Infinity Cafe Breakfast & The George Part II

Whilst my friend was visiting she wanted to try a full English breakfast and where better to go than the very local Infinity Foods Cafe. We of course went for the vegan option but there are also wheat and gluten free choices making this the perfect place for people with specific dietary requirements.

Consisting of sausages, baked beans, spinach, tomato, vegi bacon, fried potatoes and mushroom on toast, this full English was a plate of perfectly seasoned breakfast awesomeness! I loved the portabello mushroom on toast instead of the usual button mushrooms and the tofu sausages were amazing. I can't wait to find time in the morning to head down there and have this again.

I wanted to take Michelle to as many all veggie places as possible so the next stop had to be The George. I always used to end up ordering The George Burger but The George now has a daily specials menu and this weekend they had a Chicken and Bacon Burger.

As with The George Burger the Chicken and Bacon Burger comes with vegan mayo, chips and a side salad. We both added vegan cheese to our burgers and it was awesome. These are some seriously good chicken burgers - so good in fact that we went back a couple of days later and had the exact same thing!

Terre a Terre

As I mentioned in my previous post I had a friend come to stay with me this week all the way from New York City. I used her trip as an excuse to do lots of eating out. As she's also a vegan and a PPKer we had a meet up with 4 other internet friends & food blogger The Messy Vegetarian Cook. We decided to splash out and go for lunch at Brighton's fanciest vegetarian restaurant Terre a Terre.

I've been wanting to visit Terre a Terre for ages so I decided to go crazy and have three courses. To start I ordered the Skordalia and Sesame Discos (£10.50). Aubergine rounds coated with sumac and sesame served with a herb salad, radishes, salted grapes and balsamic pomegranate.

Whilst I enjoyed the salted grapes, radishes, aubergine and the sauce the meal was plated upon, I just wasn't so into the herb salad.

For my main I went with the Smoked Sakuri Soba (£10.95). Chilled soba noodles with raw vegetable spaghetti served with smoked tofu, pomegranate beads and wasabi cashews.

I enjoyed this course way more than the starter, I loved the raw spaghetti and the tofu was smoked beautifully. I even liked the wasabi cashews which was a big surprise given that I normally hate wasabi.

I was most excited about the dessert and the main reason I ordered from the expensive a la carte menu rather than the frugal foodie menu was that I had to try the Rain Vodka Cherry Chocolate Churros (£7.70).

These delicious donut straws certainly lived up to expectations. I was amazed the chocolate pot was vegan as it wasn't at all bitter and the rain vodka sozzled cherries, whilst a bit much at lunch time, were pretty awesome especially when covered in the chocolate dipping sauce.

I really enjoyed dining at Terre a Terre and whilst I'd recommend that all vegans, vegetarians and omnivores try their food at least once I think it's a little too classy for me! I'm sure I will head back there one day but I think there's better value for money to be had dining out in Brighton. For dinner that night we went to one of my favorite restaurants Pompoko for huge bowls of delicious Japanese food, at £4.20 a bowl that's my kinda place.

Sweet treats in Brighton

There are loads of cafes in Brighton where you can pick up a slice of vegan cake but recently some new options have been added to the list.

Infinity Foods has started selling cakes made by The Heavenly Cake Company.

I chose the gluten and wheat free Double Chocolate cake, I've been trying to cut down on the amount of wheat in my diet and I was interested in what gluten free cake would be like. All the cakes from The Heavenly Cake Company are vegan and (with the exception of the gluten and wheat free cake) contain spelt flour rather than white refined flour. They even do an agave sweetened sugar free cake for diabetics or those on a low GI diet.

The icing on this cake was awesome, some of the best fudgy icing I've ever tasted. I enjoyed the flavour of the cake but I wasn't so into the dense texture, next time I'm going to try one of their spelt cakes.

I'd heard a rumor a while back that my favorite of the big supermarkets, the Co-op, had started selling vegan donuts. After traipsing around 3 different locations I'd almost given up when I heard they'd been spotted at the Co-op on Lewes Road. Well of course I headed straight there to see if I could find any...

...they even say vegan on the packet! Amazing and totally worth eating some wheat for! Since going vegan I've eaten baked mini donuts and sprinkle covered ring donuts but not proper jam donuts. They were exactly as I remembered and 5 donuts for 69p well that's a bargain I'm going to find hard to resist!

Whilst I was at the Co-op I also stumbled across these, also vegan, apple lattice squares.

I obviously couldn't resist picking up a box. Whilst not as awesome as the donuts they were still an exciting find. I also spotted vegan apple pie but decided that enough was enough for one day.

It's great that such a mainstream supermarket is not only making vegan goodies but actually labeling them as such.

I have a friend coming to stay from New York this week and we have a lot of eating planned, I'm most excited that I'm finally getting to go to Terre a Terre, just look at that menu, yum.

London - Part II

Yesterday was my oldest friends hen day, we picnicked in Hyde Park and went to see a performance of Euripides Helen at Shakespeare's Globe. As a bridesmaid I got to have a hand in planning the day and when she said she wanted to go to a hippyish cafe with cocktails, smoothies & cake I knew of just the place, InSpiral Lounge in Camden.

As soon as we arrived I saw the ice cream and asked if any of it was vegan, the reply... it all is! You have no idea how excited I was when I saw mint chocolate chip...I couldn't wait and before the group decided what to order I'd scarfed down one of these...

...it was seriously delicious, just like the mint choc chip I vaguely remember from before I was vegan. The ice creams at inSpiral are made with a cashew and coconut base and some are raw, similar to the Booja Booja ice cream I love.

Then we ordered even more ice cream...a lot more!

Now we weren't exactly sure what all the flavours were but above I think we had (anti clockwise) mint chocolate chip, mango sorbet, berry sorbet and then a few we were unsure of! Below there was a whole lot of unsure. We knew we had chocolate in the centre and then we believed there was a rum & raisin, a cookies and cream and some nutty flavours alongside a lavender ice cream.

The mint chocolate chip was, in my opinion, the best by far but I also really enjoyed the sorbets, the chocolate and the one we thought was rum & raisin.

After our ice cream feast we ordered some chocolates.

There were a lot of us and I only got to try one but it was pretty darned good. All the chocolates at inSpiral are raw, handmade and delicious.

As if that wasn't enough food I couldn't not have a brownie.

There were loads of desserts to choose from, there were cookies, cake's and cupcakes but as I'd enjoyed the mint ice cream so much I went for a mint chocolate brownie. This was sticky, gooey and on the cakey side of the brownie spectrum. It was delicious and had just the right amount of mintyness.

I hadn't expected this place or the hen day to be quite so vegan friendly and I'm looking forward to going back to Camden to try some of inSpiral's non dessert options.