Earth & Stars.

The weekend before last my ongoing quest to find Brighton's best Sunday roast continued. I've previously visited The George, The Cowley Club, The West Hill and The Royal Sovereign which, on my visit, was so bad I couldn't even really write about it. I know that for some people in Brighton it's their favourite roast but based on my last experience I doubt I'll be going back.

This time around I invited my blogger buddy Sal to come & help me taste test the roast and we hit up the Earth & Stars as soon as they started serving. We went early because I'd heard that this popular, eco friendly, North Laine pub can be a challenging place to snag a table at and we were glad we did, despite the reserved signs sat upon almost every table we were able to grab one that wasn't going to be used until 3pm. 

We quickly pit in our vegan roast orders and were delighted with the plate of food that appeared from the kitchen mere minutes later. I am a firm believer that a roast dinner should be enormous and hard to finish and this one defeated us both.

The butternut squash puff pastry parcel came atop a pile of classic roast dinner veggies including cabbage, leek, beetroot, sweet potato, butternut squash, greens, and, of course, roast potatoes. This was all rounded off with a white gravy and a generous topping of parsnip chips.

The potatoes were my favourite part of the meal, the roast potatoes are usually the biggest let down for me when it comes to pub roasts but these were nice and crisp - in fact all of the veg were cooked perfectly, again, something that a lot of pubs don't manage. Although the gravy was unusual it was also delicious, well seasoned and complimented both the pie and the veg well.

This pub lunch wins points for being served in the nicest pub visited so far on the quest. Not only is this pub powered by a solar panel on the roof but the bar staff were both friendly and amusing and the pub itself is cosy with a mellow chilled out vibe that's perfect for a lazy Sunday. Bonus points for having a vegan labelled beer / cider menu too, I think we may be onto a winner!

The only reason I'm still searching for the perfect roast is because ideally I would like a nut roast to be the central feature of the meal. I love nut roast and Nick will under no circumstances venture out to eat anything where the main consists of squash or mushrooms and I'd like to find a place we can go to together.

Today I'm meeting up with Sal again and we're going to try the roast at The Sussex Yeoman. It comes highly recommended by Liz and I imagine that the pub itself will bring back fond memories as my friends and I used to drink Sex on the Beach cocktails in there by the jug when we were 16!