mostly david ephgrave

Tonight I took my wife to the lovely veggie restaurant* The Gate in Islington for a belated birthday treat.  We went there this time last year and had a great time and tonight was no different. It's a treat to be able to choose anything on the menu instead of just the obligatory macaroni cheese - and while I'm pescetarian so my options are usually fairly open, it's more of a novelty for my full-on vegetarian wife (which is how I refer to her when asked).  If you were to ask me exactly what I had, I'd struggle to recall in much detail, other than to say it all was nice. I'd like to think I'm fairly adventurous with what I eat, so if the ingredients are in my remit, I'm happy to try something new. I had a three-lentil paté to start, which came with a lovely piccalilli and melba toast, while the main was some sort of beetrooty thing (consult their menu for more detail) and the dessert was an Eton Mess that managed to be both vegan, yet still the right ...

I took my wife to The Gate restaurant in Islington yesterday for a birthday treat, and ate enough food to risk a Mr Creosote-like explosion before I left. The Gate is notable for its – shock horror – solely vegetarian menu, but what a menu it is. Everything was lovely, without a hint of something lacking, like your more staunch meat-eaters might assume. A non-fussy carnivore probably wouldn’t even notice. Either way, it was perfect for pescatarian me and herbivore her, for whom the ability to order anything was a novelty. It was the first time we'd ever been to a vegetarian restaurant, save a quick lunch in a veggie café in a monkey sanctuary near Looe. It was nothing like the negative mental image it may create (the restaurant; not the zoo). It wasn’t poncy or 'try-hard' and there was plenty of flavour-filled variety. I’d recommend it to everyone, except my mum, who’d struggle, unless she could smuggle in a slab of gammon in her handbag (which she probably ...