When you're only in London for a couple of days (for the first time!), the pressure is on to try all of the #veganthings that your stomach will allow. Which is exactly what my husband and I did on our brief but delicious stay in London. And of course, there was sightseeing and beer sprinkled in...
Tired but happy at BrewDog Shoreditch. They have a lot of vegan beer options!
Ok, let's rewind. Before beer came sausage! I heard a lot of commotion on social media about Greggs now offering a vegan sausage roll option. Until then I had no idea what a sausage roll was but you better believe that went on my "Must Try" list...a vegan sausage wrapped in a flaky puff pastry? yes, please.
The sausage roll was a perfect to-go snack while waiting for our Airbnb to be ready. And speaking of our Airbnb, can we take a second to appreciate how freakin' cute this place is.
The street was equally adorable.
After a long but necessary nap, we headed over to Boxpark in Shoreditch. Boxpark is a pop-up mall with a ton of vendors (both food and product vendors). And they have a couple of bars in there as well which we found was necessary to try and combat the jet lag.
We were delightfully surprised to see two vegan vendors right next to each other, Eat Chay and Biff's Jack Shack. At Eat Chay we ordered their Kimchi Bao, Chick'n Bao and Korean Tofu Bao. All three were soo delicious, just look at these little masterpieces.
Keeping in the trying-as-much-as-we-can spirit, we ordered all four of Biff's Jack Shack's wingz: Bang (cinnamon sweet chili, miso mayo, toasted nuts, crispy shallots, coriander), Buff (buffalo sauce, blue cheeze, spring onion), Burb (Bourbon infused BBQ sauce, spring onion) and B'ranch (Ranch sauce, maple chipotle, bacun bits, parsley).
These were some of the best wings I have ever had! What they did with jackfruit is unbelievable. The texture was amazing and the flavors melded together so well. My stomach is grumbling just thinking about them again.
And to really stuff ourselves before leaving Boxpark, we split a ginormous vegan Doner from What the Pitta! Their signature Doner contains seasoned non-GMO soy pieces in a freshly made wrap with mixed salad, hummus, tzatziki and jalapenos. It was delicious, all of the ingredients tasted so fresh!
Day 2 of our London eat-as-much-as-we-can-tour started at Wulf & Lamb in Chelsea for breakfast. It is such a pretty, modern restaurant nestled in a small street lined with other chic restaurants and boutiques.
My husband and I both ordered the Full Wulf Breakfast which consisted of a potato layer cake, borlotti (a type of bean) ragout, scrambled ackee (a type of fruit, more on that in a minute), lemon spinach sauteed peppers, mushrooms and toasted sourdough.
So I had no idea what ackee is and while digging in, we turn to Google for the answer. It is a type of fruit from the Sapindaceae soapberry family (as are lychee and longan), that contains a poison called hypoglycin. Boiling the ackee dissipates the poison but if not cooked properly, it could cause vomiting, seizures, coma and even death! Well...what the hell, we're on vacation, let's live on the wild side a bit.
So spoiler alert, I am happily alive writing this blog post so I didn't succumb to the ackee. But seriously, it did taste amazing. It was a nice change-up from a traditional tofu scramble. And that little potato layer cake of happiness...ugh, so good!
And cue obligatory Buckingham Palace break...
After doing a lot of sightseeing and a bit of pub-hopping, we happily worked up an appetite so we promptly made our way over to place #48375 on the list of places to eat, Purezza- a 100% vegan pizzeria. We ordered the dough balls (melted cheese inside!) and the Parmigiana Party pizza which is red tomato-based with smoked mozzarella, aubergine parmigiana, crumbled sausages and a dusting of nutritional yeast. And to take it up one notch, we added shaved seitan to it. Both the pizza and cheesy dough balls were out of this world! So so good.
Delicious melted cheesy goodness inside.
Parmigiana Party pizza that was devoured in an instant!
Temple Burger-Chick'n fillet, ranch mayo, bacon, cheese, lettuce, pickles.
Alas, the time has come to say goodbye to London but not without one final stop to Wulf & Lamb for one of their toasties.
