Aspects of Love at the Southwark Playhouse: A.L. DUBS YOU GOT SOME SPLAININ TO DO!!!!by Randi / January 17, 2019
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.
Fried Ball on a cool plate
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!
trail soup
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.
you owe me baked plantain
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.
shwarma?
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.
green emoji face
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.
i mean ya fine, but ya basic
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.
you say potato, I say 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.
it looks like a normal amount of apple shreddings but it was literally at least two whole 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!
chocooo
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.
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The Frog Restaurant in Hoxton: One of London’s Best Vegan Tasting Menus
Over the weekend, I tried the vegan tasting menu at a non-vegan place and I was blown away – I think it’s one of the best vegan tasting menus out there! I know I’m starting off with a REAL bold statement but damn if I’m not telling the truth. You may already know all about our crippling addiction to tasting menus and eating at all the Michelin-starred restaurants that will accommodate vegans (you can read about some of those here), even though as previous Vegan Michelin Series reviews will tell you, it’s all usually very good but kind of like ‘eh it’s still just a well-cooked vegetable; is it worth all this money’. But I was pleasantly surprised by The Frog, a very hip very cool restaurant in Hoxton Square that’s doing actually creative tasting menus, even for vegans, and has received a Michelin Bib Gourmand in recent years, which warrants its place in this series (but honestly it was good enough that I’d be putting it here even without official Michy recognition).
I know I said in one of the last of the Vegan Michelin Series that we were probably going to stop for a while but a) that was like a year ago so we did b) this was a very special occasion and 3) this tasting menu was only £50 per person! That’s like normal eating out in London prices! (Side note, are you so glad I learned how to use the £ sign and stopped saying ‘pounddollars’. That’s growth.)
Like all tasting menus, this menu describes what’s to come using as few key words as possible so you really have no idea what to expect but it looks and sounds g-d elegant. Also, the sparsely worded menu makes it seem like you aren’t getting a lot of food but as usual we had to roll ourselves home. They quickly brought our first snacks, which I appreciated because I was as hungry as I was excited and also I can’t stay out too late especially when we have to walk through SHOREDITCH on a WEEKEND to get home man alive it was a nightmare of drunken crowdedness.
My first bunch of snacks were called “heritage carrot, roasted hazelnuts, mint” and “kohlrabi, nori, tarragon”. I like these words but was curious to see what they meant when put together.
The little kohlrabi bite was good, though the nori was extra strong and made it a bit too salty for me. But that carrot bite was literally incredible. I was/am almost embarrassed to be so bowled over by a jesus forking cracker with barbecued-tasting carrots on a delightful carrot puree but it was magical, and it makes my head hurt to think about how this was possible. This was my first Jon-Lovitz-on-Friends impression in a while (“Like it?? I could eat a hundred of ’em!”). This goddamn carrot cracker was my first indication that this was going to be amazing. (But seriously why was this so good?? How did you do it? What dark magick hath you wrought?)
Our next snacks – oh, so for tasting menus and Michelin-y places they like to throw a bunch of small bites at your face before you get to the actual courses so you feel well-liked by the chef and full as fork sooner rather than later – were just as good if not better! I got a sourdough cracker topped with pea hummus and dollops of…something jammy? I got jammed! Just as I weirdly went off about how amazing a simple bite of carrot was, I’m going to do the same about versions of sourdough right now. This cracker was amazing. I wish I could buy bags on bags of these crackers since they somehow nailed the exact perfect strength and texture for holding hummus, and as you know I eat hummus every day. EVERY DAY SON. I forget what the jammy dodger drops were all about but it added the perfect bit of sweetness to cut through the mild flavors. And guys, HUMMUS! Most of my tasting menu overviews complain about how they never think to give vegans protein because they’re always too busy going ‘oh look at me, look at me, I can cook a vegetable like you’ve never seen it before’ and you’re like ‘that’s fantastic and you’re right but also my muscles’ so I was prettay, prettay stoked to get peas so early on.
I can’t believe I wrote so much about a g-d cracker with hummus but it was really good.
Also pictured above was one of our favorite things ever and also our downfall: the bread. The Frog’s rye sourdough bread was forking phenom, and while Z got his with the place’s very famous chicken butter (gross)(not like ‘gross’ Z said it was great but I mean like gross for us sorry), I got a pat of house-made vegan butter! And by ‘pat’ I mean ‘patrick’ really because this was a lotttt of butter, and it was forking delicious. So delicious that we…asked for more bread. I know. You NEVER ask for more bread at a tasting menu. We are not new to this! We know the drill – you are already super full before you even get to dessert, and then they keep bringing you more food than you can handle and you leave feeling disgustingly full but like so happy but also SO hurt! We know all this! We done f-ed up because of that damn delicious bread. And the butter. Dammit bread and butter! Why are you so good? We had so much and then I was already full before my first actual course came. NEVER ASK FOR MORE BREAD (except honestly do because it’s so good).
My first actual course, thank you I’m already full, was “celeriac, apple, dates”. The combo of celeriac and apple is prime fancy restaurant territory and I was like oh this will be nice but basic. Turns out this was not basic but ya basic, because guess what was inside that bundle of celeriac? TOFU! It was like a tofu cream cheese stuffed inside the bundle. Restaurants NEVER do tofu anything except chocolate mousse so this was a really nice surprise. Yasss for protein, yes for tofu in the savories! This was really good. But the best part was that Z also had a cream cheese filled dish, and when the waiter described his dish and mentioned “the richness of the cream cheese”, Z said (after he left) “well thanks for letting me eat all that damn butter.” He was hurt too. It was so good.
My next course was “roast cauliflower, kimchi, yeast”. I know – I was like ‘jfc they’re going to bring me a hunk of roasted cauliflower and call it a steak, aren’t they? ffs’ because for some reason I was still being all defensive even though everything so far was wonderful. I should really be more optimistic because hot damn guys, this cauliflower dish was like one of the most mind-blowing things I’ve ever had. I still can’t even believe this dish. There were a few roasted cauliflower florets but not like you’ve ever had before. They tasted like General Tso’s chicken, complete with the sticky sweet sauce in the middle. But 100x better than you’ve ever had. The cauliflower kimchi was super pungent and spicy (nice) and the creamy sauce itself was remarkable. I guess the yeast was maybe a sprinkling of nooch? I’m not sure; I didn’t ask because I was too busy saying ‘holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.’
I was so happy and so satisfied, and I relaxed a little knowing that we hit the peak of the meal and nothing else coming was going to top that (sounds weird but that’s a little relaxing, like the pressure is off). But I was wrong.
I was wrong because next up was the “flatbread, cashew, sweetcorn, jalapeno” dish and it was Mexico. It was Mexico on a plate. (It’s fitting too, because starting this week on the Travel section of this site it’s time for our epic Mexico trip. I KNOW! So I know what Mexico tastes like, guys.) This was a perfect food. I don’t know what else to say about it. The sturdy little flatbread had the most incredible texture and (I’m sooo sorry) mouthfeel, and all the components on top – that cashew cream, the corn, the jalapeno, the herby oil – exist just to be placed on that circle of magic. I made Z have a piece even though he was equally full and, in his words, “I got my own problems here!” and he agreed that it was akin to disc of rainbows. He didn’t say that.
That marked the end of our savory dishes, but there was a special in-between course that killed us both – the cheese doughnut. Mine was an oily fried dough slab covered in cashew cream and cashew dust and it killed me. Oh my god. I don’t eat too much heavy food and this was like an Iowa state fair concentrated into three bites. It was like a funnel cake from a carnival without the sugar, manhandled into a denser substance, and then topped with forking cashew cream. It was so heavy, is what I’m saying. And yes it was pretty darn good, but I think it needed either some salt or some sugar, because without any additional flavor, its flavor profile was just Fat. Every gluttonous tasting menu situation has a point where you suspect the restaurant is making fun of you, and this was theirs. Z said “this isn’t a doughnut; this is a way to get people to eat fondue with their hands!” I asked him if he liked his doughnuttier, cheese-filled version, expecting him to say ‘eh’ or something, and he sighed in fullness and horror at what he was eating and said “fucking of course”. Hilarious. We were mocking how full the other was (so full) and I said to him ‘you have to finish all that coconut!’ Here’s his dish after he ate his doughnut. (Read the caption.)
Luckily, we had little palate cleansers before dessert.
This strawberry sorbet was perfect, and I loved getting it as a little palate cleanser and not as my whole dessert. I think most restaurants have learned from their sordid past of offering vegans fruit and fruit sorbets for dessert and calling it a day, and that’s a reality I like to think all my complaining has helped bring to fruition.
I do wish that they had put this on the vegan menu though, or told me I was getting a strawberry sorbet palate cleanser, because the vegan dessert option has you choose between strawberry or pineapple and I chose strawberry. So I had two servings of this (the second on my actual dessert). Unless…maybe they had made my strawberry sorbet for my dessert and then just gave me more of it to have a palate cleanser while Z had his? Interesting.
I’m not too mad about doubling up on the sorbet though, because like I said it was delicious, and more importantly, the vegan dessert was much more than just sorbet. It was more tofu! In the form of chocolate! And yes this isn’t exactly creative but man alive I’ll never look a gift chocolate tofu mousse in the mouth. I’ll be too busy putting it in mine. This may not have been the most interesting dessert, but it was great, and I’d rather have something tried and true and delicious than another curry ice cream fail.
As usual, just when you think you’ve made it, they bring you more food to end your experience. With our bill came these chocolate truffles. Luckily, they put them in a little to-go container for us, and I got to enjoy mine the next day. It was truly great, like this entire dinner. I would highly recommend a trip to The Frog for a go at their tasting menu, especially if you need a fancy place that caters to vegans and weirdos who aren’t vegan. I believe they change their menu monthly, so get in for these amazing dishes while it’s still August. I can’t wait to go back.
THE FROG, HOXTON, LONDON, UK, EUROPE PLEASE STAY EUROPE
Water speed: Honestly, LUDICROUSLY good. Like more attentive than American Chinese restaurants where they refill your glass after every sip you take. But since we had water carafes on the table, it was a little unnecessary – you don’t have to refill my glass after every sip when I have the full bottle within reach! I can do it myself! But still, I’ll never complain about having good water service. I mean I guess I just did. But it was great. They replaced the 6 or so bottles I went through very quickly too.
Service: Really great. Like I said, sometimes it was a little extra with the water service, but overall this was some of the best if not the best service in London. Case in point: During one course, I finished my dish and my 10th bottle of water, but Z still wasn’t done and I said I’m sorry but I’ve had 15 bottles of water so I excused myself and when I got back, he told me that they came to refold my napkin (as they do) but did not take my finished plate away! THAT IS A FIRST. They did exactly what you’re supposed to do but no one ever follows that rule. Every other restaurant has always taken the empty plate away while the other diner/s were still eating, which is forking rude and also not the correct move, so bravo. The sommelier was good too and Z said he enjoyed the wine pairing.
Bathrooms: Okay so this was the only real negative I have to report. There are two single stalls, one plain, one disabled, and they were…not good. They were like the bathrooms in Starbucks but less nice. We were both really surprised.
Food: So surprisingly awesome. Some of these dishes are on my Most list. It’s so nice to find a vegan tasting menu that definitely shows respect to vegetables but also makes them fun and interesting.
Bonus: The tasting menu cost is very reasonable. It’s a fraction of the cost of other Michelin-y ones out there and yet much better. Great stuff.
