OK. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t like any vegan cheeses. None. Tried quite a few and there isn’t one that I like – either my tongue has a problem with it, or my gut rejects it in ways that makes me extremely uncomfortable. I also am not a fan of mock meats. So when I heard of VegFest in London, my first reaction was ‘hmm, loads of mock this and that’, but soon wore off when I saw the event programme and all the talks.
I did go to a VegFest in Brighton about 2 years ago, and that was on a very, and I mean, very small scale. Not knowing what to expect, I rocked up to Olympia and was suitably impressed. Go Vegan! Cooking demos, talks, summits, and more importantly, likeminded people! I wasn’t really interested in buying too much stuff (going through a cleanse at the moment, but that is another story for another time), but I was interested the food.
And everyone I spoke to was heading to just one place – Temple of Seitan for their ‘popcorn chicken’ and subs. So, I queued up to literally eat my words. This queue was 40 min long – and believe me, that queue got longer and longer over the course of the day. So I got to the front and there were 2 options:
And I only had one option – after 40 minutes of queuing, I was definitely going to get both!!
Now. That vegan popcorn chicken was stunning – chewy, crispy, hot from the fryer – stunning. I hoovered the whole thing down. The sub had the same seitan as the popcorn chicken, but with the addition of seitan bacon (yum), cheese (couldn’t really taste it), lettuce (fresh) and a white bun (too white, too doughy). I ended up eating mainly the bacon and the seitan strips.
Temple of Seitan are at the Boiler House on a weekend, and I’m planning to go soon to try them again, along with Pomodoro e Basilico and Peanut Butter Bakery, two other vegan food stalls that have amazing grub! Go!
PB Eats, PB Travels 