Vedge Restaurant, Philadelphia: The World’s Greatest

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. 

      For so long, I’ve been complaining about how England can’t do Mexican food: they don’t understand spicy food, you can’t get good avocados here, and there’s a dearth of Mexican immigrants. But an all-vegan market stall called Club Mexicana proved me wrong! Club Mexicana pops up at the various markets in London, including Spitalfields and King’s Cross. And this month, they’ve taken over the Hornbeam Cafe in…super northeast London to host fantastic Friday night dinners. (I mean dinner on Friday nights, not Shabbat-style ‘Friday night dinners’.) If you have a chance to get to god knows where I went last week (Walthamstow…shire?) any Friday this month, then you must go! They have loaded nachos, tacos, burritos, empanadas, and more. Most importantly, their signature dish is pulled jackfruit, the coolest vegan meat substitute ever. 

     At their most recent Friday night dinner, Club Mexicana offered a solid and surprisingly well-priced menu of small and large plates. The small options included roasted cornbread with mole, pedron peppers, tortilla soup, and loaded nachos. Obviously we got the loaded nachos because dayum! Vegans need to jump at nacho opportunities when they can. Also, outside the U.S., apparently people think ‘nachos’ just means ‘plain corn chips’ and that’s terrrrrrible, so I had to take advantage of someone knowing better. The nachos had vegan cheese sauce (I think it’s house made!), black beans, ancho chili sauce, sour cream (again probably house made), jalapenos, and cilantro, which they call coriander here but coriander is the dried version so I’ll never accept that. It also had guacamole, which sadly succumbed to the British curse of being weird and creamy instead of being normal.* It was better than other attempts I’ve had here though! The nachos were really good. I was intrigued by the cheese sauce. It was really sharp yet creamy and it didn’t make me angry so right on. As with every single maker of nachos, however, the bottom layer was naked.* When will people learn to stagger the toppings on all the layers and not just dump them on top so you get really loaded chips at first but then are left with NOTHING at the end? I would be so good at nachos. 
      We also got the tortilla soup, which the menu called ‘sopa di tortilla’ which is accurate but I read it as carrot coconut soup for some reason?? Don’t know how that happened but luckily that’s not what arrived. The spicy, tomato-base, lime-doused soup was really good, although I would have preferred more beans (any beans?) in it. I’m just used to my tortilla soup being full of beans. Haha full of beans. This one was mainly thick broth, but the broth was delicious so it’s all good. It also was topped with the sour cream from the nachos, which was a really nice component even if it disintegrated into the soup before it even arrived. 

      We had much more trouble choosing our mains. Not only were there two entrees featuring pulled jackfruit, but they also had chili-non-carne sloppy joes and chorizo empanadas! The jackfruit came in either taco form or burrito form. I knew I had to have one, so I figured I’d continue the taco cleanse. The waitron recommended the chorizo empanadas as our second main. Excellent choice!
      So I’m obsessed with pulled jackfruit now. I had it once before, at the White Owl Social Club in Portland, but it was on a burger bun and the bread overpowered it. Thin little corn tortillas really are the perfect showcase for this ridiculously inventive food. Jackfruit is yeah it’s a fruit, but when you shred it, it really resembles pork? or something crazy? It’s so mind-boggling and delicious that Upton’s Naturals is going to be selling it alongside its packaged mock meats. That’s aweeeesome! Club Mexicana’s version is hand-pulled and marinated in bourbon BBQ sauce, and served on the aforementioned little corn disks with sour cream, too-creamy guacamole again but whatever it’s still guacamole, and salted chiles. It also came with more tortilla chips and a warm cabbage slaw that I liked to put inside the tacos. These were so good. Oh man. Jackfruit is too cool. 

       The chorizo empanadas were also really good, like meat-filled hand pies. I guess in England that’s just hand pies. The menu said ‘puff pastry’ but it was denser than that (which was good for this dish), like heavy buttery pie dough holding shredded chorizo-style seitan, spicy potatoes, olives, and raisins. Luckily I didn’t taste any raisin because that is weird. They were topped with the creamy guacamole, sour cream, and ancho chili sauce. This plate (all plates?) also came with the warm slaw and more chips. It was a really yummy dish, but if you are ever choosing between jack fruit and Y, you must always go with jackfruit. Unless Y is world peace or something. Or, as Husband just answered to my question of what’s better than jackfruit, “jillfruit”. 

      For a specialty pop-up event like this, I expected the prices to be on the higher side, because they always seem to be. But Club Mexicana’s prices were pretty decent – 10 pounds for mains and 4 for the appetizers. That’s downright cheap for London! And it was so good too! If you are free this Friday or next (or the next?), try to catch Club Mexicana at the Hornbeam Cafe. Otherwise, follow them on social media to try to find their stall in the markets. And no matter what, get something with jackfruit! 

CLUB MEXICANA, LONDON
Water speed: Glass bottle and little cups were already on the table! So happy. 
Service: Everyone was so nice and helpful. It was probably the best service I’ve encountered in London yet. I’m not sure if the waitrons were Hornbeam’s or Club Mexicana’s, but either way, excellent job.* 
Bathrooms: A singlet, was fine. The toilet flushed which is a big deal here. 
Food: Really yummy Mexican food! 
Bonus: Jackfruit! 

*Club Mexicana has informed me that a) the waitrons were all their own staff members, so thanks to them for being great! They also said they are working on the nacho layering and chunkifying guacamole. Fantastic!