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We are Donna and Andrew. In 2004 we opened a vegetarian restaurant using money we loaned from the bank which was supposed to be for a house extension. However, we used it to buy a lease on a restaurant instead. And this was before celebrities were giving up meat and the term Plant Based was something to do with gardening.
This was a vegetarian restaurant which had a rule: no pasta bake, meat substitutes or veggie curry. Instead, we would be serving delights such as Brie ice cream, tomato jelly and mushroom fudge. Not all on the same plate, we’re not that avant-garde. We were one of the first vegetarian restaurants to be Michelin recomended and published a cookbook in 2015. We first opened in a little street called Swinegate in York then relocated to London in 2008, just when the financial crash happened.
Anyway, we’ll take you on the journey and you’ll read about the good bits and the bad. There’ll be various stories such as dealing with the alcohol licence, welcoming celebrity diners, not painting the extraction flue brick red, a spooky A-Z (remember them?) and much, much more. Plus, we’ll be sharing recipes and cheffy tips, but for paid subscribers we’ll delve into the restaurant recipe archives and bring out the big guns, as well as the theory and inspiration behind dishes. Fancy making some crispy soy sauce or builder’s tea ice cream?
If you’ve read this far, we’ve possibly captured you, so a little more about us. I was a chef for many years and cooked with meat, so I haven’t always worked primarily with vegetables. Before opening the restaurant, I was a catering college lecturer, so the background experience was there. Meanwhile, Donna was working as a nurse and the intention was for her to join me on the busy days to just help out. Well, it didn’t happen that way; we ended up working together full time and Donna was looking after diners at tables instead of patients in beds.
It’s probably best to read the Substack from the start so that you can follow the journey more easily, but if you don’t then fair enough, there’ll be something mildly interesting, I suppose.
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