Legendary vegan bakery Ms. Cupcake of Brixton are now stocking Mabel’s amazing vegan Yorkshire Puddings. They are the ONLY place in the country to get these for Christmas.
The Yorkshires come pre-made in a batch of four, which you can keep frozen until you need to bake them off.
In Mabel’s own words, these Yorkie’s “give you that authentic flavour, with a crispy top, a soft bottom, shaped perfectly for you to pour gravy into.”
As an added bonus they are palm oil free and use compostable bio-plastic packaging.
Get down to Ms. Cupcake quickly to pick up a pack or two for your festive meal. It’s the perfect excuse to get some cake in, too!
Follow Ms. Cupcake on Instagram and see their exact shop location thanks to Google Maps.
London. Do you need more vegan pizza in your life?
Superstar vegan pizza makers, Picky Wops, have just announced they are opening a restaurant on Brick Lane in East London. Huge news!
Picky Wops have been wowing people around London with their gourmet take on pizzas for a few years now.
A recent kitchen takeover at a pub in Brixton has been a runaway success, as have all their appearances at outdoor markets and events around the capital. People can’t get enough of their unique flour mixes, gourmet toppings, and good vibes.
If you aren’t familiar with what Picky Wops do, read on.
Picky Wops pizza bases are all fully customisable and each dough has a different colour, texture and flavour. Available bases include burnt wheat and turmeric. Pizzas can be served cheeseless or with vegan cheese, and a mouthwatering variety of toppings are available.
If pizza isn’t your thing (really?!), classic Italian sides such as garlic bread, dough balls, and a variety of vegan pasta dishes are also featured on the menu. A firm favourite is their carbonara which comes complete with meat free bacon bits. Carb loving Londoners will also appreciate the innovative loaded fries, topped with Italian inspired sauces such as pesto and bolognese.
Ingredients used by Picky Wops are high quality and plant-based, while all dishes are made from scratch. Founders Cristiano Vitelli and Andrea Moro are both trained in the art of pizza making in their home country of Italy, meaning their food remains authentic.
Enough chit chat. Where is the new Picky Wops location?
You will be able to find the restaurant at 53 Brick Lane from their opening date of Friday December 13, 2019. You can see the exact location thanks to Google Maps.
For December only, visitors can sample a festive white pizza aptly called The White Christmas. This special is topped with spiced sweet potato mash, roasted brussel sprouts and walnuts, seasoned soya, sweet cranberry jam, vegan mozzarella and a light sprinkling of parmesan.
It is a place to eat. It is a place to socialise. It is a space in which you can feel supported and celebrated, no matter who you are. It is a supportive space for independent vegan chefs to take risks with pop up events.
Black Cat is one a crucial component of the London vegan scene and an important supporter of local Hackney communities.
The food at the café is sensational and the people keeping it all running are even nice.
I hope you will join me in wishing Black Cat the very best as they celebrate their 5th anniversary. How incredible!
Black Cat is celebrating this huge milestone with an even huger party, including the launch of a new menu at their second location (yes, keep up friends!) kitchen takeover at Roadtrip & The Workshop on Old Street in Hoxton. This venue is a late night hangout with gorgeous cocktails and exciting events.
So much info to give you so let me start with the party aspect.
To celebrate 5 years of being awesome, Black Cat are throwing a fabulous party at their pop up kitchen venue at Roadtrip & The Workshop from 7pm on Wednesday November 27, 2019.
Entry is free with a suggested donation of £8 if you can afford it.
There is a super cool line up of entertainment across the evening including:
7pm Gaea
7:45pm Zek
8:20pm Immigranti
9pm Arboricidio
9:45pm Surya
10:30pm Awate
As part of the celebration, Black Cat is launching a new menu which you can check out below.
Grandma’s meatballs: house made sausage meatballs cooked in a rich white wine gravy 6.50
Croquettes : deep fried thick béchamel fritters with leek and mushrooms 5.50
Arancini: risotto croquettes with house made marinara and filled with vegan cheese 5.50
Dan Dan Cauliflower: crispy battered cauliflower coated in spicy sesame, soy and siracha sauce topped with pickled cucumbers and carrots and crushed peanuts 6
House wings : chicken style seitan tossed in our signature bbq spicy sauce, served with blue cheese sauce
Garlic prawns: vegan prawns marinated in a spicy smoked paprika, white wine and chilli flakes. Served with grilled sour dough 7
Burgers and sandwiches ( served in brioche bread and sour dough bread )
The roadtrip hot dog: moving mountains sausage, jalapeño jam, house sauerkraut, cheap mustard 8.50
The beef style burger: house made beefy patty, horseradish mayo, lettuce, grilled onions, burger sauce, gherkins. Black Cat best seller for the last 5 years, tweaked for the occasion 8.50
The Cuban: smokey tempeh, seitan ham, melted cheese, dill pickles, herby mayo in grilled buttered sour dough 8
Buttermilk corn crusted chicken style burger: tofu and seitan patty tossed in our very own scotch bonnet spicy sauce, blue cheese, lettuce, beef tomatoes and herby mayo 8.50
Get along to the Black Cat 5th anniversary part at Roadtrip & The Workshop in Hoxton on Wednesday November 27, 2019 from 7pm. You can see the exact location thanks to Google Maps.
Get along anytime after the party in the future to try the gorgeous new menu.
Be sure to visit the original Black Cat location in Hackney. See the exact location thanks to Goole Maps.
Fried chicken chain Chick ’n’ Sours has launched a range of plant-based sandwiches and sides.
The restaurant chain wanted to recreate their K Pop Sandwich in plant-based form and have included all the same flavours in a vegan version. The protein they’re using is seitan.
To emulate the flavours of their K – Pop sandwich, they built up a sandwich on their original bun (which is vegan already) with a vegan Gochujang mayo, the seitan patty (coated in a crunchy coating), chilli vinegar, and a reworked ‘slaw dressing’ to replicate the flavours but without the fish sauce. They top the burger with vegan Sriracha mayo.
The menu also includes plant-based nuggets called No Way Nuggs. These are a different protein using pea and soy that is coated in breadcrumbs. They coating the nuggets in a vegan ginger miso mayo and sprinkle with spring onions, pickled ginger, and sesame.
They can now offer a completely vegan meal on the new menu and have re-engineered versions of their famous sides to make this happen. This set menu includes House Pickles, No Way K-Pop, No Way Ginger Miso Nuggs, Bang Bang Cucumbers, Pickled Watermelon Salad, Fries (without dripping), and plant based Gochujang mayo and vegan Sriracha mayo.
Chick ’n’ Sours now has four branches across London: Haggerston, Seven Dials, Islington and Spitalfields.
Please note that Chick ‘n’ Sours is a restaurant that also serves meat and dairy. Their website and social media reflect that fact. If you are looking for a fried chicken experience that is completely vegan, you can dine with Temple of Seitan in Hackney and Camden.
London Vegan Beer Fest was created back in 2013 because the UK capital didn’t have a lot of large scale socialising events targeted just at vegans. Actually, outside of events such as VegfestUK and the Animal Aid Fayre, there weren’t many ways I can recall to celebrate with a vegan beer in your hand.
Following on from a visit to the original Los Angeles Vegan Beer Festival (created and run by Nic Adler and Quarrygirl), I was inspired to create something similar for London that was completely plant-based and focussed around beer.
It started as a small garden party in Bethnal Green for 200 people and over the next six years grew into one of London’s biggest annual vegan parties, welcoming thousands of revellers.
In addition, Vegan Beer Fest UK events were launched in Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield, and Coventry.
But here we are in 2019 and the vegan landscape has changed drastically. No longer is a moderately-sized vegan event with curated food, beer, and wine offerings such a unique occurrence.
Just as Hackney Downs Vegan Market found itself unwanted due to the mainstreaming of veganism, Vegan Beer Fest UK events started to feel a bit superfluous in the current climate.
People can buy vegan beer in every single shop, supermarket, and pub in the country while High Street restaurants have made veganism more than normal and common. Large scale music festivals are even showcasing entire vegan food and drink sections.
Josh and I are extremely proud of the events we put together and hosted over the past six years and are sad to be wrapping them up, but it is important to be realistic about how the climate for these types of events has changed.
Vegan Beer Fest UK events are not planned for 2019. Who knows? Maybe you will see them return in a different format in the future.
Josh and I would like to personally thank a number of people who helped make these events fun and valuable community happenings over the past half decade.
Much love to the businesses, breweries, and food traders who traded with our events around the UK. Some of you travelled great distances to be a part of these special days and all of you worked tirelessly to prove that veganism does not mean something substandard.
We have eternal gratitude to our host venues. Thank you for taking a chance on us and giving our little vegan beer events safe and special homes over the years.
I can’t express how important the people are who helped us stage and run the events. Some of you were paid and some of you helped simply out of the goodness of your hearts. All of you understood the value these events added to our community. Thank you.
Follow Your Heart has been associated with our events for several years and this California company specialising in vegan cheeses and salad dressings (including the legendary Vegenaise) made our events possible financially. If you saw some of the margins we were running on most years, you wouldn’t underestimate the importance of Follow Your Heart‘s support. We send all of our love and gratitude to them. They are a big company that truly cares.
I send personal and heartfelt thanks to my dear friend Ricardo who has worked on the event design and posters for several years. He is an extremely talented designer and helped us forge a unique personality for Vegan Beer Fest UK events. His ideas will live on in the hundreds of t-shirts and tote bags bought by attendees during the last few years.
These events would have been impossible without all of the wonderful people who attended each year. Thank you for supporting us and for partying alongside us. You drank beer, you devoured street food, and you helped us raise approximately £1,000 for our featured charity Isla Urbana (securing clean and safe water for people in Mexico) through our Charioke rooms at the beer events. We couldn’t drag people away from those amazing charity karaoke sessions!
Lastly, I want to state just how grateful I am to Josh for the support he showed my initial idea of launching a beer festival. In addition, he needs to be thanked for the ridiculous amount of work he put into making these events happen each year. There were early mornings, long days, car journeys from one end of the UK to the other to meet deadlines, karaoke hosting duties, clean ups, stall building tasks, door and ticket collecting duties, and probably about two dozen more jobs that I can’t recall.
Honestly, running these events on our own was emotionally and physically challenging like few experiences I’ve had.
Josh did them all alongside me because he believed, as I did, that we were making special places for people to feel celebrated in their vegan lifestyle.
Vegan Beer Fest UK events were our way of helping to improve outcomes for non-human animals by making people feel good about their compassionate choices.
I look to the future with memories of these events firmly and fondly in my heart.
Hospital food has had a bad reputation for decades. Never mind vegan hospital food, which I’ve never had to try and find before now. I recently had an operation which required an overnight stay in a London hospital. Ahead of time I contacted the hospital to put in my request for vegan meals and hoped for the best.
They confirmed vegan meals would be provided for me but couldn’t give me exact details of what would be available. I had the lowest of expectations and asked my loved ones to be on standby to source a packed lunch from outside if needed!
The day came, the operation was a success and this was my post-op meal, a combination of lunch and dinner due to the timings on the day.
They brought me round a jacket potato with double beans, a hummus sandwich on brown bread with crisps and a side salad. Dessert was a fruit bowl with melon, grapes and pineapple pieces. I was impressed! Nothing here was groundbreaking but it was thoughtfully put-together, healthy, tasty and filling.
Even my visitors were impressed! Though perhaps this was because there was no need for anyone to do an emergency dash to the nearest food retailer.
The real fun came the next morning when breakfast arrived. They brought me avocado on sourdough toast, a large bowl of porridge with maple syrup, another round of toast with peanut butter and another fruit bowl.
It’s one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had, which was extra welcome in the circumstances!
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.
Following a successful launch in 2018, London’s first plant-based, zero waste market is back! This is a not-for-profit initiative with all profits going to Animal Equality, a leading animal protection organisation.
Dedicated to all things eco, Zero Mkt is a one-stop shop with over 40 stallholders. You can purchase bulk grains and fresh produce, upcycled accessories, soaps, candles, cosmetics, vintage clothing and much, much more – all under one roof!
And you get to enjoy tasty vegan food and drink as you browse.
There will also be free workshops taking place throughout the day, including a cooking demo from plant-based, zero waste chef Max La Manna; a talk from Humane Society International (UK) about the environmental impacts of animal agriculture; and an eco embroidery workshop with Offset Warehouse.
Zero Mkt is all about:
Zero animal products
Zero single-use plastics
Zero waste
Surplus meals will be donated to City Harvest and leftover food will be composted and used by the venue’s Gardening Club. Trees will also be planted by event founders, as part of a carbon offsetting mission.
Zero Mkt is taking place on Saturday April 13, 2019 between 10am and 5pm at Saint Thomas More Language College on Cadogan Street, Chelsea.
The nearest underground station is Sloane Square. Lifts and disability accessible toilets are available on site.
Entry into the event and all workshops is totally FREE. Simply download your free ticket in advance on Eventbrite to guarantee entry.
Superstar vegan restaurant chain Arancini Brothers now has a fourth location in London, this time south of the river!
The 100% vegan restaurant chain is famous for its Sicilian risotto balls, flavoursome wraps, and decadent burgers. With much-adored outlets in Old Street, Kentish Town, and Dalston this fast and nutritious food chain has already established a solid hold north of the river.
Owner and founder Dave told me:
“We are opening our fourth location at Arch 34 Maltby Street, Bermondsey. We have come such a long way since we started with a simple street food concept in Brick Lane Market almost ten years ago!”
You can eat with Arancini Brothers at their Maltby Street location between 9:30am and 9:30pm, 7 days a week. The location is good for dining in, taking away, or having food delivered.
In other huge news, Arancini Brothers has become the first ever UK chain to offer a franchise opportunity.
Yes, it is your chance to franchise a vegan restaurant!
Arancini Brothers are now looking for franchise partners to open and run versions of their wildly successful business all over the UK and the planet.
If you think you have what it takes (including the funds!) to open a location of this popular vegan food business in your area, click here to read more about the franchise opportunity.
Be sure to get into the Bermondsey location as soon as you can in order to eat some amazing vegan food and congratulate Arancini Brothers on their deserved success.
Extra news: to help Arancini Brothers celebrate the opening of their fourth London restaurant, I am running an Instagram follower drive. I am trying to get them to 15,000 followers! They are just short of 10k so we need to work hard to get them there. Follow them on Instagram now.
Shayna Weisz and fellow students at Middlesex University have won a hard-fought campaign to have live animal displays banned on their campus.
This inspirational story shows what hard work and a belief in being kind can achieve. I am thrilled for Shayna to tell the story in her own words below.
Reindeer on display at Middlesex University
Our victory by Shayna Weisz
I am thrilled with this news.
It’s taken such a lot of hard work over the past year. They really didn’t make it easy for us – I joined Middlesex University in North London last year, and as soon as I heard about their upcoming Christmas market featuring live reindeer, I started off writing politely to the event organisers about my concerns and encouraging others to do the same. They simply dismissed us, so I decided to organise a peaceful but powerful protest where myself and others stood with signs and handing out leaflets surrounding the reindeers’ pen at the event, where the poor animals stood with no stimulation for 8 hours straight, surrounded by the noise and the crowd. We also noticed that they were transported to and from our campus in the back of a van.
Student protest at Middlesex University
Most people attending the event easily saw the validity in what we were doing as soon as we explained it, and agreed with our stance – including teachers and professors who stopped by and praised us for what we were doing. This was very encouraging, so following that we started a university-wide petition – although there were so many rules in place for how and when and where we were allowed to collect signatures, that it took a full 6 months to gather the required amount for it to pass.
We were informed that it was the biggest petition ever run at the university, and that the motion now had to go to a referendum. So we had to campaign again, but finally, with 60% of the students voting in favour of our motion, it passed just last Friday – specifically calling for a ban on all live animal use as entertainment on campus. For the first time in 12 years there were no reindeer at their annual Christmas market and this will also eliminate the future use of owls who are usually chained to little stands on World Book Day and caged exotic reptiles on Easter.
Reindeer on display at Middlesex University
Moving forward
For more information about the suffering of reindeer at festive events, you could check out Animal Aid’s recent campaign where they’ve done a while undercover exposé of the industry, and have lots of facts about the detrimental effects on the animals’ health and wellbeing.
I’m over the moon that all this hard work has paid off and that my University won’t be having live animal events anymore, but I really think it’s also important to get the word out there about this important step they’ve taken, in the hope that other institutions will be inspired to do the right thing and follow suit.
