Vegan Eats Edinburgh

As I mentioned last week Nick and I are staying with his sister right now. She has four kids who are eight, six, four, and two and OMG looking after them is tiring! I genuinely don't understand how she gets up and does this every single day and it's definitely reinforced my decision not to have children of my own. I mean we're having some fun but I wouldn't want to do this all the time. We're helping her sort out her house, which was Nick's parents house, so that she can sell it so we've been sorting through things, taking bags full of clothes and toys to the charity shop, and attempting to keep the kids entertained all at the same time. I'm definitely wishing I was back in Edinburgh right now as we move into hour six of supervising the putting together of a jigsaw! On the other hand Nick's sister made everyone vegan scones earlier and they were super delicious. I'll be stealing her recipe for sure, let me know in the comments if you want me to share it. Scones have always been a favourite of mine, they're up there with shortbread as one of the things I can remember loving since I was a wee bairn, as my dad would say.

Whilst we were in Edinburgh we spent a lot of time hanging out with the cats we were cat sitting for and cooking meals at my friend Imogen's place but we did manage to eat out a fair few times. Henderson's has been a favourite spot of mine since I first visited Edinburgh six years ago and now my favourite bistro is 100% vegan. How cool! Their shop, located just next door to the bistro and above their salad bar, seems to have become far more vegan friendly too. When we popped in they had cupcakes, cakes, flapjack style bars, and chocolate dipped shortbread biscuits which were only £1. As soon as I bit into them I wished that we'd bought more than three pieces.

I don't remember Henderson's having a particularly interesting breakfast menu but now it's seriously great. I wanted to order everything. In the end I settled on the tofu benedict which was a most excellent choice. 

Edinburgh Part VI

I seem to end up in Edinburgh with Nick about once a year, in 2010 it was for our friends wedding and 2011's excuse? Christmas shopping! We took an early December trip up there (thankfully on a plane this time!) and discovered some wonderful new places to eat as well as returning to our favourite eateries from trips past.

Our first discovery this time around was The Chocolate Tree, described on Happy Cow as an artisan chocolatier with an attached cafe it sounded right up our street. We headed there after an incredibly windy walk on a hill and it was the perfect cosy place to warm ourselves up.

The hot chocolates we ordered were literally the richest, thickest hot chocolates either of us had ever seen. They were delicious but super intense & neither of us managed to finish them. This may have been due, in part, to the unbelievably amazing slices of chocolate mousse cake with berries we ordered. The cake wasn't labelled vegan but when I asked if there were any vegan desserts they pointed me in the right direction.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that this may well be the best cake I've ever eaten in a cafe or restaurant...close contenders for the top spot are the Raspberry and Dark Chocolate Truffle Cake from Mildreds in London and the Chocolate and Black Cherry Gateaux from Napfenyes Etterem in Budapest. It's certainly up there in the top three! The Chocolate Tree is also a chocolate shop so we did the decent thing & bought a few bars to take home. How could we resist with flavours like Maple Pecan and Sea Salt Caramel?!

The second awesome discovery on this trip was Hanam's. We also spotted this place on Happy Cow & as it's situated right by Edinburgh Castle it's the perfect place for a bite to eat whilst checking out the touristy area of town. We visited this Kurdish & Middle Eastern eatery at lunchtime on a Wednesday and the place was packed but they happily squeezed us in.

I started with the Falafel plate which came with hummus and salad.

This was good, perfectly fried falafel balls and fresh salad. Yum. The main course was the real star of the show though. I ordered Qaysi which I had never heard of but it was described on the menu as "a sweet and sour delicacy, made with dried apricots, sultanas, yellow split peas & subtle spices." This came with Naan and Rice and I chose to pay the extra £2 (I think) to have the pomegranate rice.

This was a pretty ridiculous amount of food but every bit of it was delicious. The stew was indeed subtly spiced, I loved how sweet it was and the apricots were huge and moist. The pomegranate rice was totally perfect, you could tell that it had been cooked in the pomegranate puree and I enjoyed the addition of other dried berries to the dish. I thought the naan might be unnecessary given that we were having rice too but it was the perfect thing to soak up the juicy stew. I still think about this meal often and I have been tempted on more than one occasion to hop on a plane to Edinburgh just to head for Hanam's!

Vegan MoFo Day 6 - Edinburgh Part V & a giveaway.

Whilst in Edinburgh we went to a few health food stores in search of exciting vegan goodies & our favourite was definitely all vegetarian store Real Foods.

Real Foods is by far the largest health food store in Edinburgh & it's jam packed full of exciting things. We were especially excited to find vegan shortbread.

We've both always loved shortbread & for some reason I've never tried to make my own.

The fridge's at Real Foods are stocked up with plenty of vegan cheeses, mock meats, hummus', etc but we were most excited about the Engine Shed tofu.

We bought all three types, plain, smoked & marinated.

The Engine Shed started out as a training project for people with learning disabilities and the business now includes a vegetarian cafe, organic bakery & an organic tofu processing plant. We love the idea behind the business & can't wait to use our tofu's.

We managed to find time to nip into The Engine Shed to grab a slice of their vegan chocolate cake.

Sorry about the terrible photo, I quickly snapped this picture in the car park outside The Engine Shed as I knew the cake wouldn't last the journey across town! It was seriously good cake, really moist and gooey and they icing was perfectly fudgey.

THE GIVEAWAY!

Whilst I was in Real Foods I picked up a few things to give away during MoFo.

Organic Vegan White Chocolate, Organic Fair Trade Extra Dark Pumpkin Seed & Hemp Oil Chocolate & Natural Lemon Sherbets.

All you need to do to win these goodies is leave a comment on this post telling me what your favourite junk food is before 9am UK time on Saturday 13th November. The competition's open to anyone & I'll be choosing the winner at random. Please remember to let me know how I can contact you if you win and good luck!

MoFo Day 5 - Edinburgh Part IV

Thanks for all the suggestions of stuff I should deep fry, keep 'em coming!

We only had time for lunch in Edinburgh before getting on the road for another 8 hour drive back to Brighton, we both really wanted to pay Henderson's another visit so we did just that.

We ate at the bistro again as it seemed to have more choice. Nick ordered the exact same thing he had yesterday & I went for a hot toasted sandwich because it was chilly out.

To fill your sandwich you could choose from any of their vegan pates, hummus, baba ganoush or spicy bean and then one or two of the vegan fillings, tomato basil & red onion, roasted vegetables, marinated mushrooms or rocket & sundried tomato. I went for hummus & marinated mushroom because their hummus was so good & because I love mushrooms.

We of course had dessert but we both went for the same thing we'd had before because our desserts last time were awesome.

I'll be posting about two more Edinburgh places, Real Foods & The Engine Shed tomorrow - there's going to be a giveaway too - but now I want to talk about service stations.

On any long drive in the UK you'll inevitably have to pull over at a service station to use the bathrooms or to try to find food. Luckily every service station bathroom I've ever used in the UK has been both clean and free but sadly they (the service station's not the bathrooms!) tend to be lacking in food options.

Usually the signpost's for the upcoming services will tell you what chains are there, you'll probably see Burger King, Starbucks, McDonald's, Costa, WHSmith, KFC & M&S. If possible we stop at the M&S one's, I popped into one yesterday and ran around snapping pictures of their vegan options...

Hummus & carrot sticks, there's usually a hummus & breadsticks one too but they'd sold out.

Vegetable samosa, it'd be way too spicy for me I'm sure but I think any normal palleted person would be able to eat this!

Four, yes four, different vegan salads. Three bean, edamame soya bean, wheatberry & giant cous cous & cous cous & roasted vegetable.

Snack wise, as well as having a huge range of pre chopped fruit, they have a large selection of nuts...

...crisps (all the ready salted versions are vegan)...

...and two kinds of vegan chocolate. I'd always go for the organic fair trade one if they have it but the other one's a good second choice.

M&S usually also have two or three kinds of vegan jelly, raspberry, peach melba and orange are the types I've seen around recently - yum. M&S stores are also on most UK high streets and these day's almost all of them have a food court where you could pick up most, if not all, of these snacks.

I'm heading off to a firework display now (It's Guy Fawkes night!) but I will, of course, be back tomorrow!

MoFo Day 4 - Edinburgh Part III

**Edited to add: I re-visited Bonsai recently & was told that the Tempura is NOT vegan. I don't know if the recipe has changed or if I was misinformed when I visited for this review**

Another night in Edinburgh & another dimly lit restaurant...

I'd read about bonsai on fellow PPKer & MoFoer Rachel's blog Thistle and Yellow Rose and decided we should head there for dinner.


We'd checked out the menu online & found quite a few options that sounded as if they'd be vegan & after a chat with the lovely waitress we discovered that everything we thought looked exciting was indeed vegan - no modifications needed! Of course we did what any good travelling vegan would do & ordered all if it! Here there are the yakisoba noodles, agadashi tofu & inari nigiri sushi.


The agadashi tofu was firm silken tofu which had been breaded in panko breadcrumbs & fried, it came in a soy & ginger broth with spring onions. This wasn't what we were expecting but it was super yummy albeit challenging to eat with chopsticks! The inari nigiri sushi was great & made us wish we'd ordered a plate of it each - Nick'd never tried sushi before & he loved it.

We also ordered the vegetable tempura.


The batter was perfectly crisp & their were pieces of aubergine, sweet potato & red & green peppers. I loved this & the aubergine & sweet potato pieces were my favourites. I think I've only ever had tempura once before & this has made me determined to make it at home. Excitingly today in John Lewis we found & purchased a cheap (£40 but we paid £20 in real money as we had £20 of vouchers left from our wedding gifts!) mini deep fat frier, I can't wait to get home & start frying stuff! I have plans to deep fry a Go Max Go Twilight bar as deep fried Mars bars are a Scottish delicacy, what else would you suggest I try frying?

Location:Edinburgh

MoFo Day 3 - Edinburgh Part II

We woke up late today & after a quick room service breakfast of rolls & jam & fruit salad...


...we headed out for more exploring and ended up at vegetarian spot Henderson's.


Henderson's has been around since 1962 & has a shop & deli counter, restaurant & bistro. We settled on the bistro for lunch and after some deliberating & drinking my favourite lemonade...


...we ordered a selection of stuff to share. The homemade hummus with local organic bread & flatbreads.


The flatbreads were our favourite of the two & the hummus was perfect, homemade & thick. We also ordered the garlic bread...


...if there's garlic bread on a menu Nick's going to order it & this one certainly didn't disappoint, the bread was perfectly toasted & the garlic wasn't too overpowering. I'm not usually a salad person but I couldn't resist trying this delicious sounding rocket, red onion, squash, sultana, apricot & tofu salad.

It was certainly one of the best, and most interesting salads I've ever eaten, the onion was deliciously caramelised, the tofu was baked perfectly & I loved the squash. Definitely order this if you visit Henderson's!

For dessert I went for the cherry pie.


It was AMAZING! It had a whole wheat crust & tonnes of perfect sweet cherry filling. Nick went for the trio of flapjacks with a chocolate dipping sauce.


This was equally delicious & the chocolate dipping sauce went perfectly with my cherry pie.

Henderson's is totally awesome - if I lived here I might eat here every day!

We're just relaxing before dinner at the Filmhouse Cafe/Bar, I'm drinking a decaf soya milk cappuccino with a shot of hazelnut syrup...


...yum!

I'll be back tomorrow to tell you all about where we decide to have dinner, have a good evening.

MoFo Day 2 - Edinburgh

Hey! It's a bit of a late one today as I was without any kind if phone signal or internet connection for over 24 hours & as soon as we arrived at our hotel in central Edinburgh we went out to eat & sight see.

As I mentioned yesterday we've been at a friends wedding which was in this stunning 15th century castle.


Early this afternoon after waving off the bride & groom we headed straight into town to hunt for food, as always I was armed with a list of places I wanted to check out & some handy google map printouts - a must for any trip. Firstly we went to The Baked Potato Shop.


Unsurprisingly this place sells baked potatoes & they have a tonne of fillings to choose from.

Everything's vegetarian and there are always plenty if vegan options - boringly we both went for the potato with baked beans & vegan margarine.


Yup, that's right your order gets you not one but two potatoes! We were very glad the dude behind the counter advised us against our choice of a large potato & steered us towards this, the medium potato, which was almost impossible to finish!

The Baked Potato Shop also sell a selection of cakes & flapjacks - the British oat flapjack, not the US pancake version!


The carrot cake I went for was dense but incredibly moist, untraditionally full of seeds & the buttercream icing was delicious.

The Baked Potato Shop is tiny with only one small table but the staff were really friendly & the food was great so it's definitely a must visit if you get the chance.

After a spot of sightseeing & a guided tour of Edinburgh Castle we found room for dinner at vegetarian restaurant Black Bo's.


I'm going to apologise now for the lack of pictures here & for the terrible quality of the photos I'm actually using, I'm having to take all my photos with my iPhone so I can upload them & the restaurant was candle lit!

To start we ordered garlic bread, Nick's was plain & mine with mushrooms. We followed that with (Nick) a kidney bean & almond burger and (me) the haggis & turnip roulade.


This came with a side of salsa & mashed potato.


Nick enjoyed his burger & was excited that it came on a bagel rather than the usual bun & whilst I'm sure most people would've loved my haggis roulade I just found it far too spicy - have I mentioned before that I can't even handle black pepper?! The atmosphere was lovely though & the one lady working there was ridiculously nice, if you're in Edinburgh they do definitely have a decent amount of options for vegans.

We're now back at our hotel...


...and I'll be back tomorrow with more picture's of our Scottish adventure!

If anyone has any Edinburgh favourites, foodie or not, please post a comment & tell me all about it!