Food for Friends, Brighton

I turned 25 just over a month ago, when I was younger I thought by the time I was 25 I would be married with children and a mortgage. Luckily I only have one of those things, so I'm still free to go on Birthday adventures. This year Mr Hef took me to Brighton for a beautiful day of sitting on the beach, playing in the arcade, shopping in the Lanes and eating at Food for Friends. I've wanted to go to Food for friends for ages and after a bit of convincing Mr Hef agreed to take me. The restaurant is lovely inside, it was a sunny day so it was really bright and airy. We went straight for the main meal, I ordered the Halloumi burger (I cant resist a bit of fried halloumi) which came with balsamic portobello mushroom, grilled red pepper and gherkins in homemade brioche bun served with sweet potato chips, wasabi aioli, and dressed leaves. It was perfect, I feel like all other burgers in life won't live up to it. 

Mr Hef ordered the goat’s cheese, goji berries, toasted hazelnut and pear salad with dressed mizuna and lambs leaves, ‘parmesan’ crisps and pesto croutons. Which was surprising because the only time I see him eat salads is if it's a token piece of green on his plate. But I think he was attracted by the goats cheese and the pesto croutons. He really loved his dish as well (I tried a bit, I can see why) and he ate it all apart from some of the 'parmesan' crisps, which somehow ended up in my mouth. 

When it came to desert I had the internal struggle of what to choose. I narrowed it down to either the coconut and black sesame ‘arancini’ with fresh coconut, black sesame and trio of mango – sorbet or the deconstructed passion fruit and vanilla cheesecake with mojito fluid gel, fresh passion fruit and mint sorbet. Then I managed to sway Mr Hef's decision so that I could try them both (always a good idea). The coconut and black sesame 'arancini' tasted like little balls of coconut/donut heaven and went perfectly with the mango sorbet.

The deconstructed mango cheesecake was equally as good, rich and creamy and topped off perfectly with the fresh passion fruit (now one of Mr Hefs favourite fruits).

We both left with smiles on our faces, full bellies and the need to go back to Brighton very soon!

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Tibits, London

Last week was wonderful, I took the week off of work to dog sit for 2 lovely pugs, went to Southampton for a surprise tea party for Georgie and best of all, the lovely people at Tibits invited me to go and try their newly refurbished restaurant, in Heddon Street Food Quarter, just off of Regent Street. I've heard loads of good things about Tibits and their self serve food boat, so I was really excited to go and eat there. I took my little vegan mermaid friend Hannah G, (she really is a mermaid, with long red hair and an intense love for the sea!) and after a beautiful day in London, we walked to the restaurant where we were greeted by a totally buzzing, lively atmosphere. The staff we're really friendly and after being seated we were shown the food boat, had the concept explained to us and set off to stack our plates with delicious looking veggie food!

I really enjoyed the experience of picking different dishes to load your plate with, everything on the boat looked so fresh and inviting that I wanted to try it all! We made an initial trip around the boat and then went for it. I chose the spinach quiche, with quite a few different sides (you can check out the menu here)! There were so many different dishes, there really is something for everyone. After choosing your food you take your plate to the counter and they weigh it for the price, a bit like pic and mix. You can order drinks at the counter too, we went for the special juice, which was super green and super delicious! Every dish on my plate tasted great and I loved the variety in flavours. Rather than being cheese heavy and overly rich, the food was light and there was loads of vegan options for Hannah G. I left feeling full in a good way, not a 'I need to take my clothes off for the journey home' way.

After our main we couldn't resist trying some pudding, I went for the panna cotta with a bit of vegan mango cream (seriously good!) and Hannah G went for the vegan sticky toffee pudding. Again you get your puddings from the food boat and take them to be weighed.

We both really enjoyed the meal and I loved the pay for your plate concept, because it means you can get as little or as much food as you want. My plate came to about £10.70 which I thought was amazing value for the amount of food I had. I'm not surprised they've just won Cook Vegetarians Best Restaurant award, it's definitely one of my favourites so far!

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High Tea, The Bedruthan Steps Hotel

The worst part of a holiday is having to leave, after a week of relaxing, body boarding, cliff walking and a lot of sleeping, returning to reality seriously sucks. So to make the most of the last day of our holiday, Mr Hef and I didn't actually go home (we went to Devon to see his family instead) and went for an epic walk along the cliffs to Bedruthan Steps and then back to Mawgan Porth for a High Tea at the Bedruthan Steps Hotel.

It really was the perfect end to a perfect holiday, Bedruthan Steps is absolutely breath taking and absolutely worth nearly getting blown off the top of a cliff to see. And the high tea at the Bedruthan Steps Hotel was incredible, you get a selection of sandwiches (both Mr hef and I went for Davistowe cheddar and Red Stuff chutney) and cakes (Mr Hef had a fruit tart and I had a lemon meringue tart as well as some kind of yummy fruit and pistachio sponge) and of course a fresh warm scone with clotted cream and jam. It was just beautiful!

If you're ever in this area of Cornwall, I highly recommend checking out both of them!

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Jamie's Fifteen, Watergate Bay

I've done a lot of breakfast posts recently, probably because I LOVE breakfast. Well this is the mac daddy of my breakfast posts, just look at it! It was fathers day yesterday and as we're about 5 minutes away from Watergate Bay it would be silly not to go to Jamie's Fifteen. I've been with Mr Hef for lunch before and although I can't for the life of me remember what I had, I can remember that it was delicious and that the view was insane. I'm the only vegetarian in my family so the rest of them had a full English, but I opted for the eggy bread with mixed berries and mascapone. It was so good. So good and so big, which resulted in me not doing much for the rest of the day (which is what holiday is all about). There is another veggie option as well and I think Daddy Hef is keen to return (here's hoping).

And the view. Check out that view, there is nothing nicer than chilling out with a nice meal in front of you watching the waves.

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Rick Stein's Fish and Chips

A few years ago my family and I came to Cornwall and went on a search for Rick Steins fish, unfortunately we're all as useless as each other and never found it. It remained a mystery until Mr Hef and I came back to padstow a few years later and forced him to come to the Lobster Sanctuary with me, (you can imagine how happy he was) we didn't eat there that time because I'm pretty sure there's no vegetarian option. Luckily there is now and after a 6 hour journey to Mawgan Porth, a run around the beautiful house we're staying in and a little wander to the beach we were all ready for some good old fish (well not fish for me) and chips. The only vegetarian option on the menu is deep fried halloumi, with chipotle mayo in a sesame bun, which is the best option I have ever found at a fish and chip restaurant.

As you can probably tell from the picture, it was freaking delicious! The rest of the menu was all different types of fish and even Mr Hef (and avid fish avoider) tried the fish and enjoyed it! I would happily go back and eat it over and over again!

Hopefully this is just the start of lot's of lovely food adventures, I've brought some loose fitting clothes and I'm expecting to be squeezing in to them by the time I go home. This is the beautiful house I mentioned earlier... I never want to leave.

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Birthday Burgers

There isn't enough blog posts in the world to fully tell you about how much I love Atomic Burger, (really I'm on my 5th) but I went there last week to celebrate my belated Birthday and ordered this beast. The veggie Frito Bandito. I could describe how freaking amazing it was, but I have definitely already done that. So here's a picture of the beautiful burger instead. Enjoy.

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#captureeuphoria Day 1

Last week Ben and Jerry's asked me if I wanted to get involved in their #captureeuphoria Instagram competition. Am I going to say no to anything involving Ben and Jerry's? Hell no! So for the next week I'll be posting a picture each day which shows my euphoria for the day. Most of my life and euphoric moments involve food, but I'm looking forward to posting a bit more about other things in my life as well. The best part is you can get involved too, check out the website http://captureeuphoria.benjerry.com/ or the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/benjerryuk for more information.

To start this off, I had to go for something good. So what better than my favourite burger restaurant, Atomic Burger! I ask Mr Hef if we can do a lot of things, mainly things I know he will say no to, such as 'Can we go all the way to Brighton to go to a restaurant? Can we go to London to see the dinosaurs? (he actually said yes to that in the end) Can we go and stay in a tree house?' (I really want to stay in a treehouse). I must ask to go to Atomic Burger on a regular basis now, because it's been nearly a year since our last visit, but this time when I asked he said yes! I've been excited ever since. So this is my first #captureeuphoria moment, because there really is nothing quite as euphoric as that first bite of an Atomic Burger. I had a veggie Big Kahuna, which had swiss cheese, pineapple and teriyaki sauce on top, with a side of sci fries (triple fried, chili and garlic coated fries, mmmmmm). All washed down with a sugar puffs milkshake (which was topped with fizz whizz, of course).

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