Getting the Vegan Offer Right - Catering With Pride and The Hydro

We've recently enjoyed two great value, tasty vegan meals at non-veggie establishments. It's fantastic to see more and more places like these starting to embrace vegan options as part of a mainstream menu. Interesting both companies are run as social enterprises. The King's Arms pub is in Salford, just on the edge of Manchester city centre. As well a pub it has a theatre/ music venue upstairs and is owned by Paul Heaton. Whilst I'd been there many times I'd never eaten there until recently when two Cake Liberation Front regulars told us about the great Sunday roasts.


There's various meat roast options and the veggie option is suitable for vegans. It's a sweet potato nut roast and is great value at £7.50 (£4.50 for children) as it also includes a pudding. The pudding in question on the day we visited was a very tasty fruit sponge with banana custard. The food is provided by a company called Catering With Pride. As you can see I was enjoying it so much I almost forgot to get a picture! They are part of Strong Roots, a community interest company and social enterprise where profits are reinvested back into the local community to support unemployed people furthest from the jobs market to learn new skills and gain confidence. The food was tasty and portions were plentiful. We'll definitely be back soon.


We've also recently visited The Hydro in Buxton for the first time. This cafe is a social enterprise run by a charity with profits going to help children and families in crisis both in the UK and Eastern Europe. The cafe also provides training and employment to young people. It's a relaxed environment with a 50's and 60's theme and the only place I've ever been offered a choice of sweetened or unsweetened soya for my latte.


The service was really friendly and efficient and top marks for the breakfast. I was especially impressed with the homemade sausages as I'm not the greatest fan of Linda McCartney ones so it was lovely to get something different for a change.


Both of these places offer great tasting, home cooked, good value vegan food and it's nice to know that your money is also helping fund work in local communities.

Comments

  1. Mihl14 November 2014 at 09:04

    There's a very similar trend in Germany. I recently saw vegan options on the menu of a restaurant, which usually offers fancy German food and has so many meat options.
    The roast looks super tasty and it's really great that they do charity work, too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. vegan.in.brighton14 November 2014 at 12:02

    Everything looks great and I love that they're both social enterprises as well as places with solid vegan options.

    ReplyDelete
  3. All Consuming15 November 2014 at 11:01

    The King's Arms eh? Brilliant as they sell good beer too! I must get down there at some point, and the Buxton option sounds good too. Your blog is my one stop shop for finding new places to eat heh. Thanks Caroline.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Interview With Lisa Goddard of Lily and Dilly

Image
If you've eaten vegan cake in Manchester City Centre in the last few years then chances are you'll have eaten cake baked by Lisa Goddard of bakery Lily and Dilly . We caught up with Lisa to find out what set her on the vegan baking path! So, Lily and Dilly? What made you set up as an independent bakery and where does the name come from? Having worked as a stop frame animator for 12 years, I was getting rather fed up with short term contracts, so the last time I was made redundant, I decided not to chase work round the country, and if that meant a career change, then so be it. A friend of mine had just set up The Cocoa Emporium as an independent Chocolatier, so I gave her a hand whilst navigating through the benefits system, mostly to get me out of bed on a morning! Doing baking for her farmers market was fun, as it was one of my main hobbies, so when she asked if I fancied getting a little shop  with her, it seemed a nice chance to start something new. We got the shop
Read more

Cola de Mono

Image
Colo de Mono (Tail of the Monkey) is a Chilean concoction traditionally drunk ice cold at Christmastime. Obviously their winters are a lot warmer than ours so in the UK it's more suited to this time of year. The Chileans use aguadiente an overproof cane spirit. I use Cachaca 51 which I have in for Mojitos and Caipirinhas. Traditionally made with cows milk, here is my vegan version. Colo De Mono Makes 1 pint Serves 4 2 cups of vanilla soy milk 1/3 cup of caster sugar 1/3 teaspoon of cinammon 3 teaspoons of instant coffee 1/2 cup of spirit* Bring the milk, sugar and cinnamon to a low boil in a pan stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Turn off the heat and stir in the coffee. Leave to cool. Once cool add the spirit and chill in the fridge. It will keep for 2 weeks. Serve over ice or straight up but make it cold. * Spirit - I use Cachaca but have heard that people use tequila too.
Read more

Growing your own, bargains and a breakfast recipe

Image
I've started sprouting again! In my old flat I used to do sprouting all the time. The flat was in an old 1930's building and had radiators run from a central boiler room and it was always nice and warm. The constant warm temp made sprouting pretty fail safe. Now I'm in a Derbyshire stone house where it's not as warm the results haven't been as great and I gave up trying  but with this very hot summer we are having I thought I would give it another go and I'm glad I have done. As I already have the seeds it kind of feels like free food too! I'm using these sprouts  from A Vogel. This week I've grown alfalfa but pictured is my first attempt from the week before which was a mix of radish, lentil and rocket which grew into lovely peppery tasting sprouts that we used to garnish our bowl meals for the week. These took 4 days to grow and I nearly gave up on day 2 because I could see mold. Luckily I googled and found out that it wasn't mold at all but r
Read more