London's Just V Show: Like a Less Glutinous VegFest With Equally Crazy Peopleby Randi / July 11, 2016
*This post is part of a series in which I eat fancy Michelin-starred meals and then brag about it.
Unlike all the other posts in this series, this meal was completely impromptu. On a recent Friday, Husband and I met up in Shoreditch (our old but always hood) after work and thought, where on earth/Shoreditch/Most Popular Land for Hipsters on a Friday Night at prime time will we be able to eat dinner without a reservation? Oh, I’m sorry, without a ‘booking’. (Okay this is one I’m actually starting to say though, eek. Choosing my battles.) Most of the cool places book up way in advance, the others (like Dishoom) forcing you to line up for hours like you’re waiting for the latest iPhone. While walking around somewhat aimlessly, we walked past Lyle’s, which is right across from the BoxPark and the overground station. Lyle’s opened relatively recently and was virtually immediately awarded a Michelin star. For dinner, it offers a set tasting menu, and books up in advance. We knew it was totally booked but figured it was worth asking. You don’t ask, you don’t get, as the philosopher Strega Nonna says.
Armed only with my husband’s knowledge that he thought he saw somewhere that they can accommodate vegans, we asked the host if by any chance there were any cancellations that night. Lo and behold, they had a free table for two open at that very moment! What luck! Next came the follow-up question that I always feel supes awk asking after all the preceding excitement, ‘oh yay thanks amazing um can you feed me?’ On Lyle’s website, they post the daily tasting menu plus a vegetarian version, but it’s usually full of cheese and eggs and stuff, so I figured that for a vegan version, they’d need notice. But he said no problem! No problem! Dance emoji! I hate springing the veganism on a restaurant without giving them prior notice, but they were unfazed. As any professional restaurant should be. Especially one with a Michelin star. I bet with advance warning they could have prepared something even better, but it was a great meal nonetheless.
After we were seated in the open, airy, totally unassuming dining room (where I could watch the open kitchen from my seat! I can see Russia from my house!), we were brought, without too much delay, a pitcher of tap water. Those who know me know that this is the way to my heart. Strong start. Then we were brought a basket of really good hearty bread. Second way to my heart. My heart was so happy! On to the food!
Like other Michelinas, Lyle’s usually gives printed menus to each diner. However, since I surprised them, I didn’t get a printed menu, so the following descriptions of the dishes are pure guesses.
After we were seated in the open, airy, totally unassuming dining room (where I could watch the open kitchen from my seat! I can see Russia from my house!), we were brought, without too much delay, a pitcher of tap water. Those who know me know that this is the way to my heart. Strong start. Then we were brought a basket of really good hearty bread. Second way to my heart. My heart was so happy! On to the food!
Like other Michelinas, Lyle’s usually gives printed menus to each diner. However, since I surprised them, I didn’t get a printed menu, so the following descriptions of the dishes are pure guesses.
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The tasting menu officially consists of four dishes (for 44 GBP, not bad at all!), but like most places with tasting menus, the chef sends out a few off-book snacks to start you off and make you feel special. My first baby dish was roasted carrots, baby ones that still had their little green tops and were really cute and very good. They tasted like they had been wood-roasted on special delicious wood, reminding me of the magicked wood at Asador. I know you’re like, so hold up just a second, those are just two very small plain carrots. Yeah but they were good carrots and they were bonus food. I would say something about not looking a gift horse in the mouth but then I realized horses LOVE carrots and I feel like there is a better line in there somewhere.
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So good and cute I would never use them for snowmen |
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My next bonus food was like the perfected version of a child’s after school snack. It was literally a slice of peach topped with raw white almond slivers. I thought, um, what, okay cool? But then I breathed, and I smelled the strongest peach scent I’ve ever smelled. I don’t really recall ever eating a peach that smelled as good as this piece did even when it was still on the plate, feet away from my nose. I can’t recall any fruit ever smelling that good and that strong from so far away! (Durian doesn’t count it is the Voldemort of fruits.) The almonds were the whitest things I’ve ever seen since my legs circa two months ago. Really a fun little snack!
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You’re not from around here, are you |
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The first of the official dishes I think was actually my favorite. I got a dish of fresh peas topped with edible purple flowers and lightly dressed greens. So simple, I know. But so well done. When good restaurants serve me peas, they’re usually the best most perfect peas ever and I kind of freak out because I really only use frozen peas and it’s in soups and similar jawns that cook for ages and they get super mushy and they’re just completely different from these perfect little adorable peas. Real good.
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When a restaurant gives me fresh peas I’m thisclose to rapping about them like Meryl Streep in ‘Into the Woods’ |
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Next up to bat the Rosarios they run the cab company oops no it’s this meta world beet dish. I’m skeptical of a dish that is mainly beets but these were damn good glazed little beets! Moreover, those greens on top are the beet greens, one of my favorite pieces of greenery and one of the hardest to find (because I don’t buy bushels of beets straight from the earth who does that). They were dusted with walnut powder, a surprisingly brilliant mix of two very earthy foods.
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they struggle in the barrio |
damn you oh nee ohn
My main dish was girolles, which I think are the same thing as chantarelles, so, nice little mushrooms. They were cooked to a great level of dark saltiness, served with fresh arugula (I think) to offset the depth of the flavor and mixed with some barely detectable buckwheat, which added a really wonderful subtle earthiness. They were also served with small little onion bulbs, which are fine when fully cooked so they are soft and translucent but you see that one bulb right in the foreground? That was mostly raw still, and I ate it, and then I smelled like oh nee ohns for DAYS and I was nauseous from it for DAYS and ugh raw onions are not for consumption by dogs OR humans. Other than that, this dish was great! Oh the best is that there were these interesting little fried bits of something mixed in. They actually looked like meat and kind of tasted like a meat or a substitute, maybe. I was intrigued and really enjoying them so I asked a waitress what they were. She kind of laughed at me and said, “Um that’s fried pieces of bread!” So embarrassing. But bread is good and fried bread apparently is good too! It was funny, and it did taste really good. Yet I would have preferred some kind of bean instead, right? There was no real protein source in this meal. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that it was because I came without giving them a chance to prepare. But if you see this Lyle, remember to give vegans protein otherwise they will turn into the grass that they eat. I mean who doesn’t have 100 cans of beans on hand at all times what you don’t no me either I’m not prepping a fallout shelter or anything.
Normally in these tasting menu meals, we get so full that it hurts before we’re even halfway through. I tend to start either talking like Gizmo or laughing hysterically in a manner akin to how it used to sound signing onto AOL. The great part of Lyle’s is that it’s totally a normal amount of food so you don’t get that hurt. The only thing that happened was that at one point Husband stopped, made a quizzical face, emptied his pockets, and then said, “I have crumbs in my pockets.” I’m still laughing about that one. But now, we still felt like normal people and had room for dessert!
If I could find a vegan yogurt like this, not sweet but also not tart or disgusting, I could actually eat yogurt
As we know, dessert at non-vegan restaurants is usually fruit or fruit sorbet, which, by the way, I will never want from a restaurant, unless it’s like in a country where I haven’t been able to find fruit for days or something. So when I saw the waiter heading towards me with a dessert plate, I crossed my fingers and started shouting “no whammy no whammy no whammy!” It worked! I mean, well yes it did have both fruit and frozen fruit ice, but it was over iced cream! No not ice cream, iced cream, like non-tart non-sweet thick Greek yogurt kind of cream. It was such a good vehicle for the raspberries and the delicious sweet raspberry slushy ice on top of it. Really good job guys! As non-chocolate non-peanut butter desserts go, this was very good, and much more sophisticated than my usual favorite dessert of putting chocolate and peanut butter in my mouth at the same time.
Overall, Lyle’s offers a very nice tasting menu for a very reasonable price, and I bet with advance notice, you’d get an even better meal, maybe with some protein. When we asked for the check, they brought two more bonus desserts! I got a tiny ‘sandwich’ of delicate cinnamony crackers with blueberry compote. Neither component was sweet enough but it was pretty nice still! Huzzah.
Overall, Lyle’s offers a very nice tasting menu for a very reasonable price, and I bet with advance notice, you’d get an even better meal, maybe with some protein. When we asked for the check, they brought two more bonus desserts! I got a tiny ‘sandwich’ of delicate cinnamony crackers with blueberry compote. Neither component was sweet enough but it was pretty nice still! Huzzah.
LYLE’S, SHOREDITCH, LONDON, UK, EUROPE FOR NOW
Water speed: Very impressive for a London restaurant! I wonder if they talked afterwards about how they never had a patron go through so many jugs of water.
Service: Very nice and accommodating, considering I surprised them. Service itself was good for most of the meal, but the second half slowed down a great deal. I think I spent over an hour between finishing the girolles and getting my dessert. A lot of that is because Husband was given an extra dish, but not all of it was that.
Bathrooms: The bathrooms are single serving, one for men and one for women. Like all places with this setup, they should just make it singles for everyone. I don’t get the specifying for gender when it’s single toilets. I mean maybe the men’s has a urinal but it also must have a toilet so come on. They had nice soap but also had that weird pull chain from the ceiling to flush like so many London places do because this city was built a billion years ago and the plumbing is atrosh. This is the most I’ve ever written about toilets and I feel weird.
Food: Overall nice, simple food done very well. Despite it being many courses, it felt non-sickly.
Bonus: Be so cool dining in Shoreditch with all the cool people!
Water speed: Very impressive for a London restaurant! I wonder if they talked afterwards about how they never had a patron go through so many jugs of water.
Service: Very nice and accommodating, considering I surprised them. Service itself was good for most of the meal, but the second half slowed down a great deal. I think I spent over an hour between finishing the girolles and getting my dessert. A lot of that is because Husband was given an extra dish, but not all of it was that.
Bathrooms: The bathrooms are single serving, one for men and one for women. Like all places with this setup, they should just make it singles for everyone. I don’t get the specifying for gender when it’s single toilets. I mean maybe the men’s has a urinal but it also must have a toilet so come on. They had nice soap but also had that weird pull chain from the ceiling to flush like so many London places do because this city was built a billion years ago and the plumbing is atrosh. This is the most I’ve ever written about toilets and I feel weird.
Food: Overall nice, simple food done very well. Despite it being many courses, it felt non-sickly.
Bonus: Be so cool dining in Shoreditch with all the cool people!
Related Posts
In Which I Make The Greatest Cream Pie Ever Eaten By Humans
I’m tired of pie crust. That’s right, I said that. That just happened. I’ve made so many lately, going through so much palm-oil-laced Earth Balance, that I presently have no desire to eat any more buttery layers or bake with questionable morals. But it was my dad’s birthday recently, and when I ask him what he wants for his birthday ‘cake’, he always says Boston cream pie. Well, not exactly. He recounts what he would have as a child: a Sara Lee graham crust with “soft, gray chocolate” (ew) layer and white cream on top. I’m not sure that’s a Boston cream pie, and when I made the one from Vegan Pie in the Sky, he said it was nothing like what he remembers (though delicious). So I winged a recipe from scratch and you’ll have to make it now because, like I said, best pie ever. And it’s so easy to make! No weird ingredients, and so much wiggle room with the ingredients.
What’s the secret, you ask? It’s my aforementioned (likely momentary) abhorrence for regular pie crust. Instead of dealing with that nonsense, I altered a batch of my favorite cinnamon sugar cookies and spread the batter into the pie shell. It baked up like nobody’s business, puffing up uncontrollably and amazingly, rising and rising like a souffle. As it cooled, it fortunately sank a little (so I could fit the other components on top), but it was the most delicious and most fun pie crust ever. I see a lot of cookie crusts in my future.
What’s the secret, you ask? It’s my aforementioned (likely momentary) abhorrence for regular pie crust. Instead of dealing with that nonsense, I altered a batch of my favorite cinnamon sugar cookies and spread the batter into the pie shell. It baked up like nobody’s business, puffing up uncontrollably and amazingly, rising and rising like a souffle. As it cooled, it fortunately sank a little (so I could fit the other components on top), but it was the most delicious and most fun pie crust ever. I see a lot of cookie crusts in my future.
This went fast
What about the soft, gray chocolate, you ask? First, I put out of my mind the question of what on earth Sara Lee did to chocolate to give it those qualities. Then, I set about my usual daily activity of melting a pot of dark chocolate, wondering what I could add to it to prevent it from hardening. I needed fat, I knew that, and some milk. For the fat, I used a combination of full-fat coconut milk and Earth Balance, in order to significantly decrease the amount of butter used. I also had to add sugar, because my dad hates dark chocolate. It worked out really well, resulting it a soft, creamy chocolate layer that kept its proper coloring.
As for the top layer, I used silken tofu, a drop of peanut butter for consistency (just enough for a hint of nuttiness but not enough to tell it’s PB, so any nut butter would work), and just a tiny bit of sweetener to offset the very sweet bottom layer and the very rich middle layer. The result was pretty much perfection.
As for the top layer, I used silken tofu, a drop of peanut butter for consistency (just enough for a hint of nuttiness but not enough to tell it’s PB, so any nut butter would work), and just a tiny bit of sweetener to offset the very sweet bottom layer and the very rich middle layer. The result was pretty much perfection.
CINNAMON CHOCOLATE CREAM PIE
Notes: will kick Sara Lee’s soft gray behind
Notes: will kick Sara Lee’s soft gray behind
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FOR THE COOKIE CRUST
Ingredients:
Directions:
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Before cooking, but you can still eat it because no eggs! 
Look how puffy!!! |
IT’S BIG AND BEEYOOOOTIFUL!
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FOR THE CHOCOLATE FILLING
Ingredients:
Directions:
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How many pictures of melting chocolate in this saucepan are on this blog 
Just go ahead and stick your face in it |
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FOR THE WHITE CREAM Ingredients:
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The top cream is thin, so it gets messy, but it’s delicious. A delicious mess. |
Directions:
- Blend it all in a blender until smooth.
- Pour it over the pie and refrigerate for several hours.
Like I said this was amazing. It’s messy, especially if you cut into it before it’s fully set like we did. But we didn’t care because it was sooo good. Hot damn. Go make it!
