The Gentle Gourmet Bed and Breakfast

* Sadly The Gentle Gourmet B&B is now closed. The people behind this fabulous B&B are now running a The Gentle Gourmet Cafe which I've heard wonderful things about and hope to visit soon*

Last weekend was mine & Nick's first wedding anniversary & we decided to mark the occasion (I'll find any excuse for a holiday!) by spending the weekend in Paris.

After trying some of their delicious food at Paris Vegan Day I decided that I really wanted to spend the weekend at The Gentle Gourmet B&B.

For those of you who haven't heard about this place yet here's the lowdown! The Gentle Gourmet B&B is a vegan owned & operated business located in central Paris. It's only a short walk from the Champs Elysees, Arc du Triomphe & Eiffel Tower.

We took a lovely walk down the Champs Elysees to the Arc du Triomphe & back to the B&B after dinner one night.

The owners Deborah, Caroline, Alex & Paul (who are also the people behind Paris Vegan Day) have two apartments in the building, one with a double room & it's own bathroom situated in the apartment where breakfast is served and one with two double bedrooms & a shared bathroom which can either be rented separately or as one private apartment for 2 - 5 travellers. The Gentle Gourmet also offers Bistrot & Gourmet dinners, cooking classes, picnic baskets & tours of local kitchen gardens.

We chose to stay in the double room with it's own bathroom & we thought our room was lovely, light, bright & airy. We also loved the incredibly warm welcome we received from our hosts Deborah & Paul, it felt more like we were arriving at an old friends place rather than at a faceless hotel.

As far as I'm concerned breakfast is the most important meal of the day (Neither Nick or I are fun people to be around if we haven't eaten in the morning) & I often find that a good breakfast is one of the hardest things to find as a travelling vegan.

On our first morning we opted to have breakfast quite late and we were excited to see the table was all laid out with breads, spreads, yoghurts, granola & juice. The french bread was delicious so we were even more excited when the lovely B&B owner & head chef Deborah brought us out a huge plate of French toast with baked apples to share. In fact I was so excited that I didn't manage to take any pictures of it, it looked great though & it tasted pretty spectacular too. I liked that it wasn't overly sweet, most of the sweetness came from the apples & the maple syrup I drenched mine in.

On our second morning Deborah and Paul whipped us up a batch of pancakes...

...and some little traditional French chocolate chip breads alongside some fruit salad & yoghurts.

This was another fantastic breakfast, what a great way to start the day!

I will be recommending the Gentle Gourmet B&B to all of my vegan friends (in fact, one friend has already booked themselves into the B&B for their next holiday!) and I would definitely love to stay there again next time I'm in Paris.

Aloka, again!

Just a heads up, Aloka is now closed and VBites is open in the same location.

I'm going to write about Aloka again because every time I go there the food seems to get even better. It's so good that I've been three times in the last month and it's my new top suggestion for people when they ask me where to get a bite to eat in Brighton. Aloka used to be a vegetarian cafe with vegan options making up about 65% of the food but now it seems that everything is vegan apart from the option to have cows milk in your coffee or tea.

Aloka has a pay by weight buffet which I think must be cheaper than it used to be as my last two plates of food have only been around £4 at lunch time. It's more expensive in the evening but even cheaper if you get takeaway. The food changes every day & is as organic, seasonal and locally sourced as possible. Last time I visited they had a sweet potato curry, brown rice, a decent selection of raw foods and this delicious selection.

I went for the roasted vegetable & vegan mozzarella stack, mixed kale salad, cashew cheese lasagne and a white bean & rocket salad with cauliflower & pesto. The lasagne was my favourite part of the meal, it was full of lentils & mushrooms and their homemade cashew cheese was delicious as always.

On a previous visit I also went for the buffet option & filled my plate with a roast vegetable stuffed baked squash, tabouleh, white bean salad, a piece of creamy mushroom filo pastry bake & some green salad.

The creamy mushroom bake was SO damn good, I keep hoping it will be there again! I really enjoyed the baked squash too and I like that their green salad always has some interesting leaves.

Aloka always have a soup of the day, which, as far as I've seen, is always vegan. I'm not usually into soup but last time I met up with a friend there I had a cold & was craving something warm and comforting, this huge bowl of creamy lentil soup really hit that spot.

At only £3 (or £3.50 with bread) this bowl of soup's definitely good value for money, it was huge and really delicious.

Aloka has a raw restaurant upstairs & there are a few raw treats on their cafe menu. I finally got around to trying the Raw Cashew Cheese & Flaxseed Crackers the other day...

...these dehydrated crackers are made from a combination of flaxseed & parsnip and they were pretty good, I was surprised at how crunchy they were and also that the cashew cheese was strongly flavoured enough for a little to go a long way - yum.

If I had to pick a favourite thing about Aloka I would have to pick the desserts, after a bit of trial and error last summer they've really perfected their raw ice creams and they even make my favourite flavour (joint favourite with Pistachio really!) Mint Chocolate Chip.

This is a beautifully smooth minty ice cream filled with chunks of cacao, I could go there & eat this every day!

Aloka always have a well stocked dessert cabinet & on valentines day they had some extra special treats.

Our dessert decision was a closely run thing between the Superfood Chocolate Mousse Cake & the Valentines Special Chocolate Lovers Torte (I feel I need to point out that we were only choosing because they cost £5.50 not because we wouldn't have happily eaten one each!) but the huge chocolate lovers that we are went for the Special Torte.

This was one seriously awesome dessert, it was, as described, really chocolatey & it was definitely worth it's £5.50 price tag when you consider the cost of the ingredients that would have gone into making it.

If you're in Brighton you should definitely head to Aloka for lunch, dinner or a dessert & a smoothie, you won't be disappointed.

Paris Part II

Sadly we were only in Paris for a short amount of time meaning that we only got to try out a few of Paris' many eateries but I think we chose pretty well!

First off, Tien Hiang. We arrived at around 8.30pm on the night before Paris Vegan Day & we were so happy that they were able to find us a table considering how busy they were. We just had to wait an hour but there's a bar on the corner so we were fine with that!

I started off with salt & pepper tofu and prawn dumplings.

These were both SO good, I was surprised to get such a lot of tofu in a starter but I certainly wasn't complaining. The dumplings were perfectly steamed & contained a delicious mixture of minced 'prawn' carrot & mushroom.

For my main I went for the Cashew Chicken Bamboo.

I ate this delicious mixture of mock chicken, peppers, baby corn, carrots, courgette & cashews with a side of fried rice. I'd never had such delicious mock meat before & I'm a huge fake meat fan so that's saying something!

Excitingly I'm heading back to Paris with Nick for our first wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks so I'll be making sure to go back to Tien Hiang for dinner, and this time I'll remember to book a table!

After a long day cruising around the sites of Paris on a sightseeing boat my friend Holley & I headed to L'as du Fallafel to stuff ourselves with, well, falafel!

We'd heard about this place from a fellow PPKer who said it was the best falafel in Paris, thankfully she'd also told us which things were vegan as our French is pretty bad! We'd been advised to order the ''falafel special'' a large pitta filled with falafel, aubergine & salad and topped with tahini sauce so that is exactly what we did!

We certainly weren't disappointed with the size of the 'falafel special'', this thing was almost the size of my head! It was messy to eat but it really was the best falafel I've ever had, coming a close second is the falafel from Maoz in London & there is a Maoz in Paris too in case you are there needing falafel on a Saturday when this place is closed.

We also ordered a side of fries each to go with our pitta's which seemed to amuse the guys working there, they told us that the falafel special is VERY large & that there is no way we could possibly eat fries too, maybe we should share some fries? Uh, no sir, if there's something my friend & I are good at it is eating huge quantities of food & we were very pleased (smug even!) to give back our totally clean plates at the end of the meal!

L'as du Fallafel is another place I can't wait to go back to in a couple of weeks especially because Nick is in kinda love with falafel & I know he'll think this huge falafel sandwich is awesome!

We're going to be staying at The Gentle Gourmet B&B whilst we're in Paris, I was so impressed with the brownies & waffles I tried at Paris Vegan day that I am incredibly overexcited about getting to eat breakfast there during our stay. I will of course be taking pictures & blogging about it when I get back!

Paris Part I

I know this blog post is crazy late but Paris isn't going anywhere!

Our journey started at St Pancras International where I spotted Le Pain Quotidien. I'd heard on the grapevine that they do vegan food so I headed straight over there and found a muffin that was even labelled vegan! Awesome!

It was a pretty good muffin , very crispy ontop & soft in the middle. It was also full of blueberries rather than just having one or two hidden in there. If you're ever passing through St Pancras pop into Le Pain for your muffin fix.

We went to Paris specifically for Paris Vegan Day but decided that we should stay a day either side of the main event to sample some of the city's restaurants.

First of all we headed to Les Cinq Saveurs d'Ananda to grab some lunch. Les Cinq Saveurs d'Ananda is an almost all vegetarian macrobiotic restaurant with a lot of vegan options. We'd heard that this restaurant has an unmissable vegan souffle so we all opted for that.

The tofu souffle came with a huge plate of steamed seasonal veggies, salad, brown rice & bulgar. Although I wouldn't say the tofu souffle was exactly as I remember souffle from my pre-vegan days it was melt in your mouth delicious. The whole meal was nice & filling and a good healthy start to our weekend of eating!

Not wanting to start the weekend off too healthily I had the tart tatin for dessert.

This picture's terrible & doesn't do this tart justice but sadly I didn't manage to take a better one!

I assumed that a French apple tart would be delicious & it really was. I love fruity pastry based desserts and this was perfect!

We spent the rest of the day exploring the sights of Paris...

...and next time I'll be writing about my very favourite Parisienne eating establishments!

Vegan MoFo Day 30 - Paris Vegan Day

I've just been in Paris for Paris Vegan Day which was amazing but I am glad to be back home in time to write a proper final MoFo Post. There's no way I can write about everything we did (& by that I mean ate!) in one blog post but that just means I'll be back blogging sooner rather than later!

Paris Vegan Day is organised by an non-profit organisation made up from people in the local vegan community including people from The Gentle Gourmet B&B & VG-Zone. As soon as I arrived I was impressed by the size of it, in the basement there were stands with information on animal rights issues, the ground floor had cooking demo's, debates & stalls selling food & on the upper lever were talks, free samples & stalls selling clothes, cosmetics, beauty products & of course, more food.

The first thing we did was head upstairs towards the area where you could buy and sample exciting vegan products. I immediately honed in on the Vegusto stall as I've tried their No-Muh-Chas melty cheese before and it's seriously good. They had a huge selection & I came home with some fondue, 2 tubes of melty cheese, parmesan snack cheese & 2 blocks of cheese, Walnut & Mildly Aromatic.

I also picked up some of their seitan which I can't wait to try.

I ate some of both block cheeses for lunch today & they were really good - the closest thing I've tried to a real hard cheese. I think the Walnut is my favourite.

I was also really excited to see the Roots of Compassion stand, they have a great range of products including Go Max Bars & Vantastic Foods chocolate, I was a bit sad to see that they didn't have any of their t-shirts or hoodies for sale as I really like their stuff but I managed to keep myself happy with this selection of chocolatey snacks.

2 Jokers bars, 1 Buccaneer bar, Carte Blanche biscuits & a bar of Fruit & Nut chocolate.

Next we headed over to the Wheaty stand, I can get their products in the UK but there are a lot that I hadn't tried.

We munched on many sausage samples before I decided to buy the Hot Dogs & the Grill Sausages. We also spotted this seitan kebab & decided we'd HAVE to head back there later for lunch.

Next up was Isa's cooking demo, we headed down there a bit early to get good seats & whilst we were waiting we found a stall selling delicious vegan cupcakes...

...I went for chocolate mint. I love the little V on top of the cake!

Isa had Terry up there with her & they were both super cute & really funny AND Isa managed to make blini's look easy - I'll definitely be making them round Christmas time now. We saw Terry's demo later on in the afternoon but I sadly didn't get any decent photos - she made empinadas which smelt delicious and they're another recipe I'll be making soon. I had no idea that with both of these recipes can actually be made in advance & re-heated when you want to eat them - awesome!

Smelling all this delicious food made us hungry so we headed upstairs for the previously mentioned Wheaty kebab!

Unfortunately by the time we got to the stand they'd run outa salad stuff but that was okay because they still had the best bits - seitan & bread!

I then decided it was time for something sweet & headed over to The Gentle Gourmet table where I picked up this crazy delicious brownie to munch on whilst watching my friend Melisser do her talk about vegan travel & her book The Vegan Girl's Guide to Life.

It was more cakey than fudgey & it pretty much melted in my mouth, delicious.

After watching Melisser's talk & then Terry's cooking demo I decided it was time for more dessert & I'd just spotted The Gentle Gourmet people selling waffles so I headed straight over, unfortunately they'd just sold out but they were perfectly happy to make us another 5 for our group.

These came with whipped cream which everyone else loved but as a cream hater I had mine plain, it was delicious but it would've been even more awesome if they'd had chocolate spread!

We had a fantastic day, everyone we met was super friendly & the food was great. The event seemed really well organised & after tasting their food I can't wait to go & stay at The Gentle Gourmet B&B. I was also so excited that something like this was happening in a city famous for it's love of fur & foie gras - I hope Paris will be famous one day for it's amazing vegan friendliness instead. Next time I'll be writing about our non vegan day eats!

Vegan MoFo Day 29 - Redwood Foods.

I'll be posting all of my delicious Parisienne eats tomorrow (the last day of MoFo!) because there's been a serious lack of WiFi in Paris but for now here's one I prepared earlier...

I love Redwood Foods, they brought us Cheezly, Vegi bacon, delicious sausages & loads of deli slices and now they're coming out with loads of new products.

Their new Southern Style range consists of burgers & chicken style pieces & Nick & I gave them both a go.

We enjoyed the chicken pieces the most, probably because we eat burgers fairly often so these were more of a novelty. We served them with corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, green beans & gravy - southern style....I think!

I spotted this selection of new Christmassy party foods in the North Street Holland & Barrett the other day. First a Cheezly style selection box with a 3 types of cheese, Pepperjack, Smoked & Blue.

This huge box of 'Party Bites' with a selection of pork style, hot dog style & chorizo style sausages.

I also found these three new 'Party Bites' products, Mini Cranberry Falafel's, Breaded Pepperjack Style Cheezly Bites & Kofta Style Bites.

Everything looked really exciting & I picked up a packet of the Breaded Pepperjack Style Cheezly Bites to try. As they're meant to be a party bite I decided to enjoy them party style, served on a fancy plate with some Sheese & pineapple on sticks!

This made an awesome lunch but (& I shoulda guessed this by the name) the party bites are too pepper filled for me & I could only manage one before my mouth was on fire but Nick was on hand & happy to finish the other 6 (odd number for a pack 7!)

I'll definitely buy these again for when we have guests though because the cheese got all nice & melty & they held together pretty well during frying. I would love them to make these with the blue or smoked cheese though, I'd happily munch on a whole box then.

I'm looking forward to trying the mini cranberry falafel's & I'm definitely going to be giving that Cheezly Style selection box a whirl sometime soon.