Vanilla Black

Location: 17-18 Took’s Ct, London EC4A 1LB

Taste: 5/5
Presentation: 5/5
Ambience: 5/5
Price: 4/5
Overall: 5/5

This is the story of an evening in London known as ‘date night’. It was a gloomy, unpredictable Friday evening in London town and I was getting ready to go out for dinner to Vanilla Black in Chancery Lane. I waited for the other half until he walked from City Thameslink station to meet me just round the corner from the restaurant.

As soon as we entered the restaurant, we were greeted by the front staff and waitresses, one of whom showed us to our table. After a few minutes of catching up on our day, she returned the ask us for drinks and we ordered water – standard every time we go out, a glass of red wine and a pimms  cocktail (for those of you who know me, I’m sure it’s easy to tell which one of us had the cocktail). Just to note that everything we ordered throughout the night was vegan because I’m taking the leap of going dairy free (I know, I’m crazy)! Considering the restaurant is fully vegetarian and has a separate vegan menu, it made my evening particularly easy-going.

For starters I ordered the sweet potato and puy lentil dhal and Rahul ordered dried and iced tomato with olive oil cake. But before they arrived we were given a couple of dishes as part of the meal. The first one which I have to say I really didn’t enjoy, but Rahul did was some sort of jelly with seaweed at the bottom and apple cubes at the top and the second one was a selection of sweet and savoury bread served with an orange caramel vegan spread and olive oil. The latter of the two was definitely my most favourite. The waitress was always around and quickly spotted that we had finished with the pre-starter, starter and soon after cleaning up the dishes she served us our actual starter. They were DELICIOUS…well at least mine was – for all those goodness gracious me lovers, ‘this dhal is fantastic’ was a truly applicable quote on the night. The tomato starter was also very tasty but I still preferred mine far more. Our mains were a serving of fried and pickled mushroom with sweetcorn pureé and cauliflower, fennel pollen and pistachio with apple pureé. I had come into the restaurant dead set on not ordering any desert – mostly because of the price, however I couldn’t help myself after looking at the desert menu. Normally, we always order what I want but this time I let him choose and we went with the peanut butter cheesecake and cracked cocoa bean. When it was served to us it was basically a deconstructed cheesecake which didn’t take anything away from its decadent taste.

The presentation was the best I’ve seen in all the restaurants I’ve visited so far and rightly so because it wasn’t a cheap meal – costing just over £100 for 2 people. The atmosphere when we first entered was quite as Friday night was just kicking off and as the evening progressed, the restaurant got busier but never too loud that we were unable to have a conversation at a human pitch instead of yelling across the table from each other which in a place like Dishoom (Indian restaurant in London) has and often does happen because it’s always super busy and bustling. All in all, unless you have the money to splash, I recommend this restaurant for special dates and occasions because as well as the food (obviously) it’s also about the experience. Last Friday’s date night was definitely a wonderful evening with vegan food that tasted DE-LI-CI-OUS.