There are two huge music events coming your way in June 2019 and they BOTH feature a fabulous FGV food area.
Mighty Hoopla and Cross The tracks combine to take over Brockwell Park, South London on Saturday June 8 and Sunday June 9, 2019.
Mighty Hoopla is a pop music explosion featuring live performances by Chaka Khan, All Saints, Bananarama, Artful Dodger, and many more acts to keep you movin’ or chillin’ (depending on your style!).
Sunday sees the takeover of Cross The Tracks with an amazing line up featuring Chaka Khan again alongside Masego, Martha Reeves and The Vandellas, Jordan Rakei and some of South London’s most-forward thinking new jazz collectives.
But what about the vegan food? The FGV section has you fully covered. Check out this list:
Extra news: to celebrate the FGV food section at these events, I have curated a special FGV/Mighty Hoopla Spotify playlist featuring some of my favourite tracks from the line up. If you LOVE pop music, you need to listen now.
Put this date in your calendar because you are definitely going to want to be a part of this fab event.
To help Hackney Downs Studios celebrate their annual Open Studios event on July 4, I am thrilled to announce the return of Hackney Downs Vegan Market for ONE NIGHT ONLY.
Eat Work Art are incredibly excited to announce their 10th anniversary Open Studios Series 2019, a celebration of 10 years of Eat Work Art across Netil House, Hackney Downs Studios and Old Paradise Yard.
The Eat Work Art Open Studios event at Hackney Downs Studios is taking place on Thursday July 4, 2019 from 6pm.
This year, Eat Work Art celebrates a decade of transforming under-appreciated buildings into vibrant, creative communities. Hackney Downs Studios was the second site to be developed, back in 2011, and since then they have attracted thousands of people to their annual Open Studios events, with the public eager to witness the magic that surrounds their catalytic home.
As you know, Hackney Downs Studios was also home to the legendary and game-changing Hackney Downs Vegan Market so it felt right that we should be back on site for this momentous celebration.
Hackney Downs Vegan Market will be back with half a dozen of the very best vegan street food traders in the capital.
We are going back to where it all began!
Open Studios will allow you to meet and network with over 300 inspiring creatives, as you discover their spaces and check out their incredible work. Take a tour of our collaborative spaces Palmspace and Heartspace to meet the makers & artists behind them for a chance to purchase original works of art, craft and design.
Expect exhibitions and talks curated by residents as well as taster classes & workshops, exclusive sample sales and art showcase at Public Gallery. Enjoy live music, food, drinks and dancing at our after party.
Not only will you be able to dine at our vegan market curated by Fat Gay Vegan (that’s me!) but you will also be able to explore on-site zero waste emporium Re:Store for environmentally friendly and sustainably sourced goodies.
Doesn’t this all sound fabulous?!
Due to the overwhelming demand for this event, free tickets need to be booked in advance. Yes, free tickets!
Click here to RSVP to the Facebook event and book your free tickets. Don’t just RSVP.
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!
The Maidstone Vegan Festival is BACK on Saturday July 13, 2019!
It is a fab day out and this year you can get along between 11am and 4pm at the Union Street Methodist Church.
The mission statement for the festival is:
“Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.” (The Vegan Society)
Our aim for the Maidstone Vegan Festival is to get people excited about the “fastest growing lifestyle movement”! We are keen to show people that going vegan doesn’t mean missing out, and that veganism is an accessible lifestyle for all that will not only benefit the animals, but also our planet and health.
Visitors to the Maidstone Vegan Festival can expect to discover a wide range of food and drink, personal care and beauty products and treatments, clothing and gifts, as well as take time to meet local animal rescues and find out more about activism in the community.
The festival has been running since 2016, but this is the first year Niki Forster and Becky Jones have organised it. They own a vegan restaurant, Potato Tomato, and have been vegan for 32 years! The sisters ran the pop up cafe at the last two festivals and will do so again this year.
Expect lots of new ideas for this year, including The Great Vegan Bake Off! There will also be a comedy show featuring the fantastic vegan comedian, Chris Stokes. Musicians for the festival so far include Rudy Warman and the Heavy Weather, and Jade Chamberlain with her super 80s on Show set.
It’s sounds like a wonderful day out for the whole family, especially as they also have a children’s area with face painting and biscuit decorating.
You can RSVP to the Facebook event page, where you can also invite friends. If you don’t use Facebook, you can find more info about the event online here.
Every single vegan in Mexico City knows all about the incredible food served at Por Siempre Vegana TaquerĂa, but not everybody is familiar with their weekend brunch.
The vegan taco restaurant is my favourite place to eat in the Mexican capital but for some reason brunch had also passed me by.
I corrected that mistake today when Gil and I visited. I can’t believe I left it this long!
Everything was truly delicious.
The French toast served with fresh fruit set the mood and we washed it down with hot chocolate and orange juice.
Our mains were the torta de chilaquiles (a crunchy bread roll filled with fried tortillas, red salsa, onion, coriander, cream, and cheese) as well as the huarache (big tortilla topped with beans, nopales, cream, curd cheese, and seitan steak).
We were both extremely satisfied.
Por Siempre actually has two locations within minutes of each other. The taco stand on the street and the sit cafe style location.
You can get all the direction and opening hours details for both spots on the Por SiempreFacebook page.
If you are, you should get along to some the screenings taking place as part of Leeds Queer Film Festival 2019… and not just for the films!
In excellent news, all of the food served during the festival is vegan.
First things first. Let me share the aims of the festival:
We create spaces to showcase queer cinema with a focus on independent and DIY films. We screen films that elevate and prioritise the voices and work of those most marginalised within our LGBTQ+ communities. LQFF is run by unpaid volunteers and we are not for profit; money raised from our festival goes towards future events and supporting queer filmmakers. We aim to make our events as friendly, affordable, accessible and inclusive as we can. By bringing people together and building links, we hope to strengthen our communities.
Now, what about the food?
All the food is vegan and all the food is EXTREMELY inexpensive. Snacks are usually ÂŁ1 while a hot meal will set you back between ÂŁ2 and ÂŁ3. Devour cakes, samosas, sausage rolls, hot dogs, soup, and curry. There will also be hot and cold drinks.
The festival is unfunded so they rely on selling food to make a little bit of money. The more you eat, the more you’re supporting the future of the festival!
Click here to discover all the details and buy tickets for Leeds Queer Film Festival 2019, which runs May 9 until 12, 2019.
The irresistible menu contains wraps, burgers, toasties, panini, smoothies, teas, coffees, cakes as well as take home treats such as cheeses, meats, chocolates, sour cream, cooking cream and whipping cream.
Visitors can fill up on alcoholic drinks including wines and beers in addition to unique super food lattes.
If you have been to London during the past few years, or you live there permanently, you will probably have visited vegan ice cream parlour Yorica!
The Soho location (along with their travelling ice cream van) really is one of the leading vegan food providers in the UK.
But the great news for those outside London is that Yorica! is now making waves in supermarkets around the UK.
As of today (Monday May 6, 2019) you can now buy the brand new vanilla Yorica! tubs in Waitrose stores around the country.
This is fabulous news.
And if you didn’t already know, their Double Chocolate Cookie tubs are available via Ocado and Waitrose while the Salted Caramel is being sold exclusively via Ocado.
Be sure to follow Yorica! on Instagram to keep updated with their expansion.
Phung Kay make some of the best food on the planet.
That’s not up for discussion. Just the facts, people.
I’m honoured to have collaborated with the Chinese cuisine superstars on several occasions and now I’m thrilled to hear two big news pieces about their food business.
News the first?
I want to give a HUGE congratulations to Phung Kay on their recent award. The sensational foodies picked up the Golden Chopsticks Award for Best Vegetarian dish.
I’m not surprised but I am extremely happy for them.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw3-RKggEh1/
And what is the other news?
Phung Kay now have a gorgeous tea house in Model Market Lewisham!
This is the best news for South London. Phung Kay will be elevating vegan eating to a whole new level and I promise you that the area has never seen anything as outstanding as the food they serve.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BwH47OIA7fg/
To keep updated on the Model Market menu, you need to follow Phung Kay on Instagram.
And of course there will be more news and events in the near future from Phung Kay because you can’t control cuisine this good.
This post was originally written for, and published, in the November 2018 issue of Vegan Life Magazine. You can subscribe to the magazine online here.
Waiter, there is a pork chop in my soup!
As colder weather creeps in and daylight hours shorten (well, for some readers!), one of the most versatile food types regains popularity and springs to life on menus everywhere.
Yes. It’s time to say hello to soup again.
Soup might not seem like a dynamic topic and I’m imagining a few fingers twitching as you all decide if you should skip my column this month, but I promise that I have a silly soup story from my past that will entertain you.
Strangely, it involves pork chops and it serves as study of what we vegans sometimes have to deal with when we live in a non-vegan household.
Let’s take a trip back in time to the 90s when I was a meat-free shop assistant living my pre-Fat Gay Vegan life in Australia, listening to Alanis Morissette and Take That. Circumstance had me house-sharing with a couple who were loud and proud carnivores, meaning I stayed out of the kitchen around meal time.
One blustery Sydney evening found me stumbling into the kitchen to find my housemates cooking up a huge simmering pot of pumpkin soup. My nostrils flared and my tummy rumbled as I was asked if I would like a bowl.
I leapt at the offer.
I was busy pulling open cupboards to grab the utensils I needed when I noticed the most peculiar thing happening. The cook was reaching into the soup with a pair of metal tongs to retrieve two pork chops!
Why were there pork chops in the pumpkin soup?! My mouth dropped open and I must have looked incredulous because the chop-wielding chef told me that there was nothing to worry about. The meat had previously been cooked and they were only using the hot soup to reheat it.
I fled the kitchen and hid in my room for a few hours, shaken by the experience. The story actually makes me laugh when I tell it now, but at the time I was horrified!
If you put my pork chop debacle to one side, soup can actually be one of the dishes to unite vegans and non-vegans and is one of the easiest foods to veganise.
So, let’s have a brief chat about vegan soup and how it can please everyone.
Soup is the perfect food for single vegans. It can be thrown together with whatever you have available, you can season it to match your tastes exactly, and leftovers can be frozen for another meal on another day. There is no such thing as making too much soup!
If you are a big soup fan and you like to experiment in the kitchen, you can be inspired by soup recipes from all over the planet. Carry out a quick Internet search for Mexican black bean soup or the legendary borscht from Russia. You don’t have to be limited to tomato and spring vegetable (not there is anything wrong with them!).
A quality soup is also the perfect vegan stealth move. Take your signature vegan soup to parties, potlucks, and family gatherings and if it tastes amazing, nobody will bat an eyelid. Soup can be veganised easily and I’ve witnessed many plant-based soups be the favourite dish on the table.
Even though we associate soup with colder months, we need to be aware that it isn’t just a winter time concern.
If you are in a part of the world where the weather is warm right now, start to explore the wonder of chilled soups. The aforementioned borscht is a delicacy when served cold, as are gazpacho or the marvelous naengmyeon noodle soup from Korea. I even once enjoyed a chilled watermelon soup in an Indian restaurant in Barcelona.
One of my favourite qualities of soup is that it can be an extremely economical choice. If you can afford some beans and vegetables, plus a decent vegan stock powder, you have got yourself a nutritious plant-based meal that won’t break the bank.
I really am in love with soups all over again. They are cheap, tasty, versatile, and a great way to please all types of eaters. Soups are the food bridge across the vegan/non-vegan divide (and let’s not forget how easily they can be made gluten free).
Just remember to check for pork chops if you are ever offered a bowl in someone else’s kitchen!
