Ooft I thought I was in heaven when I found this place!…read more
It's a normal Italian restaurant, but they specialise in vegan food. This is very unusual - usually in Italian places you can get a salad and maybe a risotto if it's not already been pre-prepared with butter and cream, and that's your lot, so I can't tell you how happy I was to be here.
They have a seperate 'green' menu which is all vegan - even the name of it is a nice touch. It's comprehensive too - the night we visited, there was a choice of 5 starters, 4 mains, and 3 desserts. They are also happy to try to customise anything you fancy from the main menu - which also means that everything is being freshly prepared, and not pre-prepared like you get in a lot of Italian chain restaurants nowadays.
For starter, I had creamy mushroom and walnut pate with toasted rustic bread and cranberry sauce. It freaked me out a bit for the first mouthful as it tasted very much like real pate! But I quickly got my head round the the fact that this wasn't meat and was just amazingly delicious and really enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure you could give this to anyone and they wouldn't realise it wasn't meat based. It was that good.
For main I had the Italiano Pizza - thin and crispy with napoli sauce, marinated artichoke, caramelised red onions and fresh rocket. Oh man, this pizza! This was an amazing pizza! I have no idea what the chef puts in the base, but it was outstandingly tasty. They've found a really good vegan cheese too.
And they were so considerate throughout. When the waitress brought my starter she pointed out that the butter was OK for me. This is very reassuring as even in vegetarian places, sometimes they'll put down dairy butter when you've already said that you're vegan. And for the pizza, she brought over some sort of parmesany type vegan cheese.
They also have vegan wine! The lovely woman who was running the place that night gave us a taster of the red and it was really good.
I have no idea what my omni partner ate - I was too focussed on my awesome food.
We shared a sticky toffee pudding for desert as we were both properly full. This is the one area that maybe needs a wee bit more perfecting - it tasted a bit too much of bicarbonate of soda - you know that bitter taste, and we didn't finish it. Vegan desserts are notoriously difficult to master, but the chef here seems to really be making a huge effort so I'm sure he'll get there with the desserts. I've heard that the chocolate brownie is really good, so I'd probably have that next time. The ice cream was good too.
I loved this place. It's not super posh or classy, it's down to earth, the staff are really friendly and helpful, the food is great food, and the chef should be awarded with some sort of 'services to vegan' medal. Keep it up Mamma Mia!