Restaurant review - The Port House, Strand

I am often sad that the newly arrived fashionable tapas restaurants in London tend to be poor for vegetarians - it's not that they don't have any options but those options rarely work together as a meal.  I was therefore pretty excited when we passed The Port House a while ago and took a look at the menu and found that it has plenty of tasty looking vegetarian options.

Not only that but it has a gin and tonic menu.  Seriously.  This is my awesome orange and cinnamon G&T.

Anyway - we had a really good lunch there.  The highlight for me were the aubergine tempura with hummus - tempura were just perfectly fried, crispy, not too greasy, and the hummus was flavoursome.    Honourable mention to the goats cheese salad and the picon blue that we had.  It was also - for central London - really good value for money.  We had 5 tapas between the two of us, admittedly almost all of them vegetarian, and a drink each and the bill came to about £40.   The atmosphere was also very nice - candlelit, quiet, tables spaced reasonably from each other.

The only downside was the bizarrely judgemental waitress.  When we ordered 5 tapas, she practically snatched the menus out of our hands and told us that "that would be enough".  We decided that perhaps she was trying to be helpful and let us know portion sizes.  However, while 5 was perhaps half a tapa too many, it was pretty much the size of lunch that we wanted particularly as a couple of them were mostly vegetables.  When she came back and saw that we'd finished, she gasped disapprovingly, cleared plates, then came back with dessert menus "Do you want dessert? [without pausing] No, you've had enough."  We didn't have dessert.  (Though, in fairness, we weren't planning to anyway.)  I'm not quite sure what makes anyone decide to take a job as a waitress when they are judgemental about people's eating habits.  It seems an unwise choice to me but there we have it.  

I liked the food so much, though, that I'm still planning to return - it's probably the only tapas restaurant in London where, as a vegetarian, you could go back a second time and order completely different dishes.  

Genoa, Liguria

Apologies for the lack of posts for the last three weeks, have been busy - in both good and bad ways - lately.

One of the good things was a visit to Genoa (or, as the Italians call it, Genova) in Liguria.  It is not only has pretty palaces and churches and museums and coastline and things but ALSO fantastic vegetarian food.  Obviously, Italy has always been a great place to travel as a vegetarian but, in my view, it can get a bit samey.  Liguria has some quite different vegetarian food, though.

Behold pretty coastline

And pretty church

Back to the food.

Firstly, there is pesto.  Who doesn't like pesto?  The Ligurians do it with funny stubby gnocchi like pasta called trofie which is extremely tasty.

Trofie al pesto - photo from here
http://foodloversodyssey.typepad.com

Secondly, there is farinata.  Farinata are gram flour pancakes but done Italian style so with tasty things like onion or artichoke or gorgonzola in them.  They are delicious.

Farinata - photo from http://savoringeverybite.com/

Thirdly, there is focaccia con formaggio which is, you've guessed, it focaccia with cheese.  It tastes more like pancakes with cheese in the middle - bit like khachapuri and that is, obviously no bad thing!

Focaccia con formaggio

And THEN, as if all that was not enough, they have torta con verdura - yes, you at the back, that does mean vegetable tarts.  Lots of them.  You can have a tart made from green beans and potatoes or broccoli and brie or artichokes.  They are all good.

And ALSO you get all the more standard Italian vegetarian goodness like pizza.  And wine.  And gelato.

In terms of the food, I think that was the best trip I've ever been on.