Black Cat has a second London venue

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The team behind Black Cat, Hackney’s oldest and arguably finest vegan café, have taken over the kitchen at Roadtrip & The Workshop.

Although London can luckily claim a few vegan pubs, this is the first time a bar, and a late night one at that, is catering a fully plant-based menu. (FGV note: I might argue that Karamel in Wood Green is the first)


The aim is to offer approachable vegan food to the multifaceted clientele of the Old Street location, from gig-goers to the followers of sports on the big screens to those looking for a meal to go with their night out in Shoreditch.

Black Cat will be serving up “tapas without borders”, a menu combining vegan versions of traditionally Mediterranean dishes with hints from other parts of the world.

The menu has been tested and served at their Hackney premises, and some have even been served at benefit gigs, music venues, gatherings, and special events.

Regulars to Black Cat need not be disappointed on their first jaunt to Roadtrip & The Workshop: Black Cat’s burgers will be also available and new dishes will appear weekly on the specials board.

Prices range from £3 for freshly-cut chips to £8.50 for the delicious cashew buttermilk corn-crusted seitan burger. The small sharing plates average around £6.

This will be the first vegan residency at Roadtrip & The Workshop, and the venue has gone to great lengths to ensure that diners can not only eat plant-based foods, but that the drinks menu matches the ethics behind the food!

All wine and beers behind the bar are vegan, as is most of the cocktail menu, which is clearly labelled while the venue works with existing suppliers and brands to clarify and find alternatives for its full back-bar of spirits and liqueurs.

Black Cat’s head chef, Nacho, commented: “We’re delighted to be able to bring our food to Old Street, and the whole team are excited to reach as many people as possible to highlight how going out eating vegan is affordable, easy, and most importantly, it can be enjoyed by anyone!”

Carla, who manages the café with Nacho, added: “We’ve been on the lookout for a second site for Black Cat, and when Paul from Roadtrip & The Workshop got in touch, we knew this was the perfect place to bring our tapas menu to. We are super excited and thankful for this opportunity given to us by the venue.”

Both Black Cat venues will be open simultaneously and can be booked for large parties, birthdays, or other celebrations.

Follow Black Cat on Instagram.

Photos used in this post were taken by Al Overdrive.

Gorgeous vegan café in Puebla

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I just spent a couple of days in the Mexican city of Puebla with Gil and was pleasantly surprised by the vegan food options.

Puebla is only about two hours driving from Mexico City and makes a great weekend getaway if you are in this part of the world.

There are inexpensive buses between the two cities leaving almost constantly.

But the food, you ask?

Cafetería Tambien is a super cute eatery nestled within the trees surrounding a large hotel just outside the downtown area.

The menu is completely vegan and focuses on nutrition. Even the mocktails are designed to stimulate digestion. Everything we tried, we loved.

Check out the photos below and be sure to follow Cafetería Tambien on Instagram.

Sustainable event in London

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A sustainable awareness event featuring music, food, and fashion is taking place in Clerkenwell on Saturday April 6, 2019.

Positive Planet is powered by the same people who brought London the popular Style Yourself Sustainable and Vegstock events last year.

Music on the night is from Besureis, Queen V, and more while there will be talks from passionate individuals bringing conversations about climate change, animal welfare, and veganism to the limelight.

A sustainable and responsible fashion display will end the evening and across the night attendees can enjoy pop up stalls selling sustainable fashion, vintage goods, vegan food, and refreshments.

Click here to explore ticket prices.

Extra note: kids go free!

New interview with FGV

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I am thrilled to be included in the latest issue of Snack magazine.

This Scotland-based publication showcases the best cultural and food events in the country, as well as giving insights into latest music, fashion, and pop culture news affecting the region.

For some reason, they thought my opinions on veganism needed to be heard and I’m so glad they reached out.

The magazine is wonderful.

Please take a moment to explore its pages. You can view a digital version of the issue online here.

It’s crunch time for independent vegan business

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I will sound like a broken record with this blog, but this needs to be repeated.

Please make an effort to spend your money with independently-owned vegan businesses.

The health of our communities depends on it.

A Guardian piece from a few years back states that when we spend £1 with a small or medium-sized business, 63p stays within the local community. However, when we spend that pound with a larger business from outside the community only about 40p stays in the area.

23p might not sound a lot but it adds up when we start to look at amounts spent on High Streets and in stores around the UK.

Estimates are usually way above £300 billion when it comes to calculating how much money the UK spends with bricks and mortar stores each year. Imagine if we were able to keep a larger chunk of that money in our local communities?

Indie business owners would have more cash flow to secure their longevity, pay fair wages to local people, spend their profits on other local products and services, and add to the cultural wealth of their neighbourhood.

Spending money when and where you can with local business helps keep your community thriving and drives up social capital.

Remember when I started London Vegan Potluck in Brixton? It was a local independent business that gave us the space to use. It was Ms Cupcake being supported by paying customers that allowed them to let us use their resources for free.

London Vegan Drinks is a long-running and much-loved social event hosted in Karamel, an independent vegan bar and restaurant in Wood Green. If this venue closed due to lack of customers, I would be seriously concerned for the future of this event.

When you shop at our FGV sections of Venn Street Market and Walthamstow Sunday Social each week, you are directly supporting the livelihood of local businesses. Business that have bills to pay. Businesses supporting families. Business dealing with the same outrageous rental costs as the rest of us.

If you have money to spend on groceries, products, and services it is crucial to the ongoing social and financial health of our communities that you spend as much of your budget with locally owned businesses.

I know it can be tough as a lot of us are time poor and an one time only weekly shop saves effort, but here are some simple suggestions for keeping a little bit more money local:

  • If you pass a fruit stand or independent green grocers during your daily commute, make this your shopping location of choice for fruit and vegetables. Do this once or twice a week to avoid having to cary too much on public transport
  • Make a promise to visit at least one independently owned vegan eatery once a month if you can afford it and go through with your plans. Start a dining club or group to join you in the pledge
  • Need a haircut? Look on local supermarket message boards and online chatrooms for experts who offer home haircuts at reasonable prices. Choose this over budget salon chains
  • Start a buying co-op on your street or with nearby friends to get pantry staples such as flour, tinned food, and bulk items at greatly reduced rates from Suma
  • Drink tea and coffee throughout the working day? Find a locally owned café even if it means having to go slightly out of your way to bypass a chain business
  • Support local and indie book stores. They are disappearing at breakneck speeds and we can stop this in our neighbourhoods. If it is gift giving time, buy from a bookstore instead of online retailers. Local bookstores will often sell other gift ideas too
  • If you must shop online for time restraints or mobility reasons, buy from independent retailers via The Hive. This hub lets you shop for music, books, DVDs, and gifts before fulfilling your order from High Street stores
  • Pledge to visit a vegan market at least once a month. They are now all over the UK
  • Take time to shop with vegan grocery stores. If you are unable to visit in person, many stores now offer delivery to local residents

In closing, do what you can and when you can to keep cash in your community.

It really is the least we can do as active community members.

Vegan snacks at Heathrow Terminal 4

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Here’s a super quick post to show you some of my vegan haul at Heathrow Terminal 4.

Airports used to be a sad place for vegans, but WH Smith in Terminal 4 is really stocked to the brim with vegan goodies.

The following products helped me survive the 11 hour flight to Mexico City.

What do you think?

New vegan menu for Leeds

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Leeds based vegan eatery Knave’s Kitchen will be launching their new menu on Tuesday 12th March, 2019.

Get along to the party for free samples of the full menu from 6-8PM and a buy one get one free offer for all new cocktails, all night.

With a focus on flavourful, comforting and down to earth food, Knave’s mission is to provide delicious vegan food to diners of all persuasions. Since its opening, Knaves has hosted a run of sold out supper clubs including collaborations with Berlin’s Stone Brewery and Leeds Indie Food as well as appearances at a number of events like Halifax’s Chow Down and Vegan North at North Brew Co.

Located in legendary Leeds dive bar Oporto, Knave’s is rapidly approaching its first birthday and is ready to unveil a brand new and exciting menu for this year. Created thoughtfully and meticulously by head chef Sam Thomas, the new menu will feature dishes like ‘Jerk & Palm’, a serving of jerked jackfruit, creamy Jamaican curry and coconut rice all crowned with a crispy plantain skewer, ‘Sea Shepherd’, a delicious Beer-battered Nori tofu fillet served with mushy pea-mayo and crisp baby gem in a salt & vinegar bun, ‘CFC’, corn flake-battered seitan goujons, Brazilian slaw, and chive ranch, wrapped in a toasted flour tortilla and lots more.

Yay for good eating Leeds!

FGV personal story

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I don’t just write about vegan overeating.

I sometimes write about broader themes and subjects. Today finds me doing just that.

Please note that this blog post contains references to sexual abuse.

Why do abuse survivors take so long to come forward?
Why do they change their story?
Doesn’t this mean they can’t be trusted?

I was abused. My father beat me. Laughed at me. Ridiculed me. All from the age of… well, my earliest memory of my father is him calling me cruel names. He terrorised my siblings. He withheld food. He dished out corporal punishment with wooden spoons. Cords of electrical appliances. Fishing rods. He beat my stepmother. He punched her in her face, with all his strength, in front of me. He made us lie to relatives. Friends. Family. This continued until I was old enough not to return. Maybe 14 years old.

In my other main dwelling, there was sexual abuse. I was instructed to lie about it. I was told by my mother that I had to make a choice whether we allowed the abuser to stay living with us. I was told if I asked him to leave, we would be forced to return to living in a tent on the beach which my mother and I had done for many years due to poverty. I was maybe 11 or 12 when this choice was asked of me. I was forced to visit my violent biological father every second weekend even though I protested that he beat me, but I was also asked to not tell him about the sexual abuser in my other home in order to not get that man into trouble.

My school insisted my parents take me to see a child mental health specialist to help determine why my grades were failing so drastically and why I would rather go drinking with older people than attend school regularly. I wasn’t even 15. Maybe even just 14 at best. My parents told me to lie to the mental health professionals and not disclose my knowledge of the sexual abuse in our house. They told me if I did, I would be responsible for our family being torn apart, for the abuser going to prison.

I left school on my 15th birthday, moved out of home, and starting working full-time to support myself. I was an easy target for older men in my local area. I desperately wanted validation from adults as all of my parents had failed me, so I would go with older men for sex. I was coerced into unsafe sexual situations, sometimes with groups of men aged in their 40, 50s, and 60s. I was sexually assaulted. I was physically assaulted by gay and straight identifying men for being too much of a ‘faggot’. I was drinking entire bottles of hard spirits or cheap wine multiple times a week as a form of self medication.

Everything you have just read happened to me before I was even 18 years old. I am now 44 years old and only discovering the strength to talk publicly about this. Yes, I covered for abusers. No, I didn’t report being sexually assaulted to police. For decades.

The sense of responsibility, shame, and self loathing I have lived with has been overwhelming. It has shaped my life in ways you cannot imagine. Or sadly, maybe if you are a survivor you can imagine. I learned to hide all personal matters as though they were dirty secrets that would get me in trouble. I thought of myself as undeserving of basic daily care and longterm medical treatment. I trained myself to work hard to protect other people and animals as an antidote for not practising self care at all.

The compounded trauma of what I have lived through is the reason why my story changed over the years. And why I ‘lied’ about not being abused. And why I ‘failed’ to report my own sexual assault to police. But now I am telling the truth.

It has just taken an extremely long time to find the strength and the words. Be kind to people who have found the strength to speak about their own survival. It is often the most difficult thing a person will have to do in their life.

New vegan products at Marks & Spencer

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Let’s not waste time with unnecessary words.

Jump straight into these photos showing the dozens of vegan products I saw at Marks & Spencer in Ealing Broadway, London.

Are you excited?

Eating vegan in Hammersmith

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Vegan food is everywhere in London.

I don’t simply mean there is a lot more than there used to be. I mean there is vegan food ALL OVER THE PLACE.

Take my recent walk through of the Hammersmith Broadway centre. The shopping plaza is overflowing with vegan food options.

Your plant-based cuisine options inside the centre include:

  • Coco di Mama is a London-based chain featuring Italian food and coffee. You can grab delicious comfort food including lasagne
  • Leon is showing us just how spectacular a non-vegan chain can cater for vegans and their new burger is sensational
  • Pret is still making vegan options a priority
  • Wasabi has some stunning vegan sushi, salad and soup options
  • Pulse Juice Bar is a kiosk overflowing with vegan toasted sandwich options, as well as salad and soup to go
  • Crosstown have a kiosk near the front entrance of the centre and always have about five vegan donut flavours

This list isn’t even close to everything vegan in the centre, which also houses a Tesco that has a huge selection of the Wicked Kitchen range of ready meals and sandwiches.

A vegan food revolution inside the Hammersmith Broadway centre is underway and is indicative of what’s happening all over London and the UK.

How are the vegan options in your local shopping centre?