Tuesday 31 July 2012

Cafe Nero


6 Culver Street West Colchester, CO1 1JG and Caffe Nero at Williams and Griffin Colchester, CO1 1PN

Going by Cafe Nero's "Dietry Products Summary" their vegan options are:
 

Sea Salt crisps 
Fruit salad 
Porridge made with Soya milk
Red Pepper Penne Pasta 
Bear yo yo (for the kids..)
and..
popcorn.

Come on cafes.....Give us some interesting food!

Saturday 28 July 2012

Naka Thai


35East Hill
Colchester
Essex CO1 2QX
Tel: 01206 864086, 01206 866489
restaurant@nakathai.com 

http://www.nakathai.com

 Please note that unfortunately we cannot verify the accuracy of any findings provided by the eateries surveyed.

As ever, all information on this site is intended as a guide. Menus and ingredients may change, so always mention that you are vegan at time of ordering.
If you spot any out of date information/broken links on this site, please email me to let me know!

Last Mon (23rd July 2012) I went to "Naka Thai" on East Hill, with vegan friends.
I emailed a couple of thai places to ask if they could provide a suitable vegan meal (no meat, fish, eggs, milk,cream etc etc!)
Naka Thai was the only one to reply (hence they got our custom!) Here was their response:

"We would like to confirm that most of our vegetable dishes have no animal products. And we can also prepare many other dishes free from animal products as well, usually the meat will be substituted with beancurd. Just let our staff know, and we will prepare the food to suit your diet".

So I phoned to book (again mentioning we were vegan-just to make sure they were aware!)
I printed off the menu, and marked dishes that looked suitable, and took it along with me. When we ordered we asked the waitress to double check with the chef that the dishes we had chosen definitely contained no animal products (milk, egg,cream etc).She didn't come back to say any of it wasn't suitable, so fingers crossed that it was!

Here's what we had:

For starters:

Vegetable Tempuras with dipping sauce
Thai style sweetcorn cakes with dipping sauce

Then we ordered 4 mains to share, which were:

Thai Green curry with mixed vegetables and coconut milk
Thai red curry with mixed vegetables and coconut milk
Sweet and sour tofu
Spicy basil tofu

And a couple of sides of rice.
I then ordered mango sorbet for dessert :)

Overall the food was very nice; personally I wasn’t keen on the texture of the basil tofu, but other people I was with did like it.
The service was friendly, and it was nice to try some different cuisine, and to be able to order three courses.



Update:
Went to Naka Thai again on Monday 13th May 2013.
Ordered the same courses as before, but also added a side of Vegetable "khao pad Naka"-which is fried rice with grilled pineapple and veg (and cashews).
However when the rice dish came it had egg in it! (despite us mentioning we were vegan many times, and the chef confirming that all of our choices were vegan). The waitress apologised and our rice dish was replaced with a non eggy one!
Be aware to check if you order this dish!

Update 2:I was also told by another local vegan that they ordered the fried rice for take away, and requested no egg using the online order form, but it still contained egg when it was delivered.


Update 3:
Local vegan Bethany wrote on our accompanying facebook page:
"Went to Naka Thai tonight and was really surprised at how lovely it was there. Delicious food, extremely nice staff who were really accommodating. The menu says to mention if you are vegan and they can adapt pretty much anything. I had a coconut based soup which was amazing, and then coconut rice and mixed very stir fry with cashews and peanut sauce. Make sure you tell them you are vegan and no fish sauce and they are more than happy to make or adapt anything for you. Very impressed. Also taste card registered at 50% off so a real bargain. Will definitely be going back."


The eggy rice!



Our bill. (50% off food with Taste Card)

Sunday 22 July 2012

The Slug And Lettuce

 The Slug and Lettuce
The Slug and Lettuce – Colchester
111 High Street
ColchesterCO1 1TB
Tel: 01206 367320