Weekend Carnivore

British folk are often heard to moan that the UK doesn’t get much of a summer. This summer they really have nothing to complain about because for most of the time since May it has been not just summery but down right hot and especially so in London. Air conditioning not being common at all, especially in private homes, in the UK has made it uncomfortable at times but the solution to counteract that is to get out and explore.

I had a day off work and decided to do just that and head down the coast from London to the seaside town of Brighton.  The train journey from my home in London to Brighton is very easy and with only one simple change takes just over 90 minutes door to door. So, you would think I would have travelled there more often but before this visit I had only been there on a flying visit about a decade prior to this trip. I had been wanting to go back and properly explore Brighton and with the weather so good if felt like there would be no better time to do it.

Brighton is known as a hip and trendy area of the modern UK with a bit of an artsy flare that attracts a youthful and diverse  crowd. The popularity of the seaside town goes back centuries though and since the turn of the 19th century one of the main tourist attractions in Brighton has been the Palace Pier which is now known simply as Brighton Pier.

Still operating today, it harks back to a bygone era of domestic British seaside holidays. Filled with penny arcades and fair ground rides, it is a lot like what Americans would call a boardwalk but instead of going along the beach it stretches out into the sea.  Sure, it resides just on the wrong side tacky for most modern tastes but if you go with the right mindset you can enjoy the cheese and the step back in time.

Brighton Pier

The main purpose of my Brighton day trip was to practice my photography. With so much of the old and new in Brighton and the seaside and all its creatures to boot it felt like a good place to take my camera and see if I could get a bit better at what has become a favourite hobby of mine.

I arrived in Brighton at 8am so that I could hope to capture the beach area of the town as it was coming alive. There is something I really enjoy about observing places are they are waking up for the day. I did a mixture of colour and black and white photography just to see what I liked the most.  I  found myself enthralled by the remains of the burned down pier that still resides in the water at the other end of Brighton Beach to the Brighton Pier. I  spent a lot of time trying to get decent shots of that before moving onto photos of Brighton life – both human and animal.

Here is just a small selection of the Brighton photos I took that day. If you are interested in seeing the whole day’s shoot then feel free to check out my Brighton Flickr Album.

Remains of Brighton West Pier

Brighton Sea Bird

Brighton Pier Game

Of course, as somebody that runs a food blog, enjoying the food that Brighton had to offer was also high on my agenda. Not least because along with the slightly new age reputation Brighton has developed, the town has also grown a reputation for having a good vegetarian food scene.

It was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to find this promised vegetarian food treasure on Brighton Pier.  Sure, it had tons of food and much of it would technically qualify as vegetarian but it was mostly candy and junk food. It was fun to look at but my teeth hurt just thinking about eating any of it.

Brighton Candy

So, I moved away from the Brighton waterfront and moved into the modern Lanes shopping area of the town.  Sure enough, tucked amongst the quirky and fashionable shops were a number of vegetarian restaurants.  My main dilemma was to decide which one of these Brighton vegetarian restaurants to try.

The first vegetarian restaurant that I stumbled on was the Infinity Foods Cafe which looked really lovely and inviting. What I liked the most about the look of it was that it looked like it was fitting so well into the cafe culture of the street and wasn’t sticking out as “the vegetarian restaurant”. Just a few minutes down the street the same people also run Infinity Foods which is a giant (by the standards I have seen) vegetarian food co-op store. If I had a bigger bag and budget I would have filled myself up with goods. Instead, I just bought a few little things to try (green tea soba noodles was one..trying those out shortly) and packed them away as I continued the search for the place to grab my vegetarian lunch.

Infinity Foods Cafe, Brighton

In the end, I settled for a vegetarian burger joint that was on the other side of the street from Infinity Foods Cafe. I would love it if there were so many vegetarian options so close together in London.

I had heard of the Red Veg vegetarian burger place before. They used to have a branch in the Soho area of London but I had always been a bit shy to go. Not the least because I was fairly sure I wouldn’t be able to convince any of my meaty friends to join me when I hadn’t even tried it out on my own before. Face it, you can get really good veggie burgers but you can get really horrible ones too.  I was punished for putting off trying out the London branch of Red Veg because it closed down and I never did get a chance to try it out.

When I walked past Red Veg Brighton I new that it had to be the time to give them a try.

Red Veg Brighton

The menu board outside of Red Veg made it easy to see the selection of vegetarian food on offer. Not only do they offer a good variety of different kinds of veggie burgers but their vegetarian menu was expanded to cover various falafel and salad dishes. Plus, they had all the chips and onion ring sides you would expect to find at a burger joint. The prices were also pretty attractive with the most expensive of the veggie burgers costing £3.50.

Red Veg Menu

With feet aching and the beginnings of a sunburn, I ventured inside Red Veg. The interior was fun and a bit funky without the feeling of trying too hard.  Still being a Weekend Carnivore and not a full time vegetarian, I felt that it wasn’t the kind of place that I would feel out of place. It was clear that even those of us still trying to give up meat would be comfortable chowing down on a burger here. The bright red inside and the giant windows helped to make the place feel bigger than its truthfully tiny nature.

Red Veg Interior

The member of staff that took my order couldn’t have been more pleasant either. She was bouncy and polite and was engaging the customers in genuine conversation while they waited for their takeaway orders. I listened on the sidelines as she explained to a customer that any burger could be made vegan.  She apologized for not offering vegan cheese but explained it was too expensive for them to offer. Her explanation was truthful and believable and showed she knew the product she was selling.

As a rock music fan myself, it was fun to listen to her talk to her friend about the songs that were coming on the radio too. It made me feel as if all the local concert posters on the wall of Red Veg weren’t just there by accident but because it is the sort of thing both the staff and the customers would be interested in attending.

Red Veg posters

After pondering the veggie burger menu for a short period I was sucked in by the mushroom Swiss burger. I find it nearly impossible to turn down the promise of anything involving mushrooms. Plus, one of my all time favourite fast food items was a mushroom Swiss burger that used to be available at the Hardees chain in the States.   I was mighty tempted by the spinach and pesto burger too but  the shrooms won out in the end. With a view to conserving calories I didn’t order a side order. I did attempt to have a diet cola but they didn’t have anything diet. So, I resorted to an organic lemonade.

I took a seat and waited for my veggie burger to arrive. The first thing I liked about it was how it was served just like the more famous burger chains. If you had ordered it as take out nobody would have thought it was anything but a ‘real’ burger. When I unwrapped my veggie burger I was also happy that it looked like a traditional burger. There was nothing ‘tofu burger’ about the way that it looked. The veggie burger looked meaty, the veggies were piled high and the sauces were just as drippy as the big international chains.

Red Veg Burger

More important than looking good, the Red Veg burger tasted great. Meat substitutes are getting to so good now that if they are handled properly in the cooking process they more than “pass” for meat and end up tasting good on their own. The veggie burger pattie in the veggie burger tasted as if it had been flamed grilled even if that might not have been the actual case and it gave the whole veggie burger a great slightly smoky background taste. The mushroom and Swiss combo was as good as ever and the cheese was melt perfectly.   Now I wish that I had gone to Red Veg when they had a Soho branch and I didn’t have to wait to go back to Brighton to have another great veggie burger from them.

Red Veg Veggie Burger

After my burger I went back onto the Brighton streets and continued my photo safari for a few more hours. When my feet were just too sore to continue I made my way back to Brighton station and jumped on a train back to London.  I decided to have a bit of a sweet treat on the journey home and opened up a raw chocolate bar I had bought at the Infinity Foods store.   It was the Fresh As! bar from The Chocolate Heart company. The packaging was very attractive and gave hope for the promised lime and Acai Berry flavour.

Raw Chocolate Bar

Sadly, I have to report that I wasn’t really won over by the actual taste of the raw chocolate bar. I don’t have a lot of experience with raw chocolate so perhaps it is simply how it tastes but it lacked the creamy texture that I am used to with chocolate. Each bite left me with a bit of a chalky after taste that by the end of the bar had reached the level of being downright unpleasant.

The bar looked good so maybe it isn’t the raw chocolate but more a case that the flavour combination of the lime and Acai was leaving that after taste. Either way, I will certainly try a raw chocolate bar again just to make sure but I am not going to rush out and replace my normal chocolate with them. Not the least because you pay a fairly high premium for raw chocolate.

Raw chocoalte bar

All and all I had a fantastic day trip to Brighton. The town is vibrant, there is loads to photograph and there is a ton of vegetarian food on offer.  I shall be making sure it doesn’t take me another decade to visit Brighton again and next time I will be trying that spinach and pesto burger!