Second Time's a Charm

Alara stock the usuals plus serve organic coffee and have a self service food and salad section (price by weight), none of it was out yet so not sure if anything was vegan. They are also home to a rather large supply of Vegusto products (sauce, cheese, sandwich slices and sausages).

I didnt realise that Coyo came in a smaller size, no doubt it is more value for money to buy the larger size, but paying £2.99 for yogurt rather than £4.99 feels marginally less extravagent. I have tried Vegusto once before but was not that keen, being of the opinion you never write anything off after one try (uness of course it is REALLY bad) I am giving it another go.

Which brings me onto lunch, after a disppointing first visit to Wild Food Cafe last year Sash and I agreed we would have to come back and try out the menu properly.

They are still serving a mixture of raw, non raw, vegan and non vegan items. This can make ordering a little more tricky, I always think of Wild Food as a raw vegan place but it’s not so be careful when you order. I almost ended up with a takeaway dessert that had eggs in it and we also spotted honey as an ingredient on one of the salads.

With 3.5 of us we used the trusty strategy of each ordering something different to try out the most possible options. Everything was fresh and interesting, I love it when I get to try new things I have never had before.

I went for the roast which they do every Sunday, this and the hummus ordered for the Lil Man were the least exciting dishes. The spring vegetables in my roast were seasoned really well and cooked just how I like them – with plenty of crunch, there was a small dollop of horse radish which I have not eaten in years. The roast potatoes were mixed with nuts, there was also something else which I am guessing was meant to be some kind of stuffing? Unforutnately the description on the board was not very detailed at all.

The impressive looking deli lunch was a selection or raw and cooked dips served in endive (I thought it was chicory and a quick Google reveals they are the same thing). Some of these dips were quite rich so using the leaves was a good idea. At a guess I would say there was delicious super smoky baba ganoush, pesto, gaucamole, pickled vegetables which really tasted like pickled onions although it was red and a white foamy creamy concoction (celeriac puree perhaps?) that was also included in the Sunday roast.

I was really impressed with the living falafel, the tabouleh it was served with had something sprouted in it hemp seeds maybe, again the menu description is not detailed enough, it did have a cooked falafel look and texture about it. To keep it completely raw you can choose to have it with sunfood crackers.

The selection of raw desserts appeared to be mainly chocolate bars and one dessert of the day which turned out to be three banana bread, lemon tart (made with eggs), chocolate cake (raw).

Every table has water carafes with tap water and glasses, handy as our juice order never arrived, and tubs of wheat grass, we weren’t sure if we were allowed to nibble on these or not. 🙂 It worked out to about £13 each not including drinks or tip and we were all sufficiently stuffed afterwards, hence dessert was to be takeaway.

You might also notice the machine with the rotating silver drum on it. They opened it up for us and the small was amazing, it is a grinder used to make their own raw chocolate. Sash was eyeing this up throughout most of the meal, I am wondering how long it will be before one appears in her kitchen and by default lots of raw chocolate in my belly…

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