Moshi Moshi Brighton.

I've been hearing good things about the vegan options at Brighton based sushi restaurant Moshi Moshi for a while now & after checking out the menu online & being super impressed that they had changed it to include vegan labelling I decided to pay them a visit. Nick & I went last night (which was a Tuesday for people not reading this the day of writing!) and didn't book a table but I would definitely suggest doing so especially if you are planning to visit from out of town. They definitely get busy & you will not want to miss out on this fantastic dining experience.

Now whilst Moshi Moshi Brighton is technically part of a chain they do have a slightly different & much more vegan friendly menu & attitude than their London counterparts. Moshi Brighton source a lot of their ingredients locally, both their handmade organic tofu & many of their vegetables & herbs come from people running small businesses just down the road in Lewes. I also had a chat with the manager last night whilst quizzing him about the vegan-ness of their desserts & he told me that Moshi Brighton are making a concerted effort to become more vegan friendly.

As is the way with sushi we ordered a lot of little things to share.

Avocado Handroll & Inari Tofu

I love how everything is made fresh to order, we sat by the open sushi preparation area & could see the girl working like crazy making all of the hand rolls, nigiri & maki. The avocado in the hand roll was ripe & fresh & we actually ended up ordering another plate of the Inari Tofu because we loved it so much.

Tofu Teriyaki Nigiri.

This hand formed sushi was delicious & even Nick, who isn't a huge nori fan, liked it. Apparently Moshi Brighton make their Teriyaki sauce by simmering fresh vegetables in soy for 5 hours, it was without a doubt the best Teriyaki sauce I've ever tasted.

Crispy Vegetable Dumplings.

We ended up ordering two plates of these as well as two plates of the inari tofu because they were so good. Perfectly deep fried, not at all greasy & bursting with vegetables.

Vegan Cheese & Sun Blushed Tomato Maki

I was really happy to see this vegan cheese maki roll as a stand alone dish on the menu & not just as something that can be made vegan on request so there was no way I could let it go unordered. I think that the cheese used here is the White Cheddar Style Cheezly, it's quite a mild cheese & it worked perfectly with the other flavours in this sushi roll.

Aubergine Dengaku (I totally just typed Eggplant! Do you think I read too many American blogs?!).

I'm sorry about including this terrible photograph but it really was delicious!

The Auberine Dengaku consists of pan fried aubergine with a light miso sauce. The aubergine in this dish was so beautifully cooked that it pretty much melted in my mouth, I can't stop thinking about how perfect it was!

We'd planned to order one of Moshi Moshi's hot seasonal dishes, the Duck Teriyaki, which is served over white or brown rice & is made vegan using Redwood Foods new Duck Style Pieces. Sadly they were out of the mock duck so we decided to try the Organic Tofu Udon instead.


We decided to try this because we both really, really love tofu so noodles in vegetable stock topped with grilled organic tofu steak & organic vegetables sounded way too good to pass up. The tofu they use at Moshi Brighton is fantastic, it's really soft without being crumbly or waterlogged & it had been cooked so perfectly. I often order the udon noodle / tofu / vegetable soup at Wagamama & I have to say that this far surpasses it. The broth had an amazing depth of flavour & I really loved that fact that the soup not only included 3 of my favourite veggies - green beans, broccoli & pak choi, but that all of the vegetables were perfectly crisp rather than the soggy offerings you often see in soups. One thing I will add is that sharing a bowl of soup if you are both right-handed & using chopsticks is hard, really, damn hard! I cannot count the amount of times Nick almost poked my eye out - romantic!

Of course I had looked at Moshi Moshi's menu online before heading out to dinner & I had noticed that none of their desserts were labelled as vegan or even vegetarian but I decided for the purposes of the blog to do a little more investigating! I asked the manager if anything aside from the fruit salad was vegan & I was incredibly surprised when he said that he thought that the Green Tea Brûlée & Green Tea Blancmange were both suitable. I was surprised enough to confirm with him that vegan meant no dairy, eggs or honey! He certainly seemed to know his stuff pointing out that the Chocolate Mousse definitely wasn't because it contained egg & that whilst the actual Mochi Rice Cakes were he couldn't verify that all the fillings were 100% vegan. He also went back to the kitchen & had a discussion with the chefs to make sure that he was right which I really appreciated. Once we were 100% sure that these were indeed vegan options we HAD to order the Green Tea Brûlée.

Yeah, I got overexcited & cracked the top before taking a picture! Terrible blogger!

Whilst I actually don't like tea of any kind green tea is one of my favourite flavours in a dessert. I absolutely love the Zotter Matcha / Soya chocolate bar & I cannot wait to try these delicious looking Matcha Coconut Chocolate Macaroons from fellow vegan blogger Seitan is my Motor.

I've never actually tried any kind of brûlée before so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect underneath the crispy caramelised sugar topping. I was very pleased to find a delicious smooth creamy green tea flavoured custard. This was such a beautiful light dessert, I think the custard was probably made with silken tofu rather than something nut based & I will definitely be ordering this wonderful dessert again.

Writing this blog post has a) made me want to run right back to Moshi Moshi to eat more of their delicious food and b) made me realise just how excited I am about Moshi Moshi's vegan options. After having another look at their menu whilst writing this I realised that I haven't even come close to trying half of their vegan options! Next time I definitely want to try the Japanese Mushroom Teriyaki Gunkan, the Mini Leaf Wafu Salad with Grated Apple and the Red Miso Shirumono Soup with abura-age tofu.