Cafeteria, National Botanic Gardens, Dublin

I often go to Dublin's Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, usually just to walk around and enjoy the greenery. This particular visit was a Saturday, a week after the Bloom festival, and the weather couldn't have been more different. We had a blissfully lazy day, stretched out on the grass, reading, and decided to treat ourselves to a lunch at the cafeteria in the garden's Visitor Centre.

The cafeteria is quite large, relatively new, and nice and airy - and generally really quite busy. This Saturday wasn't an exception, but we'd dawdled until the very tail-end of lunch time, and so managed to get a table without too much trouble.

Husband went for the traditional roast, pork and two veg with apple sauce, followed by a strawberry and apple crumble. It was all good, filling and wholesome, in the usual standard for the restaurant.

No food was labeled either as vegan or vegetarian, though there was the usual good number of evidently vegetarian choices (baked potatoes, quiches, cheese sandwiches) as well as a vegetarian lunch option. There wasn't anything hot that was even remotely vegan, however, so I went for a selection of three different salads and a bread roll. The salads were a carrot and sultana one, a couscous salad with chick peas and fresh coriander, and something vaguely oriental. They were all very tasty, and I felt more than adequately fed, even if none of the pudding were even remotely vegan.

The meal was good value for money, and while the restaurant was constantly busy - mostly with pensioners and families - the staff remained cheerful and were swift about clearing the tables.

I find it difficult to grade somewhere I'm so familiar with, but shall try. On the Tiwinaku scale of mold-resistant roses for cafeterias (as opposed to table-serviced restaurants), the National Botanic Gardens restaurant gets eight blooms for the service, seven for the ambiance (it was still busy and loud, and a creepy old woman was staring at me for at least ten minutes), and nine out of a dozen roses for the food - apparently the pork was a bit dry.

All in all, though, I heartily recommend a visit to the Gardens, any time of the year - don't be put off by little rain, it just keeps the crowds out - and a meal at the cafeteria, especially if you're a vegetarian rather than a vegan, as the food is good and robust, and the pudding selection is to die for.

Taste of India's market stall, Dublin

This was an attempt for a quick spot of lunch midst of a soggy day at the Bloom garden festival in Dublin's Phoenix Park. As a part of the festival, there was a small "food market", with a plethora of stalls, selling mostly artisan cheeses and bakery goods, but also hot and cold snack foods, like Cornish pasties and traditional-type savoury pies.

There was a reasonable variety of obviously vegetarian things, but, as usual, the vegan was a bit lost. In the rain, I gave in to the lure of a hot meal, and went for the vegetable curry - labelled vegetarian *and* vegan! - from the Taste of India stall. The curry was ladled on top of a nearly full plastic container (of the sort you get your take-outs in) of rice, so you didn't get all that much bang for your buck in the first place. And once I tucked in... Bland, except for the burn of too much chilli, the veg was mostly peas and sweetcorn, and there wasn't all that much of even that. Disappointed, I didn't finish, despite being hungry - this is very, very unusual of me.

In conclusion, I should've gone to the Itsa Bagel stall instead, and got myself a bagel with some hummus and other nice things, instead of the overpriced curry. On the Tiwinaku rain gauge, the Taste of India stall at the Bloom gets not a drop.

So there.

Juice, Dublin

Juice is effectively Dublin's only proper sit-down vegetarian restaurant. I haven't been frequenting it much recently due to generally not eating out much, and previous less than perfect experiences, but as there was someone to take me out for dinner on a Saturday evening, I booked a table on the basis of Juice being somewhere I knew would be able to feed me.

Booking the table turned out not to have been necessary; they weren't exactly busy. Our food, his Cannelloni and my Asian noodles in Ponzu Sauce, arrived without undue delay, and our very friendly and solicitous waiter kept our glasses of water topped up while managing to stay unobtrusive.

The noodles were quite nice, the vegetables were stir-fried to absolute perfection, and the tofu was wonderfully marinated. The sauce itself was flavorful and fragrant, if a bit oily, and obviously made with sweet chilli sauce of the bottled variety. Nevertheless, I'd be happy enough to have this dish again.

My dinner companion scraped his plate clean, and commented that this was one of the very rare times he's had spinach - apparently you couldn't really taste it from the cheese and all the other nice things in the cannelloni.

For a drink, I had a freshly squeezed apple and carrot juice, and he one of the lassis on the menu. The juice was nice and fresh, but would probably have worked better chilled, for my palate at least.

So the food was good, but what especially struck me was the quality of service, as it rather exceeded what I've experienced at Juice in the past. As for the interior or ambiance, Juice evidently hasn't been refurbished since it opened, and while the wear and tear isn't showing as such, the decor is starting to feel a bit dated, with the fairy lights at the back wall and the canvas covering the ceiling. Still, it's pleasant enough.

This dinner experience at Juice gets four chick-peas for food, four for service and three for everything else. Worth a visit, if you're a vegan holidaying, or indeed living, in Dublin, and looking to go out for a proper, nice dinner, and not always only because you don't have all that much choice in this fair city.

Ocean Bar, Dublin

The Ocean Bar and Restaurant at Dublin's docklands is a "normal" restaurant and bar, i.e. not a veggie place, and boy, did that show. Their brunch menu does have some vegetarian options, like eggs benedict, or caesar salad to be had without chicken (the recipe for the dressing calls for Worcestershire sauce, but the small "vegetarian" contingent of the business lunch didn't seem too concerned about that), but no vegan main dishes as such. This was only to be expected, so wasn't in the least disappointed

I ended up having a green salad of palatably fresh lettuce, cucumber, red and yellow peppers, red onion, etc., with an ok balsamic vinaigrette. The chef had been rather generous with the vinaigrette, and the dregs of the salad were exceptionally oily.

For actual sustenance, I had freshly heated bread rolls with a very nice olive oil for dipping; lovely.

The rest of the 20-strong party seemed quite happy with their share of the food, too, and the Guinness got a favorable mention.

The Ocean Bar sits at the root of a tall, modern apartment block with the waters of Charlotte Quay Dock on two sides, which, with the floor to ceiling windows, makes for a very pleasant surroundings. The furniture is made of stools and armchairs, set around small coffee tables, which isn't really ideal for having lunch, but gives a nice and informal setting for a drink or coffee, I'm sure.

Service was jovial, professional and quick, and they had no trouble keeping on top of a large party of people. There was some humming and hawing over my vegan nature, but they didn't consider it a problem, and the salad and bread rolls was a more than satisfactory meal. For the post-lunch coffee, however, the until then perfectly affable waiter came up with an unnecessary quip of assuming me to have a herbal tea rather than coffee. I may be vegan, and look "alternative", but I'm no hippie. I had a diet-coke, full of nasty artificial sweetness, manufactured by an evil global corporation, thank you very much.

Ocean bar gets four stars for food, purely because they did well enough despite not being equipped to deal with vegans on day to day basis, three for the interior and ambiance, and two for service (would have been a four, had the waiter only curbed his scintillating wit. Tut, tut.).

Haus Hiltl, Zurich

Haus Hiltl, Zurich

Haus Hiltl vegetarian restaurant is by all accounts a venerable Zurich institution and this is their new incarnation which, I believe, has only been in existence for a few months. We went there for lunch on a Sunday on a bank holiday weekend in May, which seemed to be the right thing to do; not only were there free tables (albeit not many), but they were also doing the table service as well as their pick'n'mix'n pay by the pound (or kilogram, as it may be) buffet. We opted for the á la carte menu and table service.

My omnivorous lunch companion had tagliatelli in a creamy tomato sauce with aubergine. His comments on the food included things like "yum" and "I could eat an awful lot more of that", so we can deduce that his meal was very, very good indeed.

Choice for me was surprisingly straightforward, once I managed to decipher the menu - there turned out to be only one vegan main course, artichoke with saffron and couscous. Artichoke was a new acquaintance, other than the unpleasant pickled variety, and had a pleasant, soft texture. Unfortunately it's difficult to say anything about the actual flavour of the food, as the sauce was horribly salty. You could sort of get the general idea of a curry through, but that was it, even if I was hungry enough to nearly finish the average-sized portion. The couscous, however, was perfectly cooked and subtly textured. Best couscous I've ever had, even, but still not enough to make up for the sauce.

For a drink, we both had their freshly squeezed strawberry and apple juice, which can only be recommended.

Now. The menu was in German (there might have been an English version available, but we certainly weren't offered one, despite our halting-to-nonexistent German), and so took some time for us to figure out. Each item on the menu had a list of abbreviations for the possibly objectionable things it contained, like milk, or egg, or garlic (no, I don't really get that one, either), so you could find anything vegan by a process of elimination: anything without Mi, Ei or Kä(*) was ok. This was a surprisingly challenging exercise and it took a while cross-reference and double-check.

No dessert was had, mostly due to time constraints. There may or may not have been a vegan option.

Service was friendly enough, if a touch amateurish. The decor of the vast interior was going for the ever-popular boutique hotel/club style, all patterned wallpaper and plush furnishings.

On the Tiwinaku scale of wheels of Swiss cheese, Haus Hiltl gets a third of a wheel for food, and half a wheel for both service and ambiance. From the completely biased, vegan-centric point of view, the menu gets one small slice for user-friendliness.

All in all, Switzerland doesn't seem to be all that vegan-friendly. The supermarkets (and what supermarkets they are! Dunnes Stores, eat your heart out.) have a reasonable selection of vegetarian things, and of course vast quantities of cheese, but by the looks of things veganism isn't all that popular in Central Europe. Didn't check out any specialist health food shops, though.

(* Milch, Ei or Käse, i.e. milk, egg or cheese)

Henderson's Bistro, Edinburgh

This, May 1st, 2007, was the last day of our long weekend in Edinburgh, and as we had to vacate our flat in the morning but had until late afternoon before it was time to head back to the airport, we seized the chance and walked around Edinburgh some more. We hadn't planned to eat out, but since we were at the Princes Street area, hungry, and knew where Henderson's was, having passed it on our way to the Botanic Gardens a couple of days earlier, we decided to investigate more closely.

Unlike David Bann at dinner time on a Sunday, Henderson's at lunch time on a Monday was nice an quiet. A few of the nice, cosy tables remained empty through our visit, though I can't imagine why, since the food... but I get ahead of myself. The decor is an... interesting mix of rustic wooden chairs, retro-modern glass and metal -and faux leather wall coverings. The last one, while it probably looked good when it was put there, still seems like a slightly odd choice for a vegetarian restaurant.

In addition to The Bistro, Henderson's have a Salad Table and a small shop in the same block, so it may be that The Salad Table gets most of Henderson's lunch trade. After three days of traipsing up and down of Edinburgh city, however, we wanted somewhere where we could sit down and have food brought to us. Eventually.

Again, the menu offered a plethora of clearly indicated vegan and potentially vegan options. I just had to try the vegan haggis, while spouse went for the day's special, a Moroccan stew.

The haggis, which, I'm sure, shares little besides the name with the real thing of sheep innards, was wonderful. It was comforting and, well, stodgy, but in the best possible way. The sort of meal you have after a full day of working the fields, full of carbohydrates, with starch, and some more carb. There were at least lentils and pinhead oatmeal in the mixture, and some other grains and pulses, and the generous pile of haggis was served with a side of mash and a ramekin of gravy, and some fresh greens. And, oddly, garnished with thin slices of apple, but we're going to ignore that bit. The mash, which had a specific name I can't remember for the life of me, was a perfect accompaniment for the haggis, and the gravy was the proverbial cherry, or possible apple slice, on the cake. Mmmm.

In practice I don't often get to have the traditional sort of cooking typical for the region of the world I currently live in, so this was a nice change. Though considering how heavily (but comfortably, mind you) the meal sat in my stomach afterwards, a few times a year is plenty.

The Moroccan stew and rice spouse chose was a much, much lighter affair, but none the less flavorful for it. The stew was fragrant and beautifully colored, with chickpeas and butternut squash, my very favorite vegetable. I must admit there was a moment I wished I'd chosen otherwise, but the haggis was a rare and wonderful experience.

We did have a garlic bread starter, as well, and it was a good thing we did, as we had to wait for our mains for quite a while. They did eventually arrive, without an apology (though that came later) or explanation, but the service was friendly enough, and we were on a holiday, so we didn't really mind. As for the garlic bread, it wasn't memorable enough to stick with me this long. Sorry.

The dessert, however, I still remember, and well. We, and especially me, were more than sufficiently sated after our generously proportioned main courses, but the rare chance of a vegan dessert was too good to let it go by. We shared a slice of vegan whole meal cherry pie with a vegan cream substitute. You could really taste the whole meal in the pastry, and the filling was red and sticky and gooey - yum. While the pastry admittedly was a little dry, and nearly rock hard on the crust, we nevertheless practically licked the plate clean.

To top the whole thing off, instead of the usual mints, the bill arrived with two little squares of Green & Black's dark mint chocolate. Those had to be stashed away for later.

As a total experience, and because it was a perfect end for the best holiday for a long, long time, on the Tiwinaku scale of planetary bodies Henderson's The Bistro reaches all the way to Neptune, since we're no longer supposed to count Pluto. We'll be going back when next in Edinburgh.

Mamma's American Pizza Co., Edinburgh

This was our third or fourth visit to Mamma's, though my first time there as a vegan, rather than just an ordinary veggie. We'd spent the day (April 30th, 2007), the whole day, at Edinburgh zoo, and in our exhaustion just wanted to go somewhere where we knew we'd get a good, quick meal. And as Mamma's American Pizza Co. is on Grassmarket, and our holiday rental was just off Grassmarket, there really wasn't any decision making to be done (luckily, the day had rather taken it out of us).

Now, Mamma's don't do a "vegan pizza", but nor do they bat an eyelid when you ask for a pizza with no cheese. I've had good cheese-free pizza experiences with our local take-out pizza place, and we knew from experience that Mamma's pizza base and sauce should be up to the challenge. I don't recall exactly what I had on my pizza, on top of no-cheese, but I didn't go for any of the more outlandish options they have available. Nor have I any idea what spouse had on his, but I'm sure it involved dead animal of some kind, as well as the cheese.

What I can remember is that the pizza was tasty and indeed demolished to the last crumb. Luckily, none of the desserts were vegan by any stretch of imagination, so we we went home and fell over. I think. It was a long day of walking and lions and tigers and bears and parakeets and cotton-top tamarins.

David Bann Vegetarian Restaurant & Bar, Edinburgh

This was a birthday meal, none the less. David Bann's is on Mary St, a few minutes downhill from The Royal Mile, past a few more ethnically oriented restaurants, at least one of which had a board out to advertise the vegetarian nature of some of their food.

This may have been in order to lure in the overflow from David Bann's; we were after an early dinner on a Sunday evening, so hadn't thought it'd be necessary to book. How wrong we were. We were lucky to get a table at all, and after only a short wait - they were turning more people away as we waited. Later on there were a couple a larger groups of obviously pre-booked people, one of which may have been that scourge of Edinburgh, and indeed Dublin, a hen-party. Despite the amount of cocktails the young ladies consumed, however, they did behave themselves admirably.

The interior smacks somewhat of those boutique hotel type places one sees on interior design programs, but the atmosphere was nevertheless pleasantly intimate and the tables far enough apart for privacy.

The food. Vegan and potentially vegan options were clearly indicated on the menu, which made my job of picking two courses *and* dessert much more difficult than I'm used to (my usual experience of eating out in non-specialist restaurants is along the lines of "well can you do a green salad, then? no, no cheese, please."). Omnivorous spouse had even more trouble.

For a starter, he had a dish of mushrooms and polenta, and some parmesan. I gathered there was not much that could've made it better.

My starter was their smoked and marinated tofu. I'd never tried smoked tofu before, which I'm sure makes me a bad vegan, but I've never been that fond of cooking with tofu. This may well have been my loss, as the tofu was wonderful, firm, and with just the right amount of smokiness. In fact, it must've been the first time I tasted anything smoked since I stopped eating animals, and I quite used to like smoked fish. In any case, smoked tofu will hopefully appear on the family menu before long, spouse has certainly mentioned that trying to cook with it might be an interesting thing to try.

For the main course, spouse had a mushroom, smoked cheese and ale strudel - again, I didn't get to try it, but judging by the pleased sounds from across the table, it was, again, very good.

I, on the other hand, went to town with the new and exciting tofu experience, and had ordered a tofu main, as well: "Home smoked tofu with udon noodles. Tofu smoked with aromatic spices, pan fried and served on udon noodles, red pepper and pak choi, konbu, miso dashi (kelp, soya soup) with sesame paste, lime, fresh ginger and spring onion. Topped with cucumber, nori and mizuna."

Now, I like Japanese food as well as any other, and this tofu was, again, lovely. The noodles were not bad, nor was the miso dashi, but I just didn't like the taste. It did sort of grow on me as I worked my way through it, but still somehow wasn't quite right. I suspect this was purely due to it being a new taste I hadn't encountered before, and that I might well come to like it with more exposure. Still, the experience could have been better.

For dessert for me, there was vegan chocolate "ice cream", presumably the usual soy-based thing, though they don't specify. Three scoops was more than enough, and spouse was free to finish my portion. The ice-cream was sweet, and cold, and chocolate-flavored, but that was it, I fear I've had better soy ice cream from a supermarket. Additionally, the balls of ice-cream were set on top of little, thin discs of biscuit, which to me tasted a little stale - spouse was happy to scoop them up, though.

Spouse had rather more choice on the pudding front - there was just the vegan "ice-cream", sorbet, and one potentially vegan item for me to choose from, whereas he had the width of the menu. Choice fell on a rhubarb cheesecake, which I understand was, again, gorgeous.

Service at David Bann was what you'd expect from a high-end restaurant, despite the place being full. They were sufficiently attentive and didn't leave us sitting there with empty plates, or indeed without plates, for a noticeable length of time at any point.

In a "pulled out of my sleeve right at this minute 'cos I didn't know at the time I'd be reviewing the place" scale of Tiwinaku stars, David Bann Vegetarian Restaurant & Bar in Edinburgh gets 4 for location (nice and close to our rented flat for the waddle home), 4.5 for service and 4 for food. It was all very good, but I don't want to be carried away just because I'm not used to eating in proper, nice, vegetarian restaurants.

Kalpna, Edinburgh

This was late March, a month and a half ago.

Kalpna is an Indian vegetarian and vegan restaurant just outside the beaten tourist trail in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can take the bus, or indeed a taxi to St Patrick Square, but the 15-minute walk down South Bridge from High St (part of The Royal Mile, the most beaten of Edinburgh's tourist tracks) gets you into what feels like a more real, everyday city than the one hedged with kilt shops and ghost tours - recommended, if the weather allows. Don't be confused by the map - Kalpna in on the left, across the street from the square itself.

The menu is reasonably extensive and has all the items you'd expect of an Indian restaurant - in vegetarian versions. The dishes aren't, however, explicitly labeled as vegan, and as ghee traditionally used Indian cooking in place of vegetable oil, I took the easy and tempting option and went for the only clearly indicated vegan item on the menu, the Vegan Thaali. I'm sure they would've been more than happy to tell more about their menu, had I bothered to ask.

What arrived after we'd nearly finished our complimentary poppadoms and chutneys was indeed a "balanced selection of dishes from their menu full of complimentary flavors and textures." There were four or five different dishes, selection of naan breads and rice, but further details escape me after six weeks. I can recall it being all very enjoyable, though. The individual dishes were small, in their little metal bowls, but after working through the whole tray I was fed more than well.

Relentlessly omnivorous Spouse went for the Thaali Raj Bhog, a "royal platter", and a feast fit for a king it was: seven different dishes, plus the breads and rice. There were appreciative noises.

Service was friendly and attentive without being intrusive. The restaurant has a comfortable feel, even if it does come across as slightly worn out and even cafeteria-like. On a completely arbitrary scale, I give Kalpna an eight for the food and value for money, a six for the location, and a nine for the whole experience.