Vegetarian Festival Food - Amazing!

Caribbean Pastry

Fake meat extravaganza

Best thing ever

Potato dream

The weekend before last we went to the Vegetarian Festival which was just down the road from us in Kensington. It was awesome! So many stalls of all sorts of stuff, vege and vegan food, books, magazines, massages, talks, and more stuff. We decided to have something to eat before we looked at everything because we hadn't had breakfast. We found a corner that had a lot of food stalls and Quentin went to get a Caribbean pastry and I decided to get some Asian fake meat food.

The pastry was quite good but needed more flavour. I always expect Caribbean food to have heaps of flavour (like jerk tofu burger!) but what we have had in England so far has been disappointingly bland.

I got a box with some stir fried noodles and veges, some 'tikka masala' and some 'hoisin chicken'. It was really good! Basically the only thing I miss about meat is the texture and the soy meat in this was fairly similar to meat. The hoisin part was definitely the best, I could eat that all day! Just sweet enough without being too much and with heaps of flavour. The tikka masala was good as well but I preferred the flavour of the hoisin. The noodles were quite good but a bit overcooked from staying heated for so long, and a bit too spicy for Quentin. It was super filling as well though and we couldn't finish it between us!

While we were eating we saw someone with a massive amount of potato on a stick and immediately I knew I had to have one! After we had looked around most of the ground floor we found the stall and ordered one. What they did was get out a giant skewer and a potato. They then put the potato on the skewer and ran it through a machine I couldn't see which made it into a spiral which they then spread down the skewer. They dusted it in some flour and batter and then deep fried it for a few minutes. You could choose from a bunch of different flavourings to go on it so we got garlic salt. It was amazing. Probably one of the best things I have ever tasted. It was like a potato fritter but way better because the potato and batter were both nice and thin. The only bad thing I could say about it was that it could have been drained for a bit longer since it was still mega oily. So good though.

We purchased so many products while we were at the festival and I got a bunch of new recipe books (including one called the chip butty) and signed up for a subscription to vegetarian magazine. A very successful day!

In regards to ratings I would give the pastry a 2.5 because it was neither here nor there, a bit forgettable but not bad in any way. The Asian food I would give a 3 because it was good but not great, and the potato skewer gets a 4. I think it would have been better with less oil and plain salt.