by Hiking Fox » Fri Apr 23, 2010 10:00 am
Updates
Earth Cafe still closes at 4 and they've stopped heating the place. Everyone was wearing coats and scarves at the table on my last visit!
Odd and Odder do really nice, relatively low-fat vegan breakfasts. The price is okay for the location.
Oklahoma still do nice vegan hot chocolate and tasty baked sweet potatoes, but either the portions have shrunk or I went on a bad day. If I spend just over £5 on a baked spud, I want it to fill me up!
I took AndyO to Dough, the new pizza place on High St in the Northern Quarter (just round the corner from Earth and Oklahoma). We were impressed.
The pizzas were really nice and just the right size (about 9-10 inches). For slightly cheaper than The Cornerhouse prices, you get a slightly smaller pizza with a thicker, fresh-tasting base and twice as much topping. They have vegan mozzerella cheese and hummous options on the pizzas (both were great) and some tasty salads for side dishes with slightly wanky presentation (we had tomato, red onion and mango).
They have lots of flavours of Swedish Glace ice cream. When I phoned to book, the guy who answered was very knowledgeble about vegan options (although the menu isn't absolutely clear). They are very child-friendly before 6pm and give kids a drawing and crayons so they can design their own pizza!
They have Worthington White Sheild IPA, an excellent bottle-conditioned beer that's really hard to find.
Two negative points:
The olives were those crappy cheap ones out of a tin that are jet black and bright green. An Italian place should have real olives.
The place is understaffed. We were dealt with by a very helpful woman who was run off her feet. There were only about three staff waiting on everyone, wiping tables etc. We had to wait ages after finishing our pizzas for the dessert menu. Someone else could have had our table 15 mins earlier so this is a false economy that could ultimately break the place.
. Last few times I've tried to go there the savoury food choice was really limited - e.g main dish was dahl and the soup was a variation of the dahl.
