Two new London venues

[HumanGazelle]

Sometimes a place opens and the news completely passes me by. So, I'm sharing some recently-opened venues that I've not been to yet, but wondered if anyone's tried them:

Coach and Horses - a pub in Soho (somewhere on Greek St) which is now vegetarian. I think the beers & wines are all vegan. They serve vegan fish and chips with mushy peas - not tried it yet but I've seen a photo... looks pretty damned good.

42Raw, posh new place (presumably raw!) somewhere off Regent Street / Burlington Arcade.

Also, this is not new at all and I have pointed this out to a few people but it's not a premises so it's probably not something you'd find online: on Newport Court, in Chinatown, there's a street vendor selling baozi (steamed buns). The vegetarian one is £1.20, it is damned tasty, and two makes for a mighty fine, satisfying meal. There are a few other vendors selling the same thing, but there's more often one at that location. I was seriously addicted to these for a 6 month period.

[Hiking Fox]

Coach and Horses - a pub in Soho (somewhere on Greek St) which is now vegetarian. I think the beers & wines are all vegan. They serve vegan fish and chips with mushy peas - not tried it yet but I've seen a photo... looks pretty damned good.

I will be there on 7th May and will report back.

[Hiking Fox]

Ok, I went to the Coach and Horses pub. The food is actually served in the Teahouse upstairs, which you reach via a flight of stairs behind the bar, so it looks at first glance like the stairs are for staff only.

The Teahouse is all kitted out like a 1940s cafe (if Emm7 still posted on here she'd love it) complete with cake stands, embroidered tablecloths and a chunky clock on the mantelpiece. Literally everything, even the serving staff, look like they're stuck in a time-warp. It's worth going just for this novelty (though vegan nerds should note that the cake stands are almost certainly bone china).

Onto the food. The menu is based around one price for two courses (£14 I think) and a higher price for three courses, so I ignored the starters and opted for main course and pudding (dessert, to Southerners), plus a pint of Staropramen beer (they also have Leffe). There's a wine list, but I don't know whether it's all veggie as I don't drink wine.

My vegan fish (tofu and seaweed, battered) was lovely, as were the minted peas. The chips were bog-standard ones out of a packet. For this price, I would expect chunky, hand-cut chips, so I mark them down for this.

The only vegan dessert was a lime flan with a scoop of ice cream. The waitress informed us that the vegan ice cream flavour was rose and banana, which sounded awesome, but they didn't have any, so she suggested serving the flan with strawberries and blueberries. The fruit looked lovely on the plate, but I was disappointed that I couldn't have ice cream, as the flan was a little dry without any kind of sauce or ice cream to balance the texture out. It was gorgeous though, especially the strands of sugared lime rind garnish on top, that I could have eaten a whole dish of. Top marks for the flan.

Food - 8/10
Service 9/10 (nothing was too much trouble for the smiling waitress)
Value for money 6/10 (they lost a point on the chips)
Vegan-reliability 5/10 (must try harder - why should we pay the same as everyone else, but get less?)

[HumanGazelle]

Nice review Interesting to hear of a 40s themed cafe in the West End.

In the photo I saw, the chips did look like oven chips. Bit of a shame they cut that particular corner. I am still sure I'll visit it soon enough.

[mouche]

Thanks for posting!

Amazing review, Hiking Fox.

Probably doesn't sound like it would be top of my list of places to go, but definitely a good option to have if suggesting places to go with colleagues or people you don't know so well, who aren't vegan, etc. Personally I also think it's encouraging to see vegan options in a non-vegan place, and that they're not selling themselves on the fact that they have ONE vegan dish - it just happens to be there... like vegans just happen to exist.

[Talyn]

Coach & Horses has made the guardian. Progress.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/may/18/coming-down-the-vegetarian-pub

Like always, don't read the comments.

[baldy]

Not a very positive article but probably sums up what most people thing.

The idea is great. We all eat too much meat, and though we think of a vegetarian restaurant as this dreary, dour place full of people with root-vegetable-dyed hair and rings through their noses sitting down for a bowl of lentils and arguing over the bill, the idea that they've now got pubs where they're getting pissed up and eating tofu is good."

Getting pissed up at a pub and eating tofu sounds pretty spot on for me.

[Hiking Fox]

Personally I also think it's encouraging to see vegan options in a non-vegan place, and that they're not selling themselves on the fact that they have ONE vegan dish - it just happens to be there... like vegans just happen to exist.

I think it is disappointing, not encouraging, that an all-vegetarian place has only one vegan dessert on the menu.

Why not give us a choice, and why not give us the ice cream that the non-vegans get to have for the same money?

[Hiking Fox]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/may/18/coming-down-the-vegetarian-pub.

I just read that, and now I want to snap pencils across the writer's nose.

"Lettuce-eaters"

Pah! The Guardian is a dogshit suppository, pretending to be progressive and modern.

[mouche]

Personally I also think it's encouraging to see vegan options in a non-vegan place, and that they're not selling themselves on the fact that they have ONE vegan dish - it just happens to be there... like vegans just happen to exist.

I think it is disappointing, not encouraging, that an all-vegetarian place has only one vegan dessert on the menu.

Why not give us a choice, and why not give us the ice cream that the non-vegans get to have for the same money?

I do agree with you on that.

I do also have to admit that I didn't pay much attention when I first read yours and HumanGazelle's posts and hadn't realised it was a vegetarian place. Weirdly, it annoys me more when vegetarian places have few/no vegan options, whereas I am impressed when non-vegetarian places have a vegan option (especially a dessert option that isn't sorbet). I know this is illogical. I think it's because I hate seeing non-veg*ans congratulate themselves on visiting a vegetarian establishment, or picking a vegetarian option (usually full of cheese), and I especially hate vegetarians not catering to vegans.

So I guess I don't know what my argument is, but I should probably just go to bed.