Veganuary: Eating at Resturants as a vegan, vol 2

Updated 26/08/2021

It's day 3 of veganuary, and today I want to focus on places that are easy to dine at when you're vegan. Most of these even have designated vegan menus if you ask! It's really great to see so many places taking the time and effort to make it easier for us to order food without worrying about if it's SFV or not.

What's vegan at Pizza Express?

Vegan doughballs!

Recently, Pizza Express have brought out multiple new vegan pizzas and an entire vegan menu! This means you can now enjoy 3 courses here. The food on offer is:

• Doughballs (with harissa dip)
• Marinated olives
• Roasted tomatoes
• Baked Garlic Mushroom
• Rosemary & Garlic Flatbread with Houmous
• Most of their pizzas can be made vegan on request. Some on the menu include classic, romana (thinner but larger) and leggera (the middle is cut out and replaced with salad) versions:
• Sloppy vegan (Quorn™ pieces with green pepper, red onion, tomato, smoky chilli, garlic oil, vegan mozzarella alternative and parsley on a Romana base)
• Vegan Giardiniera (Artichoke, mushrooms, red onion, black olives, tomatoes, vegan mozzarella, garlic oil)
• Padana (SPECIFY VEGAN, vegan mozzarella, caramelised onion, spinach, red onion, tomato, garlic oil)
• Margherita (SPECIFY VEGAN, vegan mozzarella, tomato sauce) 
• Veneziana (SPECIFY VEGAN, Pine kernels, red onion, baby capera, black olives, sultanas, vegan mozzarella, tomato)

The jackfruit pizza (front, discontinued) and the padana pizza (back)

• Vegan norish bowl
• Pea and asparagus risotto
• Calzone Verdure (Roasted peppers and aubergine with spinach, smoky tomato harissa, hot chilli, tomato with garlic and topped with rosemary. Served with salad and balsamic dressing)
• Coconut / raspberry sorbet
• Carrot cake (comes with a hot drink)

Carrot cake with a soya latte

You can now order hot drinks with soya milk too, including:

• Tea
• Americano
• Latte
• Cappuccino

What's vegan at Lounges?

Vegan breakfast (before they introduced vegan bacon and falafel!)

Each lounge has a completely different name, but you can recognise them by either googling the name, looking at the menu or peeping the funky furniture. They were ahead of their time and have had a vegan menu for as long as I can remember them existing for. This changes sometimes so keep an eye out for it! Some of their offerings include:

• Vegan breakfast (Falafel, vegan bacon (vivera: contains soya), hash browns, baked beans, tomato, mushrooms, spinach, peppers, toast)
• Vegan bacon butty / avocado toast / regular toast
• Fries / tenderstem broccoli / coleslaw / sweet potato fries / mini hash browns / spicy rice
• Tapas: Patatas bravas / hummus with ciabatta / supergreen bowl / guac / sweet potato taco

Avocado and falafel wrap (top) and Moving Mountains hotdog

• Falafel and avocado wrap
• Sweet potato burrito
• Vegan BLT
• Soup of the day
• Vegan Mediterranean Salad Bowl
• Vegan Avocado Rainbow Bowl
• Vegan Bombay Sweet Potato & Lentil Curry
• Mexican superbowl
• Beyond cheese burger
• Vegan Moving Mountains hotdog
• Dark chocolate and orange torte
• Fruity flapjack
• Mago sorbet
• Vegan carrot cake

It's worth noting some of these options have non-vegan counterparts, so specify 'vegan' when you order!

What's vegan at Wagamama?

Vegan pad thai

Wagamama have also released a vegan menu! They have also pledged that they want to have a 50% vegan menu by the end of 2021 andthey definitely seem on track with the amount of amazing vegan food they've released recently.  Again, there are veggie/meat versions of some of these dishes, so make sure you specify vegan to your server.

• Mushroom and aubergine steamed buns
• Sticky vegan ribs
• Edamame (salt, chilli and garlic)

Vegan sticky 'ribs'

• Wok-fried greens
• Bang bang cauliflower
• Vegan chilli squid
• Vegetable tempura
• Yasai gyoza (vegetable dumplings)

The gyozas are amazing and come with soy sauce

• Kare burosu (curry ramen with tofu and mushrooms)
• Tofu firecracker
• Tofu raisukaree
• Tofu harusame salad
• Vegatsu (Breaded seitan ('fake meat') with katsu sauce and rice)

Vegatsu with sticky rice

• Avant gard'n
• Miso mixed vegetable hiyashi bowl
• Yasai katsu curry (breaded aubergine, sweet potato and butternut squash with katsu sauce and rice)
• No duck donburi
• Yasai pad thai (rice noodles, peanuts, tofu, beansprouts)

Vegan chilli 'squid'

• Yasai yaki soba (rice noodles, picked ginger, crispy onions, mixed veg)
• Japanese pickles / chillies / miso soup

Yasai Yaki soba with rice noodles

• Banana katsu
• Chocolate orange cake (gf)
• Coconut reika ice cream *
• Miso caramel ice cream
• pink guava and passionfruit ice cream *
• strawberry and yuzu ice cream *

Noodle-wise, both udon (thick) and rice (flat but wide) noodles are both vegan. Avoid the soba noodles as these contain egg.

* Wagamama are currently having supply chain issues due to Brexit meaning this ice creams may not be available. 

Banana katsu