Bite Me!

I've been putting off putting this review online because I took some photos on a friend's phone and was waiting for them to be emailed over to illustrate my deathless prose.   This was a month ago and I've now realised that we could be here until next Christmas waiting around for him to get his ass in gear and email me the bloody things, so I shall just post this without photos and hopefully add them in later on.  Like, next year.

So, on to the review...

I’m always a bit wary of going for pub lunches on a Sunday.  Too often, amidst all the great hulking plates of roast beef with all the trimmings, you’ll find that the vegetarian option is something totally boring and non-roast related, like risotto.  Now, I like risotto, but it’s hard not to get envious when you’re spooning up a mouthful of insipid pap next to an entire tableful of people tucking into a hefty pile of roast potatoes and gravy.

I was therefore really, really happy about my lunch at The Water Poet yesterday.  They do a proper vegetarian roast dinner, with roast potatoes, carrots, parsnip, onion, yorkshire pudding, what seemed like a quarter of a head of cabbage and two massive, stuffing-filled vegetarian sausages.  And vegetarian gravy.   It was such an enormous plate of food that I could barely move afterwards, which is always the sign of a good lunch for me.  And they do Aspalls on tap.  I love that pub.

The Water Poet, 9-11 Folgate Street, London E1 6BX

After the boulangerie, there was just time for a little snackage before heading out for dinner - some Brittany cider fit the bill, with a bagette and some truffle-studded camembert that Abi bought from the fromagerie on Rue Cler.  The cheese was good, but very pungent, with the sort of smell that seeps into every corner of the room despite being muffled by several layers of plastic.  I actually think that the cheese might have tasted better if it hadn't been quite so ripe, as the truffles were rather too subtle to make themselves felt over the taste of the camembert, but nevertheless it made a very nice snack.