As part of our summer vacation this year, Ethan and I took a trip to London. In 4 days, we did a lot of eating and a lot of sight-seeing. If you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you likely saw a lot of photos of us and the food we were enjoying. However, before I get to the food, I want to share some advice that Ethan’s brother gave us and was very helpful. Taking a taxi from Heathrow into London proper is very expensive. You can reduce the cost by taking the Heathrow-Paddington Express. This train takes you from Heathrow to Paddington Station in 15 minutes. From Paddington you can call an Uber or Lyft to get you to your hotel for much less. Also, while you are in Paddington Station, head over to platform 1 and meet Paddington himself.

me and Paddington.

The 8 year old me was so excited to see him. This was really one of the highlights of the trip for me. I loved Paddington when I was little, so it was like a dream come true. Incidentally, there is a coffee shop right near the statue that has  vegan bagel special on Mondays called the “Vegan New York.” As we got there on a Friday, we didn’t look into what it was. If you go, please report back.

We stayed in the Shoreditch neighborhood located just east of central London. It is a lively area with lots of bars and restaurants. However, it is a good 30 minute trip to get to central London. While I am glad we stayed there as we were able to try a lot of the vegan places in the area, I don’t know that I would choose it as a base again. Here are the places we eat in Shoreditch:

Essential Vegan
This Brazilian inspired vegan restaurant was a just a few blocks from our hotel. It has a few tables inside and some outside seating on the sidewalk. We decided to try a few things off the “Small Bites” section of the menu. We went for the Risoles, Cheese Balls, and Chicken Wings. The Risoles are crunchy deep fried potato dough filled with a slightly sweet creamed corn and are as scrumptious as they sound. The Cheese Ball are a vegan version of Brazilian Cheese bread. These baked balls are soft and full of vegan cheesy goodness. I could have eat several orders of these and been really happy. And for those of you with Celiac, they are gluten free. The chicken wings are simply 6 fried pieces of seitan served with your choice of dipping sauces: ketchup, mustard, sweet chili, mayo, sriracha, and tobasco. They are very good, but the other two were really the stand outs.

Risoles

Cheese Balls in the front, Wings in the back.

We ended the meal with a freshly baked cinnamon roll stuffed stuffed with fresh berries and a much needed cup of coffee for Ethan.

In addition to freshly prepared food, Essential Vegan also sells their own line of homemade cheeses, a garlic & chive and aged smoked. The staff here is very friendly and this was a lovely way to start our trip.

Essential Vegan Cafe
6 Calvert Ave
Shoreditch

A short walk from the cafe is Boxpark Shoreditch, a two level shopping mall made out of repurposed shipping containers. The lower level is mainly shops, while the upper level is a huge food court. Many of the restaurants here have vegan options, and some are entirely vegan. While we didn’t eat at all of them, we did try a several.

Hands down, my favorite restaurant at Boxpark is What The Pitta. This all vegan Doner Kebab stall should not be missed. The soy doner meat is amazingly well seasoned and is served in a wrap, a pitta (pita for those of us in the US), or the way I got it (twice) over a huge pile of chips (fries). You can then add toppings like lettuce, tomato, and hummus. I kept it simple with just lettuce, tomato and some vegan tzatziki sauce. This was one of the best things I eat while in London.

Doner Chip Box – I added a little ketchup, because I wanted to.

Right next to What the Pitta is Osteria Della Pasta. This places does simple food extremely well. The concept is simple: step 1, pick your fresh made pasta, step 2, pick a homemade sauce. While not exclusively vegan as some of the pastas are made with egg, some of the sauces contain meat or fish, and they have dairy cheese available, the vegan option are all clearly labeled. They also do have vegan cheese available. There is little as delicious as fresh made pasta, cooked to order, topped with a wonderfully rich red sauce. As everything is made to order, you may have a slight wait, but it is worth it.

If you are in the mood for chips, you can get them at What the Pitta, or head over the Poptata stall and get a huge serving topped with vegan cheddar cheese and your choice of vegan dipping sauces. They use violife cheese here and they use it generously. One serving is enough to share with another person and still have plenty to eat. I found them to be a little heavy on the salt, but that didn’t stop me from finishing them.

These were our three favorites, however, these are far from being the only vegan options at Boxbox. For some vegan Indian food, check out Sonita’s Kitchen, although Ethan found the food rather lackluster. The other place Ethan tried, that I did not was Rudie’s for some Caribbean food. Here you can a vegan plate “Jah Love Box” or vegan patties. Ethan tried the pattie and only ate half of it. In addition to these places, there still more vegan options that we didn’t have time to try, but will note here: Cook Daily for Asian bowls, Falafelicious for falafel, VooDoo Ray’s Pizza where the vegan option is simply a pizza with no cheese, The Athenian for Greek Food with vegan options and Nosteagia for vegan bubble waffles filled with vegan ice cream. We wanted to try the waffles at Nosteagia, but vegan can only get the preselected combination rather than being allowed to choose our own flavors. Sadly, the preselected combo didn’t work for us.

Boxpark Shoreditch
2-10 Bethnal Green Road

That is it for Boxpark Shoreditch, but that is far from the vegan options in this neighborhood. If you are from the United States and craving diner food, be sure to check out The Diner Shoreditch. The Shoreditch location is just one of six locations around London. As most vegan travelers know, finding a vegan breakfast other than pastry or oatmeal can be a challenge. Thanks to The Diner, we didn’t have to worry about that, here you can get an American style breakfast as well as many traditional diner classics. It must be noted that only 4 of the locations offer a vegan menu: Dalston, Shoreditch, Spitalfields & Strand. I chose the Strawberry and Chocolate Pancakes for my meal. The portion was so big I couldn’t finish even half of it. These three huge pancakes come out covered in chocolate sauce and topped with fresh strawberries. It was good, but very heavy. Ethan had the Vegan Benedict: crispy rounds of polenta and vegan bacon (tempeh) atop a toasted English muffin all topped with a cashew sauce.

Vegan Benedict

Strawberry & Chocolate Pancakes

The Diner Shoreditch
128-130 Curtain Road
London EC2A 3AQ

In addition to What The Pitta, there was one other place in Shoreditch that we we liked so much we went back to a second time: Doughnut Time. This small stand on the side of Old Street makes both vegan and non-vegan doughnuts. These were among the best doughnuts I have ever had. The selections change regularly, and when something runs out, it is out for the day. The vegan doughnuts are all clearly labeled. Each doughnut costs around 4£, so a little over $5, but they are worth it. The doughnuts are not too sweet and come in very creative flavor combinations. Of the vegan options available when we went, we tried the Sia Later and Houston We Have Biscoff. The Sia Later is a red velvet doughnut with vegan butter cream frosting and freeze-dried raspberries. The Houston We Have Biscoff features a vegan coffee glaze, topped with caramel buttercream, chocolate drizzle and a Lotus biscuit. In addition to the regular sized doughnuts, which are quite large, they also sell “mega doughnuts” which are easily 4 times larger than the regular ones. And yes, they have vegan options. The vegan mega doughnut is the Chris Hemsworthy: a red velvet vegan doughnut, topped with cookies and cream frosting, vegan cookie pieces and chocolate drizzle! Doughnut Time has 7 locations throughout London.

Sia Later

Houston We Have Biscoff

The Chris Hemsworthy next to regular size doughnuts for comparison

Doughnut Time Shoreditch
233a Old Street
London, EC1V 9HE

That does it for Shoreditch, but that is not the end of our time in London. If you are in London on the third Saturday of the month, be sure to check our the Hackney Vegan Market run by our friend Sean, AKA Fat Gay Vegan. This monthly vegan market is sure to have something to please everyone.

Here is just a sample of what we found at the market

The line up of vendors changes regularly, but not matter who is there, you will find plenty to eat. When we were there we food choices were almost overwhelming from burger and sausages, to cheeses and ice cream, to baked goods and juices. And if on the off chance you don’t find anything you want to eat from one of the vendors, you can stop into Temple Goods, an offshoot of Temple of Seitan that has a full cafe menu of pastries, sandwiches and more. While did some live videos while we were there, so rather than post about every singe vendor, we will let our video handle that.

We do want to give a special shout out however to the amazing people at Vegan Delice, the all vegan bakery that is at the market every weekend. I began stalking their instagram weeks before our trip and could not wait to treat myself. Everything they sell is made fresh that day. When you see the array of baked goods, you will be truly in awe that one person could do all that in just a few hours. When we were there, they had at least 5 different flavors of cupcakes, several different cookies, a few bakewells and they were frying up fresh hot donut holes.

Hackney Vegan Market at Hackney Downs Studios
17 Amherst Terrace

In addition to Vegan Delice, there is one other place I was instagram stalking before our trip, Temple of Seitan. This vegan fried chicken chain has two locations, one in Camden and one in Hackney, a short cab ride from the market. From everything I heard, this was a MUST DO. The small shop in Hackney has one or two tables outside so seating is limited, the Camden location is larger with more seating. It was a hot, sunny day when we went, so we were able to sit on some nearby steps to eat. I really wanted to love it, but unfortunately, I didn’t. The chicken is made from seitan and the while the coating is excellent, it really is just a big piece of fried seitan. It isn’t bad, I just don’t think it lived up to the hype. The mac and cheese, the crisps and the gravy were all very good.

Perhaps if we ordered the smaller sized popcorn bites, I would have liked it more. From the line out the door and seeing how everyone else was devouring their food makes me think Ethan and I are in the minority on this one.
Temple of Seitan
10 Morning Lane

One night when we ventured to the Chelsea neighborhood to try Wulf & Lamb. Located on a quiet road off of Sloan Square, the space itself is quite nice with 2 floors of seating. A quick note about ordering here: you order food at the bar on the first floor and then it is brought to your table. We opted to try the Open Burrito, Wulf Pie, and Mac ‘N’ Cheese. The burrito is a soft wheat tortilla topped with sautéed ackee, black beans, red rice, cherry tomatoes and peppers with chilli, coriander, lime and cashew sour cream. Ackee we learned is a West African fruit that cooks up to a consistency like scrambled eggs. In fact, ackee is as common on vegan menus in London as tofu scramble is in the US. The Wulf Pie is a their version of  Shepherd’s Pie, a stew of jack fruit and lentils topped with mashed potatoes and baby carrots. The portions are quite generous but overall the flavors were rather lackluster. That is not to say it was bad, just very bland with no umami in anything.

Clockwise starting top left: Wulf & Lamb, Wulf Pie, Mac ‘N’ Cheese, Open Burrito

If you are in the area, it might be worth trying it, but I would not make a special trip there.
Wulf & Lamb
243 Pavillion Road

On our one really big touristy day, we spent the morning at the Tower of London as I had never been there before. A trip here could easily last an entire day, however, we were somewhat selective in we wanted to see so we kept our visit to a few hours. We had afternoon tickets to the London Eye on the opposite side of the Thames, so after our Tower tour, we headed across the river for lunch at Tibits Bankside. This all vegetarian, mostly vegan, restuarant is part of the Tibits chain that has 2 locations in London as well as several in Switzerland. Tibits features a large salad bar type island featuring over 40 homemade vegetarian and vegan salads, hot dishes, soups, freshly pressed juices and desserts. With foods from all over the world, there is something for everyone here. You pay by weight, so you can take as much or as little as you want. They are open all day so it’s perfect for breakfast, after work drinks, a leisurely meal or a take-away to eat along the riverside. All the vegan options are clearly labeled with V, and every Tuesday, the entire menu is vegan. Moreover, each dish is labeled to indicate whether it contains soy, nuts, or gluten. Tibits is a great option if you are in the South Bank area.

 Tibits Bankside
124 Southwark Street

We decided to take in some theatre in the Westend and got tickets to see Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. We loved it! If you are going to London, this is a must see show. It’s somewhat a cross between Billy Elliot and RuPaul’s Drag Race. Unfortunately, I messed up on timing for eating and we couldn’t get in to the restaurant we wanted to try before the show, and it would be too late afterwards. So, a quick check on abillionveg led to us The Real Greek. This Greek restaurant, proudly displays a sign that they have a vegan menu. The food is served tapas style so you can order a bunch of different dishes to share. We chose Santorini Fava, a twist on traditional hummus using yellow lentils in place of chickpeas, the Melitzanosalata, a Greek version of babaganoush featuring smoked eggplant, garlic, shallots and lemon, Gigandes Plaki: gigande beans, slow-cooked in a rich and herby tomato sauce, and Spinach with Gigandes, which turned our to be the same as the Gigandes Plaki but with spinach added.  The food was tasty and satisfying, but not so heavy that sitting through a 2 1/2 hour show would be uncomfortable. For a light meal in Soho, The Real Greek is a good option.

The Real Greek
50 Berwick Street

One of the highlights of our trip to London was seeing our friends Lisa and Steve who we had seen in 10 years.

We met on a trip to the Galagos and the four of us became fast friends. Although we have kept in touch on Facebook, this is our first time to see them in a decade. It was like no time had passed and we just picked up where we left off. It was truly wonderful. We spent the better part of the day just walking around the city with them. When it was time to grab some dinner, we saw that there was a By Chloe nearby, so we took them there. They loved it. We wouldn’t normally eat at an American restaurant while traveling abroad, but this was the only option where we were. Also, it is good to know that if you are in London and you cannot find a vegan option, there may well be a By Chloe close to you. The London menu does have some variations from the US menu in that they have a some British fare including vegan fish & chips and sticky toffee pudding.

By Chloe
Drury House
34-43 Russell Street

That is it for our time in London. We were off to Berlin after this for a few days, so stay tuned for our write up of Vegan Berlin.