Wildebeest Cafe, Falmouth

I can't lie the main reason I decided to make Cornwall the location for our summer camping trip was to visit the newly opened, all vegan, Wildebeest Cafe, which is situated in the lovely port town of Falmouth. 

The people behind Wildebeest used to live in Brighton and whilst they were here they ran popular sushi pop up Yum Tum Sushi whose food I ate and enjoyed on multiple occasions. I've been following their journey towards opening this gorgeous new restaurant since the very beginning and I was overjoyed to finally make it down there to try the food. The space is gorgeous, this couple are super stylish and have created a lovely, welcoming, relaxing space.

Despite having a peculiar phobia of chalk (seriously, don't use it near me) I loved the handwitten chalk board menu and the area people could doodle on above the bar seats. I was pretty happy nobody used it whilst I was there though or I might have had to step outside! We arrived far too early for lunch which begins at 12 and we were all happy to chill out with a drink and use their speedy wifi for 45 minutes before ordering. As we'd been eating ridiculous camping food I decided to go for a green juice as I couldn't remember when I last ate a vegetable.

It had spinach, pear, apple, cucumber and lime and was perfectly refreshing. I love a little citrus in my green juice and it wasn't overly cucumbery which I dislike. Everyone else had coffee or tea, this is Sal's chai latte which she enjoyed.

It was the food we were most excited about though and I seriously wanted to order every single thing on the menu. It was great that we had so much time to deliberate and I managed to convince Nick to share loads of things with me which meant I got to try four different dishes. Here we have the Miso Soup & Seaweed Salad and the Hoisin Cucumber Rolls from the Light Bites menu.

I loved everything about these three dishes. The cucumber rolls weren't what anyone was expecting, the finely sliced cucumber was wrapped around tender perfectly seasoned seitan. The hoisin sauce had just the right level of spice so as not to overwhelm the cucumber and, aside from being a little challenging to pick up with chopsticks, it was perfect. Seaweed salad is always a favourite of mine and the addition of a miso dressing and sesame seeds elevated it to the next level, I found this one hard to share! Miso soup, another fave, was up there with some that I had in Japan. So, spot on! We also ordered the Butterbean, Garlic & Dill dip with homemade bread.

Whilst I enjoyed this I would have preferred it to have had a more pronounced dill flavour, the garlic was a little overpowering for me. I thought that the homemade bread was excellent and Nick, who doesn't love dill, thought everything about this light bite was great.

The real star of the show was this next dish. Polenta with Pesto Tomato Sauce, Aubergine, Roast Cherry Tomatoes & Leeks.

This dish wouldn't be out of place at an upscale NYC spot. The deep fried polenta was spectacular and it paired perfectly with the pesto and aubergine and the leeks and roasted cherry tomatoes could easily stand alone as a punchy canapé. Every bite of this was exceptional and when I go back I will be requesting that this is on the menu.

One dish I actually didn't consider ordering was the Chilli which came with salsa, guacamole, chipotle cashew cheese and handmade blue and white corn tortillas.

It was beautifully presented and both Sal and Tabitha raved about it. A bottle of homemade hot sauce also appeared at the table and everyone who tried it thought it was excellent.

Dessert was another area that needed a lot of deliberation, there were five options and in the end we all went for three each. Yup! Three. That's how hard it was to choose. We all opted for the Warm Chocolate Brownie and a scoop of the home-made Chocolate and Hazelnut sorbet.

The brownie came with cream but being a cream hater I skipped it. Ice cream's better anyway and boy did we hit the jackpot with this decision. The brownie was served hot out of the oven, it was perfectly gooey and super chocolatey and the chocolate and hazelnut sorbet is the kind of things my dreams are made of. It was intensely rich, nutty and creamy, bordering on Nutella-esque in flavour but better, so much better. Honestly I'm pretty tempted to make the seven hour journey just to eat this again. Hold me back!

We also each took away a piece of the Lime Sponge Cake which made an excellent post-nap snack eaten lying on a picnic blanket in the sun back at our campsite.

We all ended up with a bit of a sugar rush because the slices were huge and because we have no self control where cake is concerned but it was delightful nonetheless!

Whether you live near Falmouth or not Wildebeest Cafe should make it onto your must eat list, it'll be worth every second of travel time I promise!

Exploring Cornwall

Surprisingly for me I didn't just go to Cornwall to eat, I also had the beach in mind. Uh, yeah. So the famous British weather ruined that idea but I still had a great time exploring rainy coastal villages and towns with my buddies. Mevagissey was one of our first stops and it's super pretty, we walked around the harbour and I saw my first ever jellyfish which was really cool.

We stumbled upon this cute little soap store which had loads of vegan options, some of them even had the vegan society logo! Their bath bombs smelt amazing!

We popped into this little grocers to buy some fruit to snack on and were super surprised by the vegan delights hidden inside, they had a huge variety of non-dairy milks as well as Alpro soya desserts.

One place that we did plan to visit just for the food was Falmouth, we went specifically to dine at Wildebeest Cafe which was so great it's getting it's own post. After lunch and a fair amount of walking I spotted this sign out of the corner of my eye! How exciting!

Annie's Kitchen had two kinds of vegan cake to choose from, I was stuffed but Nick took a piece of chocolate cake away and it looked really good.

Falmouth also has a health food store where you can pick up a pasty and some snacks or staples.

Falmouth is also one of the places you can pick up a vegan Cornish pasty from a traditional pasty shop, we were super excited when we spotted King's Pipe Pasties but they'd sold out already. Womp womp! Don't do what we did and rock up at 3pm, you need to get in there early!

The next place to tick off of our Cornish to do list was The Eden Project, I can't believe it's taken me this long to plan a visit and we were super lucky as it was a lovely sunny day.

The Eden Project has been focussing on increasing the wild bee population for the last couple of years, they've planted a wild meadow and a lavender garden, both of which are attracting bees by the bucketload. It's great. So much of the food we eat wouldn't be available if it wasn't for bees so we need to do everything we can to help them flourish.

The Eden Project seemed to have a few vegan options available, I spotted a vegan looking salad and a sandwich in the shop near the entrance / exit and the cafe just inside the entrance to the Mediterranean dome looked like it had some vegan friendly options. It was all on the expensive side though and as we weren't 100% sure we'd find anything to eat we came prepared with some snacks and sandwiches. Yup, that's a Muscolo di Grano smoked seitan slice and Pringle sandwich. Thanks for the genius idea Sal!

We spotted vegan chocolate in the gift shop.

And we were all excited by the juice bar, we love juice!

I went for the Revitalise which has spinach, mint, ginger, apple and lemon. Juice cheers!

We all really enjoyed The Eden Project, the Rainforest Dome was my favourite part but I also loved exploring the outdoor areas and riding the little land train. The dinosaur stuff they had on because it was the school holidays was super fun too! I would have liked it if somewhere so focussed on conservation sold a lot less animal products but I guess you can't have everything!

The last stop on our journey was The Monkey Sanctuary which is based in Looe Bay. They focus on rehoming monkeys from the pet trade, they have an anti-vivisection stance and they're definitely vegan leaning - the cafe is entirely vegetarian with a lot of vegan options which is a great start. I first visited The Monkey Sanctuary five years ago and I've been dying to go back ever since. They're one of the charities my not-for-profit bakery Operation Icing donates to and it was fantastic to see how the monkeys are doing and to hear some talks by the volunteers. I didn't take pictures because the monkeys really aren't meant to interact with people and I wanted to keep a respectful distance. They have loads of space but we were all saddened to hear the stories of how they ended up at the sanctuary.

We wound down in the cafe before our long drive home, it's in a lovely spot and the volunteers were super nice and happy to tell us what was and wasn't vegan. Nick ordered a the Traditional Burger and I went for the Hotdog. They both came with hand cut wedges.

The cafe use Fry's products for their mock meaty offerings which is great because they're one of my fave' vegan companies. The hand cut chips were delish and you know how I feel about hot dogs!! This was a good filling lunch but once we discovered all of the cakes that day were vegan too we dived right in. Sal went for the Carrot Cake with Lemon Frosting and everyone else had a slice of the Chocolate Cake.

The cakes were great and I was impressed at the size of the piece you got for your money too. This was a great end to our trip and I would definitely recommend a visit to The Monkey Sanctuary if you're in Cornwall.

Cornwall

It was my birthday last week so I hit the road with my boyfriend and two of our friends to celebrate in a tent at the Ruthern Valley campsite near Bodmin in Cornwall. The campsite is incredibly eco friendly and full of wildlife, I saw loads of squirrels, cute tiny birds and even frogs. Before we left I'd decided that I had to have birthday pancakes so I packed the ingredients to just mix together on the day.


This was super easy and I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before. (In fact I didn't think of it this time I read about someone else doing it on the PPK!)


We ate them pancake day style with sugar and lemon - yum.

The birthday fun continued after breakfast with a trip to The Monkey Sanctuary . I knew I'd love this place and I was right! The all veggie cafe and the work they put into ending the primate pet trade accompanied with their anti vivisection stance makes them damned awesome, and that's before you even account for the amazing work they put into recreating natural habitats for the rescued monkeys to live in. I didn't take any monkey pictures as I didn't want to be invasive but I did manage to take pictures of the food served at the awesome Treetop cafe.


On The Monkey Sanctuary website they say that they have a vegetarian cafe but until I arrived I had no idea how vegan friendly they'd be, I was so excited when I saw the menu.


All the V's mean vegan and the ones with a star meant that the dish could be made vegan upon request. As I mentioned in a previous post if there's a burger that's what I'll always go for so here it is.


The burger was obviously homemade, it was packed full of nuts and seeds and came on a delicious wholemeal bun with fried onions and vegan mayo. As you can see it also came with two side salads covered in a yummy dressing, oven baked wedges and more of the vegan mayo. The only complaint I had with this was that I thought the wedges were too spicy but that's just because my pathetic palate can't handle spices, my dining companions said that they weren't actually the least bit spicy.

The cafe also sold the whole range of Whole Earth drinks alongside the local apple juices.


I was super surprised and excited to find out that all but one of their desserts were vegan and that they had gluten free bread and cakes available. I went for the chocolate cake and the boy went for the chocolate chip cookie so that we could try both. The chocolate cake was rich and moist with a fudgey icing, it was pretty perfect. I wasn't so impressed with the cookie, I found it to be a little dry and flavourless. In contrast to that cookie the vegan chocolate chip biscuits they sold in the gift shop were great.

The birthday fun continued after the sanctuary with a trip into Looe to hang out by the beach.


I even managed to get myself a vegan candyfloss. They're usually pink and made with E120 dye (which is made from crushed beetles - ewww) but this one was apple flavoured and made with green dyed sugar.


Look how happy I am, I get overexcited about birthdays and candyfloss so both together was a little too brilliant, especially after all the monkey and pancake fun earlier in the day. What a great day!

The next day we worked up an appetite on a walk in the countryside alongside a really beautiful river.


Afterwards we stopped off in a little town called Wadebridge to find some food, I was starving and a little worried as the day before my birthday we'd had a bit of a disastrous trip to a similar town where all I could eat was a bag of ready salted crisps whilst my friends munched on cheese sandwiches in a cafe where even the chips were cooked in the fryer with the meat, yuch.

As it turns out Wadebridge is pretty good for the vegan traveller. We stumbled upon an Elixir Health Foods store as soon as we got out of the car. They had a decent selection of Sheese, Panda liquorice, Redwood veggie bacon, Fry's products and vegan chocolate so I grabbed myself a raspberry panda liquorice to tide myself over. Everyone fancied getting food from somewhere we could sit down so we found Flo's cafe where they not only had Heinz baked beans but also yummy lemonade and they were happy do do me a jacket potato without the butter.


Granted it's not the most exciting meal but yummy none the less. Whilst we were there we also spotted a Co-op supermarket (the only supermarket whose toiletries are BUAV approved) so if you happen to be in Cornwall and need to find something to eat I'd recommend Wadebridge.

That evening back at the campsite I made some Sammy's italian pesto flavoured cous cous and roasted veggies.


Roasting veggies whilst camping is super easy and delicious, just pop the veggies in tin foil with a bit of olive oil and then stick it on the barbecue for about 15 minutes.

Amongst my super cool birthday gifts were some Dandies vegan marshmallows so for dessert we toasted these on our camping gas stove.



Dandies marshmallows are seriously great, my veggie friends were of course excited too as marshmallows are traditionally made with gelatin. I'm looking forward to cooking with these and I'm planning to make some marshmallow krispie squares. I'll be ordering more of these as soon as I can afford the postage to the UK.

I love camping, the boy & I are going again in July so hopefully I can think of some exciting new things you can make on 2 little gas burners and a disposable barbecue!

I also cannot wait to get back to The Monkey Sanctuary to try some more of their vegan options. If you're ever in the south west of England I highly recommend it as a great place for a day out. I'm hoping I can get enough time off work next year to fit in a few weeks voluntary work there.

I'm off to London tomorrow to see The Bouncing Souls and Black President and I'm intending on doing some eating so I'll be blogging about that when I get back.