Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I live in a village which still relies on fishing as its main industry. There are a bunch of artists that kick around too and the local cafes know what a vegan is although don't exactly cater to it. If I eat out it tends to be with my partner and she is in Glasgow so Stereo and The 78 are my go to places for a treat. Shopping wise we have an H&B and a local health food store in St Andrews which is the nearest town. They mean I can shop ok.

Hello Bristol person! -waves- I am in Bath! You are close! =][/quote]

<waves back> hi, we are practically next door neighbours. i love bath, home of demuths and the porter...oh yes!

haha, your avatar has been censored! I love demuths and the porter. But i've only been to Bristol twice, once for the vegfest and once for primark and nothing else. I need to go for other things.=]

like Kino! SW meet up?!

SW meet up normally ends up being just me and chipmunk, which I totally don't mind =D

I live in a village outside of Glasgow and while it's not a fishing area, it totally sucks for vegans and vegetarians. Also, everyone at the health centre apparently totally disapproves of our being vegan. The nurse flipped out on my husband once. She told him our immune systems will all fail and she treated 3 vegetarians who needed double bypasses (I think this is bull-jazz anyway because I get the feeling we are the ONLY vegetarians in the area and there are only a few hundred people in our village).

When we go out to eat, we go to the grocery store cafes and have chips and beans. ;p

Salt Spring Island is both vegan paradise and vegan hell. The dining-out options are HORRIBLE, but there are so many incredible organic farms on the island, a local tofu producer, and a bunch of other local products suitable for vegans. For whatever reason, the stupid restaurants here cater solely to tourists and not to residents, so eating out sucks. But it makes me cook a lot more with gorgeous ingredients, so whatevs.

Nottingham is good, as above, also:

Kayal is a popular South Indian place, omnivorous but they understand 'vegan' and offer a vegan version of their yummy veg thali with vegan ice-cream for dessert.

Broadway cinema offers reliable bistro-style food, usually has a vegan main course on the board and if not, the veg chilli is always available, also soup, pate and a sandwich or two.

I didn't know about Annie's Burger Shack, thanks!

I didn't really rate Dough in Manchester for the vegan pizza, but I don't really like vegan cheese so maybe I should go again and just have no cheese at all. I have to say, for a chain, Pizza Express is extremely helpful when accommodating vegans. No strange 'er what?' looks when you ask if you can have your pizza without cheese. The last couple of times that I went, I got the Giardiniera, which has asparagus, artichokes, mushrooms, red peppers, santos tomatoes, olives, garlic oil, tomato & pesto base, I just asked for it without the pesto and without cheese, making it vegan and it was delicious.

I'd also recommend eastZeast, plus, if you're going out with friends who are omni, they can probably find something to suit them, that is, unless they don't like curry, they don't use ghee in their curries which is good and they do an amazing chickpea and lentil dal.

Other places that I find are pretty good in Manchester are:
8th Day Co-Op (http://www.eighth-day.co.uk/) They have some great recipes listed on their site. I don't ever really get food from there though, as in take out food, I just get essential vegan goods, like nooch.
Unicorn Grocery (http://www.unicorn-grocery.co.uk/) same as above really
Las Iguanas
Wagamamas
Tampopo
Yo! Sushi (you need to be careful and read the info on their site, as there are a few things on the menu that aren't vegan that you might assume are)

There are a bunch of other places too, I'm sure, but off the top of my head, these are the main ones.

the food seems much the same as before - delicious burgers and oily yet tasty salads, though i don't care for the chips as much as i did in the old location. they were more brown & leathery and less golden & crispy.

there were tons of people in there both times i'd been in January. i'm glad they're doing so well, and i like the new location, but i miss the lunch counter and cozy downstairs of the little spot on Ninetree Hill.

DetoxRetox in Manchester city centre is a newly converted to veggie/vegan restaurant that I can recommend highly. It's restaurant food at restaurant prices but lovely for a treat, and has some great special offers too. I can't wait to try the sunday 'roast'!

http://www.detoxretox.co.uk/

Damn, I was in Manchester on Friday and would definitely have tried that!

i just heard about detoxretox last week too, i'm pretty excited about the place to be honest!
the head chef is one of the old chefs from eighth day's cafe, from back when it used to be awesome, so i'm hopeful that this new place is as great as people are saying it is!

I've lived in 6 counties since turning vegan (Surrey, Essex, Dorset, Devon, West Midlands, Warwickshire), and not had a problem in any. We've got it good in the UK - even when I've visited remote parts of Scotland there's been an abundance of food to eat in the nearby shops and supermarkets.

It all comes down to convenience really. We all know that Brighton and London have loads of great places to eat out. Most cities in the south of england have 1 or more v*gan cafes/restaurants - it gets a lot more sparse the further north / into the countryside you go. Even in Cumbria though I can think of 4 decent places to eat.

I don't trust omni restaurants places for the most part - if that's the only option then I'd rather pack a picnic.

Quoted for truth. Germany was amazing supermarket-wise (there was an organic hippy-dippy supermarket near my house... imagine Infinity crossed with Harrods), but less accessibly for eating out, unless you're happy with a diet of kumpir and felafel (both of which are delicious, but can be a bit repetitive).

France was harder. I once was given lamb soup as the vegetarian option (no meat, but it had bone chunks in, so...). I understand it's a bit better if you know what you're doing and where to go, but I'm used to the "there is one vegetarian thing on the menu, guaranteed" attitude found in England.

In Zaragoza in Spain, everything was cooked in pork fat everywhere I went, and I actually threw up in one place. Madrid and Barcelona were much better... if a little hammy. Good felafel in Madrid, served by attractive people.

The sticky toffee pudding is pretty damn special......

I bought some Mexico tomatoes yesterday. I normally try not to do that at all but I REALLY wanted tomato on my sammich. They were organic romas, and they were terrible.

HOWEVER, local new potatoes are starting!!!

Sorry to re-activate an old thread - but I've just re-joined recently and got all excited after seeing this thread!

I'm another Nottingham person, and it looks like people have already got that covered, but just wanted to say that Annie's Burger Shack is unfortunately closed at the moment (although the pub's still open), due to smoke damage after a small fire!

Jam cafe does a couple of vegan options, if you ask - the falafel is veg without the raita, as is the chickpea stew... annoyingly though, the stew is marked as vegan on the menu, but when I ordered it there was raita with it! Luckily it was in a separate pot, but we were basically told that 'they needed to re-do the menu, as it wasn't vegan anymore!!'. I'm really relieved that there wasn't anything else non-vegan about it!

Yammas is a tapas type restaurant, and they were really accommodating when I went there for a friend's birthday - they gave me a menu where they'd marked everything that was vegan, or indicated where it would be possible to veganise things (they did the same for someone who was gluten free). Very nice people!

In terms of chains, we noticed that the cafe Nero had some things labelled vegan in the food cabinet - there was a pasta thing and a carrot/hummus thing!

If anyone's a student, the university is a bit rubbish, but some of the cafes have started doing sandwiches that are labelled vegan (the usual hummus and salad, but it's alright if you're hungry!).

I also know a bit about Norwich vegan options, as that's my hometown... well, my nearest city as I'm actually from a tiny rural place in North Norfolk! I was there the other day and we went to the branch of Loving Hut, which is at the back of the Castle Mall, and it was totally ace - £3 for a big box of Chinese buffet type food, it was really yummy.

We sometimes go to Pulse too, which is a restaurant where I've sometimes eaten amazing food and at othertimes been really disappointed (I'm also a bit resentful of it, as I blame it for leading to the amazing Treehouse cafe being shut down). However, it does have a nice health food shop underneath (Rainbow health foods) - which used to be under the Treehouse, boo.

On the unlikely chance anyone ever ventures into deepest, darkest North Norfolk, we ended up at a tiny rural pub last week where I thought I'd have no chance whatsoever getting anything remotely vegan, but found they'd got clearly marked gluten free and vegan things on the menu! (Well, one vegan thing, which was one more than any other pub I've ever found in Norfolk.) It's called the Lighthouse and it's just outside of Walcott.

Finally, yay for Edinburgh's baked potato shop! I used to live there and whenever I go up to visit friends it's one of my first ports of call!

Sorry, I should have clarified, I meant Notts uni, not sure what Nottingham Trent's like (although Trent students are based in town so probably have more lunchtime options in general - lucky people!!).

Great update! I'm in Nottingham in the first week of June, so will try and branch out a bit from my normal Squeek foray!

yes!
although i didn't used to live there, i agree with the rest of this statement!

That's good to know, my auntie lives in Norfolk and keeps asking me to come stay with her, but she doesn't really like cooking and tends to take people out for dinner instead. So hopefully there's something near by.

Oriental Chinese, if it is the one I'm thinking of, only has the fact that there is a good range of mock meats going for it. Take-away wise, their food is pretty poor. It depends how excited you get about getting fake-meat in your take away!

I hadn't actually tried that place when I wrote that but we've ordered from them twice now & the food was terrible the first time, both the mock chicken & beef were like what I imagine chewing on a shoe would be like & the second time (we thought we'd give them another chance!) we had a tofu dish & it was still pretty bad. The only good thing was the mock duck.

Some friends also dragged us to Mr Noodle on Queens Road the other day claiming that it was a bit like Pompoko or a cheaper version of Wagamama's, it wasn't, it was totally disgusting, don't go there!

If you're in Newcastle for an extended period, there's a health food shop in the ginormous Tesco that has a good selection of tofu (Clear Spot and Taifun), some chocolates, Tofutti cream cheese and sour cream, tempeh, and a few other things. I didn't get a chance to have a good look round because we had already finished our shopping and called a taxi, but it looked like you could do alright with what they had.

I'm going to Jack Spratt tomorrow, so I'll report back when we get back to my friend's house.