I’m back in London, will be back at work in July, so am enjoying the last few days of ‘freedom’. I have to say the glorious weather has definitely helped – they’ve chased my holiday blues and jet leg away for sure. First meet up was at Mildreds, a place I’ve been meaning to try for a while. Vegan heaven, super popular and amazing food. Aaah. So the food was not as good as hoped, and I’m not sure if it was down to them being so busy or whether it was poor choices on our part. But poor choices aside, the food should taste good, right? We kicked off with a cocktail, I went for an Aperol Spritz – perfect drink for a sunny day.
Instead of going for a main course, we decided to share some small plates/starters, and go with the flow. I thought we chose a good selection of dishes. Gyoza with a soy/sweet chilli dipping sauce. The filling was soy mince I think, not my favourite, but the outside – hard and chewy dumpling wrapper, and not in a good way. Next? Smashed avocado with lime and chilli and organic corn chips. Beautiful avocado, but lacking in terms of seasoning and lime – which let everything down. The purple corn chips were quite yummy though.
Now I love miso aubergine, or nasu dengaku, and when done right, this dish is luscious. Meltingly soft aubergine, hot, almost fluffy miso dressing, sweet, sour, salty, umami overload. Sadly this dish was an epic fail. Barely lukewarm aubergine, I couln’t taste any miso. Bland bland bland. The best small plate was tenderstem broccoli with confit garlic and chilli. Perfectly cooked, the dressing was so delicious, and the garlic was divine. Loved this dish. One decent dish out of four, I wasn’t happy and didn’t want to spend any more time or money on the savoury stuff.
So bring on desserts. Vegan desserts. Now We Are Talking. The BEST vegan dessert I have had. Chocolate hazelnut brownie, salted caramel sauce and ice cream. Served warm, it turned out to be one of the best vegan desserts I have had. Seriously chocolate my, seriously caramel, seriously creamy, seriously good. That with a cup of green tea – lovely.
In hindsight, I think I should have just gone straight in for a main course – but it was such a hot day, the idea of having a pie or a burger or a stir fry/curry or a dish with rice (yep, still not feeling it fully) was not welcoming. I will give this place another try and check out the main courses – just to make sure the problem might have been with me and not Mildred.
PB Eats, PB Travels 