London Vegan Potluck guest review: November 2011

The London Vegan Potluck was such a ridiculous success last night I have had to bring in a guest reviewer with a snazzy camera to whip up a pictorial review worthy of such a fine night.

Kick back, relax and enjoy the food-inspired ramblings and visual evidence gathering of The Vegan Butcher.

Last night was London Vegan Potluck 7 and if you missed it I feel very sad for you. It was a hell of a night, with tonnes of food from our event sponsor (Beanie’s Health Foods), lots of amazing vegan creations from the attendees, and an alarming amount of vegan booze (a trend I hope continues). Let’s recap, shall we?

I rode the slow train from East London with a piping hot casserole dish of Daiya-filled vegan mac & cheese in tow. I like to think that all of the stares were ones of jealousy.

I arrived early at our generously donated venue (a basement auditorium in Faraday House at Syracuse University London Program) and started bustling around with set-up.

Beanie’s Health Foods donated box upon box of Fry’s Vegetarian sausages and sausage rolls. I frolicked into the kitchen to help Josh cook them all.

The sausage rolls were easy enough—just throw them in the oven for a bake.

But what to do with the sausages? Batter them and deep-fry them, of course!

We gave the frozen wieners a quick boil to thaw them out. Josh invented an on-the-spot beer batter and was frying in no time! I danced around, wiping counters and what not, pretending to be helpful.

By that time vegans from far and wide had converged on Faraday House and a couple tables groaned under the weight of their vegan offerings.  Things were shaping up!

 After a speech from our fearless leader (FGV), we all dug in. Not to boast (fack it, I’m boasting) but a queue formed at my casserole dish and my mac & cheese was gone within two minutes of being set out.  I elbowed a couple people out of the way to ensure I had a scoop on the plates I was preparing to take back to the kitchen for Josh and me. Daiya vegan cheese is not available in the UK and I used some that I flew in from Canada in this dish. Mmmm!

Seriously though, Daiya is amazing and people can’t get enough of it. My friend Kip even licked the dish clean. I’m not kidding. Here’s photo evidence. I think when I start campaigning to bring Daiya to the European market Kip will be at my right hand.

But enough about me, let’s see what other people brought! Kip invented an aaaaamazing Thai Seitan Salad for this event. I wanted to climb inside this salad and live there. It was so good. Her bowl was scraped clean too and it didn’t take long.

A darling girl from inSpiral Lounge in Camden brought along raw coleslaw that was to die for.

We had countless salads, pasta dishes, desserts, and other scrumptious dishes. The creativity levels were pretty high yesterday. Well done, London vegans!

A latecomer (who I was too busy to catch the name of, sorry) showed up with homemade salami-style seitan and crackers. Delicious! Editor note: it was The Vegan Ronin.

Josh and I were in the kitchen, cranking out batches of sausage rolls and battered sausages like it was going out of style.  Fat Gay Vegan played the role of waiter and kept running out trays of reinforcements to the hungry vegans in the auditorium.

This potluck was hopping, with just under 50 people in attendance.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Josh and I were eating like friendless outcasts in the kitchen. At least we had each other.

I don’t know who was responsible for all of the wine and beer, but I enjoyed it very much. If you can’t cook before the potluck, I wholeheartedly suggest that you bring booze. At the end of the night I kicked back with a glass of Marks & Spencer Kool-Aid wine.

The 8pm end-time came far too soon for most potluckers. After we cleaned up (the space and ourselves) we headed down the road to the Princess Louise bar (so very British). We kicked back with some organic cherry beer and talked about how we can’t wait until the next vegan drinks. You are coming, right?! Get your details from Fat Gay Vegan. We’ll see you there!