Bellaverde, Puerto Pollensa.

As I mentioned in my blog post about Mallorca last week Nick and I were trying to be as frugal as possible on this trip, we have a lot of travel plans coming up in the next year so we definitely need to focus on reigning in our spending both at home and abroad. This definitely meant less eating out than usual but we couldn't stay in Puerto Pollensa without visiting one of the restaurants we'd enjoyed on our last trip, Bellaverde.

Bellaverde is situated in a side street just off of the main seafront drag and behind the gates lies the most beautiful garden I've ever had the pleasure of dining in. It's shaded by hundred year old fig trees and full of some of the most amazingly bright flowers I've ever seen. It's the perfect spot to sit, relax and enjoy a meal

We started dinner with a jug of freshly made lemonade and some mineral water because we're wild and crazy like that.

We also couldn't say no to the offer of bread and olives and as she poured the olive oil the owner told us about her friend who makes the it from trees that are at least one hundred years old.

As soon as we tasted the oil we could tell that it was something special. It was zesty and fruity and it made us want to spend all of our money on fancy oil when we got home.

The last time we visited Bellaverde was back in 2011 and whilst we did eat a delicious vegan meal then I remember having to use my terrible Spanish to explain what we would and wouldn't eat and them modifying a couple of dishes on the menu for us as nothing was vegan as written. This meant that this time around when we saw the menu and noticed that there were not only plenty of vegan options clearly marked but some raw vegan dishes too we were ecstatic. It's so awesome to see a restaurant moving with the times even in a small town on a small island. I think a lot of restaurants around the world could take some tips from these guys!

After much discussion and deliberation I ordered the Fake Plate which was essentially a gyro plate with peppery seitan, tzatziki, salad and perfectly cooked french fries. It was fantastic.

Nick went for the Vegetarian Hamburger which also came with fries and the burger itself was full of veggies and topped with an amazing raspberry ketchup which Nick said elevated this burger to the next level.

Obviously we weren't going to skip dessert once we'd seen that over half of that menu was vegan too, dishes ranged from Panna Cotta to Elderflower Sorbet with Hibiscus Gazpacho. I couldn't resist the Chocolate Cake with Rhubarb Puree.

I apologise for the terrible photo, my phone went a little strange in the heat (it's like me!) and every picture I took that night had a strange blue tinged blur to it, if you can believe it these have actually been fixed up in iPhoto already! Anyway, you get the idea. Delicious, rich, moist chocolate cake not only served with rhubarb puree but also with a thick dark chocolate sauce and topped off with pieces of fresh orange. Delightful.

Nick ordered the gingerbread mousse with cherry coulis.

I have to admit to not being a huge ginger fan so this one wasn't for me but the texture was spot on and I enjoyed the tangy berry coulis.

After such an amazing meal on our last night we decided that we couldn't bear to go home not knowing when we'd get to enjoy Bellaverde's food again. Basically both the food and the setting combined to make us break into our savings to enjoy one more meal on our last day. As it was super warm again, even in the shade, I decided to go for cooling foods and started with the Green Gazpacho. Nick went for the delicious veggie burger and chips he'd eaten the previous evening and as you can see the plate was overflowing with fries.

The green gazpacho was beautifully thick and garlicy and I detected coriander which I love. I followed my refreshing soup with the raw Vegetable Lasagne with Spinach Cream which was gorgeous but hard to photograph despite me carrying it around the place looking for the perfect lighting to highlight it's beauty!

The spinach cream was like a pesto in taste and texture and the lasagne itself was made up of slices of courgette, mushroom and tomato. I can honestly say that this is the first time I've ever enjoyed raw mushroom, the key seems to be super thin slices. I'm going to give mushies sliced like that another whirl at home soon.

Of course I wasn't going to skip dessert, if we're eating out we're doing it right and the Carrot Cake sounded too good to pass up.

The cake was succulent and covered with what appeared to be fruity yoghurt with pieces of peach inside. However strange that sounds it totally worked, it wasn't too sweet meaning that it complimented the flavours of the cake perfectly. I adored it.

This meal was such a wonderful end to our trip and I would recommend both Puerto Pollensa and Bellaverde to anyone considering a trip to Mallorca. The beaches in the area are gorgeous and as you've seen from this post and my previous one your stomach will be well taken care of.

Self Catering in Mallorca.

Nick and just I spent 6 nights in Mallorca and we had an amazing trip. We stayed in Puerto Pollensa, a small town on the coast in the north of the island that we discovered on our last trip to the balearics in 2011. We loved it so much that we've been aching to go back ever since. 

I love to self cater when I'm travelling, when you're in a major city sure you want to eat out all the time but when travelling for longer periods, on the cheap or to not-so-veg-friendly spots self catering wins for me. As soon as we picked up our hire car at the airport we headed for Carrefour, one of Spain's largest supermarket chains, to stock up on food for the week. First things first, fresh produce. I couldn't resist this 2kg box of cherries for just €4.40, best thing? Nick does't even like cherries so I got to eat them all myself!

On our last visit I remember being so impressed with how many exciting seitan and tofu products were sold in Carrefour, there were meatballs, flavourd tofu's, tofu fillets and many types of burgers to choose from. This time there was only one kind of seitan, a couple of burgers and some plain tofu. Slightly disappointing but no big deal, at least there was some seitan! We also grabbed some Artura margarine as we weren't sure where else we'd find a dairy free option.

We bought loads of these seitan steaks and Nick ate them for almost every meal, he's seitan obsessed! On our first night we ate dinner on the roof terrace. We made simple salads, fried the seitan in plenty of garlic oil and served it alongside delicious freshly baked bread. My salad's the one with the black olives and tomatoes!

We arrived too late to hit the beach but there was time to explore the waterfront and the pine walk before heading to bed. I love being close to the sea and the pine walk winds right along the coast.

We met a cat on our walk, s/he was super friendly. I love to stop and pet kitties when I'm travelling or, y'know, just walking around my neighbourhood in Brighton.

The next day we hit the beach around lunchtime and spent all day lying on the sand reading. It was bliss. We were starving by the time we got back to the apartment so I cooked us huge plates of pasta with butter beans, olives and marinara sauce, store-bought of course, there's no time for homemade marinara when you're travelling! We topped it off with the Vegusto cheese I'd brought from home.

The next day we went to the beach again (if you pay attention you'll being to see a pattern emerging here), rented a pedalo, and got out onto the water. Now until recently I would have been far too scared to get off of that boat, I was always happy to swim in the sea and peddling the little boat would have been a-ok but getting from the boat into the water? Nuh-uh, that would have meant water splashing onto my face which would have given me a panic attack and I'd have probably drowned. It wouldn't have been fun! Recently I had a one to one lesson followed by a full days swimming class with these people who help you cure your fear of the water, I don't know how it's possible but the teacher had me dunking my face underwater within the first 20 minutes of my first lesson. It was amazing, up until then I didn't even let water from the shower touch my face!

I'm still not 100% confident in the water, the idea of learning to dive is stressing me out a little right now and if you showed me to a diving board I might back away, but I'm a work in progress. I totally went down this slide right into the sea and you know what? It was so fun I did it twice!

We decided getting out of the mid day sun would be sensible next move, I turn pink pretty fast despite continuous applications of factor 30+, so we popped back to our super central apartment for lunch. Salad, an open topped seitan sandwich, and a bowl of gazpacho.

I freaking love gazpacho, I should really learn to make it myself. This one was very garlicky and super fresh.

After more afternoon beach time at one of our favourite spots, Formentor Beach, we headed home to shower off the sand and to relax on the balcony with our books and some fun drinks, beer for me, iced tea for Nick. Formentor beach has gotten a lot more popular since we were last there in 2011 and we liked it best in the afternoon, around 4 o'clock, when the majority of the crowds had gone home. Parking seemed to be free then too which was a nice bonus!

We threw together another easy dinner that night. Nick made himself pasta with tomato sauce and ate a hunk of bread on the side and I threw together a salad with pasta, cubed garlicy tofu, chickpeas, butter beans, black olives, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and a little more of that Vegusto grated on top.

It was delicious, I love cheese in or on salads! The balcony turned out to be a wonderful place to eat  because it has a view of the town square, as there was a saints day coming up there was a little stage set up there and people were taking a group zumba class as part of the festivities. Fun to watch but I have no idea how people do outdoor exercise when it's so hot, I found lying on the beach challenging somedays and was glad of our apartments air conditioning.

Puerto Pollensa has definitely become more vegan friendly since our last visit and we were excited to stumble upon Bio Botiga during one of our adventures. They're an organic wine shop and grocery store chock full of products from pasta and sauces to seitan fillets, tofu and vegan margarine. If we'd known this store was here I'd say that we could have probably skipped the Carrefour trip and just bought food from here and the local groceries and supermarkets.

A little further away and somewhere we made a special trip to scope out is Farmatural in Alcudia. 

They stock a wide range of vegan products including non-dairy milks, soy yoghurts, vegan cheeses, burgers, seitan sausages, tofu frankfurters, veggie burgers, cream cheese, tofu based spreads, vegan margarines and cereals. Definitely worth a visit if you're on a self catering trip in the area, Alcudia is probably too anglicised for me to want to stay there but it's busy and has a late night bar and club scene if that's your thang.

One of my fave' things to hunt down when I'm in Spain are palmeritas! These delicious sweet pastries are up there with my favourite treats. All of the freshly baked ones we found had honey but these were a-ok and I ate a lot of them! They're make perfect snacks after a long day on the beach, hell, go crazy, take them to the beach!

Another thing that makes a great beach snack is these crisps, so yummy, so addictive. I'm sure that has nothing to do with the MSG! We found both these and the palmeritas in the Eroski supermarket.

We broke out the veggie burgers for dinner the next night after a long and relaxing day at, yup, you guessed it, the beach! We ate them alongside noochy cheesy pasta which is one of our favourite easy to cook dishes.

As you know I took a block of Vegusto with me but I also took a baggie of nooch. I almost always take nooch on my travels! It perked up my salads, enlivened my avocado toast at breakfast time and made noochy cheesy pasta possible. Yum!

We had the best trip, we love the beach, we love swimming in the sea and Nick loved taking me for my first snorkel ever! It took me a while to let go of his hand but I did it and I saw fish! Big ones, small ones, medium ones and even some stripy ones. It was so great and I can't wait to travel to some further flung places where I'll be able to see exciting coloured fish, rays or even turtles, it's going to be so amazing.

Eating out in Mallorca.

Before travelling to Mallorca I did some googling & searched Happy Cow to see which places near where we were staying might have vegan options. We were staying near Port de Pollenca & I discovered that there is a vegetarian cafe there called Bellaverde.


Bellaverde is situated on a little side street just off the main promenade & is actually part of a bed & breakfast. It's described as vegan friendly on Happy Cow so we were pretty optimistic. We were also excited to find that they have sections of their menu written not only in Spanish but also French, German & English. The vegan items weren't marked on the menu & it was quite cheese centric but it was quite easy to spot the vegan options. We sat in the beautiful garden...

...and whilst we were deciding what to order they brought us some bread, oil & olives.

The oil was filled with an olive tapenade & was covered in toasted sesame seeds. It was so delicious, I could've just eaten that for lunch & been happy!

We decided to order a couple of things to share & went for the the Hummus & Bread & a selection of tapas.


The Hummus & Bread usually comes with cheese but they gave us double the amount of hummus instead. One hummus was traditional & the other olive. They were both delicious but I think we both preferred the traditional flavour.

There was so much tapas that I was really glad we were sharing. These three dishes are seitan ham, tofu with blueberry compote and pepper, tomato and onion salad.

Then there was a dish of marinated mushrooms with a crushed tomato sauce & one of figs with caramelised onions...

...and tomato & nori salad.

Everything here was excellent & we were pretty stuffed by the end of our meal. I really really loved the tomato nori salad, it's definitely something I'll be throwing together at home because it's so simple but really lifts the flavour of the tomatoes. My favourite things were definitely the figs & caramelised onions closely followed by the tofu with blueberry compote. The figs & caramelised onions were really sweet & I'd love to know how to recreate the dish at home.

We decided to take a walk around the small town after lunch to see if we could find somewhere for dinner one night that would keep the entire family happy. We stumbled upon a restaurant called Los Zarzales that had a Vegetable Paella on the menu. I recalled my best GCSE Spanish & was ready to ask someone about the stock used in this dish when a waiter came over & started to speak to us in English. We continued the conversation in English as his was far better than my Spanish. He assured us that the dish didn't contain any animal products & he even told us that one of the owners of the restaurant was vegetarian. We booked a table then & there & went to eat there the next night.

This perfectly coked paella was filled with delicious vegetables and chunks of seitan. It was fantastic & I was really surprised that we'd found such a great vegan dish in an omnivorous restaurant especially when Spain isn't exactly renowned for being vegan friendly. My guide book pretty much said not to even bother trying to eat out which is just ridiculous!

I'll be back tomorrow with my Vegan MoFo plan & then again on Saturday with the first of my MoFo posts! I can't wait!

Mallorca.

Nick & I recently went to Mallorca for a week with his family. We stayed in a villa near Port de Pollenca & it was one of the most relaxing weeks I've ever had. Normally I plan my travels around delicious vegan food meaning that I spend a lot of time in cities, which I love, but it was great to spend a week lazing by the pool & going to the beach.

The first thing Nick & I did after picking up our hire car was to head to the large Carrefour supermarket right by the airport to stock up on food for the week. We knew that there was a small supermarket nearer to where we were staying but we suspected that it was unlikely to have some of the things we wanted.

Caffefour had loads of fantastic seitan & tofu products. Nick loved both of these seitans & spent the week frying them up to eat on baguettes.

These Filetes de Tofu came in their own sauce & took minutes to cook. We had them for dinner one night with the Savoury Orange Rice from Viva Vegan.


I was incredibly excited when we spotted these Seitan Albóndigas. Albóndigas are a Spanish meatball that I remembered enjoying back in my pre-vegan days.

We snapped up two packets & one night we used them in a simple tomato pasta dish which we served with a side of homemade garlic bread.

Before we left I looked online to see what brand of dairy free margarine I should be looking out for at the supermarket. I saw Artura Corn margarine on a few vegan blogs & we were happy to find it in Carrefour. I ate it at breakfast time almost every day with jam, fruit & freshly baked baguettes that were delivered to the villa every morning.

The best surprise on this trip was the avocado tree that we discovered in the garden of the villa. I used the fruit from the tree to make some delicious salads like this one with salad leaves, tomato, cucumber, apple & avocado with a side of roasted aubergine.

After a couple of days we realised that we'd forgotten to pick up any chocolate on our Carrefour trip so we headed to the local Eroski supermarket where we picked up this great selection.

My favourite chocolate was definitely the Eroski brand almond chocolate whereas Nick much preferred the plain Lindt 52% chocolate. Neither of us really enjoyed the Eroski basic plain chocolate & a scary warning on the back of the Valor almond chocolate put me off eating it. The Valor chocolate was actually a sugar free diabetic chocolate that warned you not to eat too much of it in one go because it would cause diarrhoea! I am not a person who can only eat one or two squares on chocolate at a time so whilst this tasted nice I decided to pass on finishing the whole bar!

We also grabbed a couple of bags of peanut crisps at the store. You can find these kinds of crisps made by different companies all over Europe & I've never seen a non-vegan version. Be warned though that you will probably polish off the whole bag in one go.

We also stocked up on Corona because I'd managed to drink all of the beers we'd bought on the first shopping trip! If you are planning to visit Mallorca I'd recommend a trip to Carrefour to stock up on essentials, whilst the Eroski supermarket (apparently the second largest shop on the island) had great snacks there was no dairy free margarine, tofu or seitan.

On our last night I decided to make Nick & I some tapas, I'd have made it for everyone but nobody seemed to want to try the "scary vegan food"!

I made Garlic Mushrooms, Albondigas in tomato sauce...


...Mojo Oven Roasted Seitan from Viva Vegan & a tomato tofu salad.

We ate all of this with copious amounts of bread which was especially great to soak up all of the garlic oil from the mushrooms.

We also went to a couple of restaurants whilst we were in Mallorca and I'll be back with those reviews very soon!