New product discoveries: Vegan eating when out and about

Most of my supermarket product discoveries appear in monthly In My Kitchen posts, but foods I buy out and about often get neglected. I thought I'd summarise a few recent highlights in this round-up, featuring two restaurant meals and two take-away items.

First up, Fego. Mr Bite and I had a day off together earlier in the year, enjoying some solo time while Mini Bite was in nursery. We enjoyed a long country walk and then headed to Sevenoaks, a neighbouring town, for lunch. Fego was a new-to-us discovery in the Sevenoaks centre and there are 8 other restaurants around England.

Fego vegan-friendly vegetable curry

The menu is large and varied with a number of vegan-friendly options. I deliberated between the Veggie Buddha Bowl (with raw courgette, grilled aubergine, chimmichurri, avocado, beetroot, kale, apple, olives, houmous and mixed seeds), Superfood Salad (roasted butternut squash, grilled peppers, avocado, tomato, asparagus, tenderstem broccoli, baby gem, quinoa, mango salsa, chia and flax seeds) and Vegetable Curry, which ultimately won out. The curry featured cauliflower, spinach, sweet potato, aubergine, butternut squash, a tahini dressing, basmati rice and mango salsa. It was excellent and beautifully presented. The only downside is that the menu labels it as vegetarian rather than vegan, and I had to double-check it was dairy free. 

Mr Bite enjoyed a chicken burger and liked that too, although the burger was large enough to prove unwieldy, and he wasn't convinced about the mango salsa it included.

Sticking with the burger theme, Gourmet Burger Kitchen now offers a vegan burger on their main menu. I posted some years back about their hippy dippy burger, which was vegan but not listed on any menus - you had to ask. It consisted of grilled aubergine with pineapple, tomato, alfalfa sprouts, and a slightly spicy tahini sauce.

I used to find it bizarre that the hippy dippy burger wasn't listed on the main menu. Now, it is listed on the menu but has completely changed. The revamped version has a bean patty, jalapeno hummus, avocado, piquillo pepper, salad and relish. I think I preferred the old version, but this one was good too.

Our outing to GBK was in honour of Mr Bite's birthday (back in April) and he enjoyed the Californian veggie burger, which has the same bean patty but cheese and crispy onions in the mix. We took lunch from home for Mini Bite but she enjoyed sitting in the diner-style booths of the Maidstone store we visited.

Moving on to take-away items, Waitrose now have two varieties of vegan sandwich (they also do some vegan salads and vegan sushi). The Mean Greens has spinach, edmame beans and peas and is good although not excellent. Their second sandwich choice has chipotle sweet potato and I probably prefer that one, although neglected to photograph it on my one purchase to date.

Last but definitely not least, the Coconut Collaborative have released a vegan double chocolate mousse that is included in the meal deal choices at Boots. This is the most mousse-like mousse I've had since turning vegan, with a gorgeously fluffy texture and silky chocolate sweetness. I heartily recommend it.

There are vegan products popping up by the week at the moment, so this is a selected taster of ones I've managed to try. Feel free to alert me to any discoveries you've made that you think I need to seek out!

Have you enjoyed any meals out lately?

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