Super fancy London restaurant Pied a Terre sent me their vegan feast for two box. It wasn’t exactly the five star experience I was expecting but it was tasty, especially the French onion soup.
If you had told me at the beginning of the year the world would still be struggling through the COVID disaster in November, I would have had a difficult time imaging that as reality.
I would have even been even more surprised had you told me I would no longer be living in Mexico City, but rather in Sheffield!
Life is full of surprises. Due to global circumstances, I’m living in Sheffield and working alongside a vegan food business. I feel extremely fortunate to have steady employment and a place to live, it’s just that it has come out of the blue.
We do what we must at times like this (has there ever been a time like this?) and I’m doing my best in Sheffield, a city I have loved for a long time and with which I have nurtured a special relationship ever since I hosted my Vegan Beer Festival events here.
Of course many food businesses are closed or sometimes closed in Sheffield, but I am still managing to eat and consume. You can’t hold a good FGV down!
Check out some of my foodie adventures since I’ve been in Sheffield this year.
The photo above shows my first meal on my first night back in Sheffield in July. I ordered a big comfort food bundle from Sunshine Deli to be delivered to my hotel room.
This vegan eatery has a lot of fans and delivers not only hot food, but heat and cook at home packs for people living longer distances from Sheffield.
One of my favourite vegan businesses in the UK is Truffle Pig, Sheffield’s very own artisan truffle and chocolate expert.
I first experienced the wonders of Truffle Pig a few years back when they traded at my Vegan Beer Festival in Sheffield. When they sold out almost as soon the doors opened, I knew they were something special.
Friday restocks on their website sell out just as quickly and Truffle Pig now has fans all over the UK.
There is nothing I love more than an independent vegan grocery store and in Sheffield, we have the best!
The Incredible Nutshell is home to a dazzling range of vegan products including meats, cheeses, ice cream, chocolates, sweets, personal care items, household cleaners, pantry items, tinned food, and even alcohol.
Visit The Incredible Nutshell online and follow on Instagram.
In the intro of this blog entry I mentioned I am in Sheffield working with a vegan food company.
My mates at Make No Bones asked me to come onboard and help with a few things, including promoting their new project called Saucy. Saucy is a vegan takeaway joint selling wings, burgers, fries, desserts, and drinks.
Check out the vegan chicken burger in the shot above.
I currently live near a part of Sheffield called Kelham Island and just around the corner from me is a gorgeous pub called The Fat Cat.
This pub always has a few vegan options on the menu and it is all old-school pub fare. See my meal above consisting of mushroom pie, wedges, peas, and gravy.
This next one is a bit of a cheat as it isn’t actually in Sheffield. The Globe is in a town called Glossop but I have included it as I visited from Sheffield during one of the brief time periods when short journeys were deemed OK and safe.
It is close enough to drive to if you are in Sheffield and well worth the trip, but is actually much closer to Manchester.
The Globe has a 100% vegan food menu and is one of my favourite pubs on the planet. The prices are ridiculously low and, as you can tell by my photo, you will be more than satisfied if you love comfort food.
I dropped in to see Icarus & Apollo a few weeks ago in the outdoor food and bar complex known as SteelYard Kelham. The site is one of those shipping container constructions that are all the rage and even has a bar on the roof!
Icarus & Apollo serve fusion food (with a bit of Mexican and African influence) that looks great in photos. I’m always seeing happy customers sharing photos on socials.
Pom Kitchen is a vegetarian cafe in a cute and trendy part of town known as Sharrow Vale. The collection of shops on Sharrow Vale Road is a mix of foodie hot spots, bakeries, fresh food mongers, and antique traders.
It is here where Pom Kitchen has built a loyal customer base with their mix of vegetarian and vegan offerings.
A much-loved local coffee shop that isn’t vegan might just be selling one of the tastiest vegan sandwiches in the UK.
Create Coffee is a few doors along from the aforementioned The Incredible Nutshell on Chesterfield Road. They of course specialise in caffeine but just happen to do an incredibly tasty vegan Reuben using seitan supplied by Make No Bones.
The Beer Engine is one of Sheffield’s favourite drinking spots but unfortunately they have been more closed than open during my time here due to the pandemic.
When they do re-open for service, I really must insist you try the food of Dumpling City. This is the in-house kitchen of the pub and the flavours of the vegan offerings will knock your socks off. They are also branching into delivery, so stay alert.
Finally, I’m delighted to share these two photos from Make No Bones. They are the reason I’m currently in Sheffield and even though I work alongside them I don’t think it is unfair to say it is the best vegan food in the city.
Their food is currently reaching people only via delivery and takeaway due to the lockdown but that is not dampening the city’s love of the menu. The Sunday roast dinners fly out each week, while the newly-added Big Make burger is winning hearts all over South Yorkshire.
I love showing you all the samples and PR gifts I get sent… and not just because I love to gloat!
I share because I want to let you know about some of the great vegan products available. My list of gifts always includes products from independent vegan businesses, so it give me a chance to support them with a little bit of exposure.
Check out my haul from this week and let me know in the comments if you have tried/enjoyed anything listed.
Be sure to click the multiple images on some of the posts, otherwise you might miss some sweet treats.
Extra note: to see all my latest food photos, follow me on Instagram.
There have been quite a number of PR gifts and free samples sent to me over the past few weeks, so I thought I would share some of the highlights with you.
Click through to each of the Instagram posts if you wanna discover more information or follow the brands.
The ninth most popular post was a photo of me accompanied by a plea for people to not buy or breed dogs. It resonated with a lot of people and is a message for the ages!
There was a HUGE response for this photo of my Follow Your Heart pin. I never expected this to be on the end of year list, let alone come in at number eight.
This is the first of two photos of London vegan cheese shop La Fauxmagerie to make my top nine Instagram list for 2019. Having two entries is proof of how excited vegans were about this shop opening.
Vegan food in airports can be a bit uninspired so this photo of my breakfast at Wagamama at Heathrow got a lot of likes. It was a tasty treat to enjoy before a long haul flight.
I shared this message from Chapter One coffee shop in Edinburgh and it was popular enough to land at number five on my top nine list for the year. People loved reading news of this popular café switching to become a totally vegan business.
I am surprised this post took off like it did because it is kinda an ugly photo! The Wicked range in Tesco is one of the most successful product launches I have ever seen and this photo being in my top nine is evidence that people can’t get enough.
This post is not a happy read and contains a few upsetting memories of bad times from throughout my life. People who follow me on Instagram were kind and supportive, making this the third most popular post of mine for 2019.
Warning: it is a very upsetting read so do proceed with caution.
LOTS of people responded positively to this photo I took in Heathrow airport. It is exciting to see so many mainstream business be so open about their vegan options.
La Fauxmagerie took the number one slot on my Instagram account for 2019. News of this vegan cheese shop opening in London broke the Internet and more than 4,500 people liked this photo.
Much love to everyone who has helped make my blog and social media accounts viable for another year.
All of this is done to help promote veganism and independent vegan businesses. I want people to go vegan and stay vegan to help improve outcomes for animals.
Social media has been crucial to the rise of veganism in London and no platform has been more important than Instagram.
Instagram is an important component for vegan businesses trying to spread word of their offerings. The social media platform is free, focussed on visuals, and extremely user/customer focussed.
Internet usage is part of our everyday lives and we have become socialised into responding to attractive visuals that grab our attention and short bursts of information that tell us what we need to know in the least amount of time.
That sums up Instagram perfectly!
Following is a list of ten vegan businesses in London that have harnessed the power of social media effectively by amassing more than 20,000 followers on Instagram.
Follow these accounts if you aren’t already and don’t forget you can also follow my FGV Instagram account for the best of London, dining in Mexico City, and the occasional rant!
Here is a super short post to tell you two things:
I have a fab Instagram account that you might like to follow
My Instagram account has just been verified and now sports a super smart blue tick
Yep, it’s official.
There is only one FGV!
My Instagram account is the perfect place to see the latest news from my vegan markets, keep updated on my food adventures in the UK and Mexico, plus see the occasional drunken story from when I venture out to trashy gay bars.
What’s not to love?!
You can follow me on Instagram and check out some recent posts below.
As I do at the end of each year, I like to share the most popular photos from my Instagram account from across the previous twelve months.
As you can see from the list below, Wagamama made the list three times and bizarrely the same dish made up two of those posts! If you work at Wagamama and you make a lot of money, I won’t say no to a monetary showing of appreciation. I didn’t post those pics for my own financial return, but holy shit did you people get some incredible PR from me this year.
Some of the entries are surprising (that popcorn chicken in at number 3 and those tiffin bites appearing AT ALL?!) and it is extremely telling that eight of the nine photos feature products from huge, non-vegan multinational companies.
If you need proof of how mainstream and commodified veganism and plant-based eating has become, this list might just come in handy.
Enjoy reliving these most-liked moments from 2017 and if you don’t already, follow me over on Instagram for new adventures in non-animal living in 2018.
Here we go, starting with number nine and counting down to the most popular:
I live part of the year in London and part of the year in Mexico City.
Most of my time spent in those two cities is spent drooling over vegan food photos coming out of the USA. There are seemingly dozens of new plant-based products every week, a lot of which never make it to the UK or Mexico.
This week I find myself in California, so I’m wasting no time when it comes to playing catch up.
Number one on my list this trip was the Beyond Burger by Beyond Meat.
Tonight I visited my buddies Laura and Jonas for a BBQ session and thankfully they had plans to throw the Beyond Burger on the grill.
The Beyond Burger looks a lot like a minced meat patty and cooked up perfectly over the coals… although that probably had something to do with Jonas being an expert BBQ operator.
I don’t know when this incredible product will make it out to the UK and Mexico, but believe me when I say it will be worth the wait. It is close to being the best burger I have ever tasted.
My buddy Ricardo and I visited one of the best vegan eateries in Mexico City earlier today, Vegamo. This place is packed solid with delicious dishes and cool drinks. I just can’t get enough of it and the owner are the friendliest people you could hope to meet.
Today I decided to not do my usual trick of playing it safe. I have a habit of always getting the same thing, but I pushed myself to take a leap.
And I am beyond glad I did. Please pay due respect to these AMAZING waffle sandwiches that Ricardo and I scoffed down.
I know most of my readers aren’t heading to Mexico City anytime soon, but I wanted to share in the hope of spreading waffle sandwich hysteria far and wide. I wanna see homemade waffle sandwiches flooding social media.
Extra note: my sandwich was called Yoda and the waffle dough was coloured/flavoured with spinach. Divine. Ricardo went for the Chewbacca.
Extra extra note: Ricardo is the extremely talented designer of the Vegan Beer Fest UK posters/logos for last year and he is set to once again design them all in 2017. Yay for talent!
