. I LOVE oyster mushrooms, how thick and meaty they are, so amazing. I heard good things about these skewers but they were fine, not amazing. Z was meh about them, because they turned out to be just grilled mushrooms on a stick without much flavor to them. I do love mushrooms even if they aren’t all fancied up so I was more on board. But I was originally like “oh I just want to get LOADS of the skewers I bet” and then I was fine with just my one, so.

Next up to bat was the fried aubergine (eggplant) with zhoug (ZHOUG AAAAAVERYYY) and date syrup. This was the standout for me. The eggplant was fried perfectly and it was so soft and also crispy at the edges and wow. I’m kind of over eggplant nowadays but not this dish. We love zhoug (ZHOUG AAAAVERYY) (WHO’S ZHOUG AVERY) (SHE THE QUEEN HONEYBEE) and it was used perfectly with this, and there was just enough sweetness from the date syrup. AMAZING.

(Z also got the halloumi, for those of you who still like to support the cruelty of the dairy industry, and said it was incredible like wow. SO THAT’S GOOD TO KNOW FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO THINK IT’S WORTH IT.)

Our first of the more ‘main’-like dishes was the grilled cabbage with tahini, pomegranate, and hazelnut. This was DELICIOUS and something I will try to recreate for a regular weekday dinner. The chunk of cabbage was so soft I could cut it with a fork. It was in a bit of broth so the tahini quickly mixed with it and made a tahini broth, which is everything I’ve ever wanted. And the hazelnuts that might seem just like a lil afterthought topping were actually a brilliant addition, adding a perfect counterpart to the earthy cabbage. I mean hazelnuts are I guess earthy too but in a different way. We love earth.

Our last savory dish was the ful medames, with lovage pesto, yoghurt and malawach (a fried bread). The yoghurt (they spelt it with an ‘h’ so I will too even though my US computer is HATING IT) and the malawach aren’t vegan but they said they could put them on the side for husbo, which is good for us because we are kind of obsessed with ful medames. FUL IS SO GOOD. And I would never put yoghurt or yogurt in it and I already had the laffa flatbread (which is the best thing ever) so the removal of these nonvegan additions don’t hurt it. As fuls go, it was pretty good. I do love my beans.

(Husbo also had the potato latkes (not vegan) and said they were great, but we and the Israelis next to us laughed at them being called latkes – they are perfectly rectangular potato cubes. Delicious, by all accounts, but not free-form-potato-string-patty-like latkes.)

For dessert, there’s only one vegan option (more mishegas!), the coconut malabi (like milk pudding) with hibiscus and sesame brittle. It was pretty nice (as the Brits say about food and I guess since I am one now I have to say it sometimes too)! It’s basic, to have a coconut milk pudding, and not that inspired, but the sesame brittle really makes it. They should put a little more of it in there.

We also got their two fresh tea options: mint and rose petal. The rose petal was funny – it came out and we realized ‘oh it’s just…hot water with flowers in it.’ It wasn’t steeped long enough maybe? The mint tea was a tad whack because it was just a mug with the whole mint leaves in it, with no filtration system, so it was impossible to avoid getting all the leaves in your mouth. What schlamiel thought of this? Also, when we hear ‘fresh mint tea’ we think of the super sweet version from Morocco (the best kind) and often in the Middle East but this was unsweetened. Sure you can sweeten it yourself if you want but it’s actually physically impossible for a human to make their own fresh mint tea to the same sweetness level as someone in Morocco would make for you. It’s too much sugar and you’d realize by the 5th tablespoon that you are drinking the ‘beetus. (Also it’s better with sugar syrup.)

ANYWAY, Bubala is a treaty little treat joint to add to the amazing vegan-friendly restaurant scene around Spitalfields. Highly recommend you check it out if you’re in the area. And if you are, it means you’re near me, so INVITE ME TOO.

BUBALA, SPITALFIELDS, LONDON, UK, EUROPE FOREVER BITCHES
Water speed: Good. They brought carafes of still AND sparkling since I wanted the former and Z the latter as usual. Pretty good replacement speed.
Service: As I said above, this is the part that needs work. It’s super busy and cramped and loud, so there’s definitely justification, but their system of knowing what table ordered what seemed…on the fritz. Also despite two hours there we were never sure exactly who our server was that we should be asking for stuff?
Bathrooms: Meh, they are up lots of stairs so it’s not accessible, and there’s only one (or maybe two).
Food: Fantastic!
Bonus: Despite the location, it’s not too expensive. Also the name <3