People that know Hannah and I will be aware that we are not vegan, but we do enjoy cooking and eating plant based food on a regular basis. In fact, it makes up a good proportion of our weekly diet these days.
We sort of drifted into eating less meat as we started to experiment with meat free recipes to try and make vegan food more exciting. Hannah’s mother has been vegan for most of her life and when eating out, the option she was usually given for ‘vegan’ was a mixed salad or grilled vegetables, so we wanted to make it a fun experience by coming up with lots of different recipes.
These days lots of restaurants have added proper vegan dishes to their menus and the choice now thankfully is much greater. There are also a growing number of vegetarian and vegan only restaurants.
We have had great fun cooking vegan food from making a full-on Indian banquet to a Caribbean tasting menu. You can create multi-layered textures using products like chickpeas and sweet potatoes and with spice and herb combinations, you can cook any type of cuisine packed with flavour.
La Sala Puerto Banus
We have always been fans of the food at La Sala in Puerto Banus. I am part of their golf league and they also sponsor the entertainment news on Hannah’s breakfast show with Talk Radio Europe. We knew they had been experimenting with a new ‘green’ menu, but we were very excited to hear about the introduction of a vegan / veggie menu.
So off we went on Friday night to try it out for ourselves. It was already very busy in La Sala by 7.30 but luckily, as recommended, we had booked a table. They were expecting a full service of two sittings so we were advised that the table would need to be vacated in 2 hours.
We always take time to enjoy our food, but 2 hours was more than enough time to not even feel remotely rushed.
The menus were brought over and the staff were eager to explain the vegan options to us and also offer their personal favourites and thoughts, which we found very helpful. There was a great choice of starters and mains which included some of our favourite dishes.
We LOVE ceviche and were thrilled to see a vegan version as one of the starters. Hannah chose this and I opted for the vegan gyozas. Both were super tasty, but we were very impressed with the ceviche. It managed to capture ALL of the flavour of a traditional ceviche but with no fish at all.
For our main courses I wanted to try the ‘beyond meat’ burger which came with non mayo coleslaw and fries. Hannah had been very keen to try a jackfruit dish, so she had the Thai red curry with jackfruit.
My burger was incredible. Now it is not for everyone as although it is 100% plant based, the texture and even flavour replicated meat almost exactly. For Vegans that are transitioning from meat it is a great choice. It is also good for non vegans who want to have a meat free meal. I think people that have not eaten meat for many years or who have never eaten meat might struggle with the concept that it replicated meat. But whatever the individual thoughts of diners, I found it amazing and Hannah, who is not a burger fan said she would actually have this as a main.
The jackfruit Thai curry was also amazing! We had both been looking forward to trying jackfruit as it seems to be the ‘trending’ ingredient of the moment. It was actually quite sweet, but it worked incredibly well in a Thai curry and is definitely something we would have again.
Overall, we were extremely impressed with the vegan / veggie menu and it is great to see a popular establishment like La Sala embracing the changing eating habits of many people and cater for them as well.
Well done La Sala and we cannot wait to work our way through the vegan menu…the vegan version of fish and chips with mushy peas is on my list for next time and I know Hannah has her eye on that burger!!