Food for Friends, Brighton - restaurant review

Brighton must be one of the most veggie and vegan-friendly places in England, I reckon. Like all good Londoners, I like to head down in Brighton as often as I can, have a stroll along the seafront, play some crap arcade games, and generally get in the locals' way.

My other half is a former Brighton resident, having spent a few years studying in the city. That was a long, long time ago, but even then he used to eat at Food for Friends. Back then, it was a veggie restaurant turning out baked potatoes and other simple veggie meals to hungry, scruffy students. Now it turns out slightly more upmarket vegetarian dishes to shoppers taking a break from hitting the high streets. Now, like then, it's packed.

The past few times I've been in have been hit and miss. That said, even their misses are pretty good, it's just that when they have hits, they have Hits so it's kind of disappointing when you just have a decent, rather than a-MAH-zing meal.

I don't know why, but nothing called out to me from the menu. When I saw you could get the halloumi salad as vegan option (crispy tofu subbed for the cheese), I knew I had found my dinner.

Here's what I got:

The halloumi-less salad promised crispy tofu, avocado, mango, wasabi cashews and a mango dressing. Oddly enough, the last two ingredients had gone AWOL. The mango dressing morphed into plain old olive oil, and the wasabi cashews had morphed into thin air. 

Shame, that. Still, for some reason, I kind of enjoyed it - the tofu was light and fluffy in the middle, crisp on the outside, and I was jonesing for some leaves after a week of eating food that can only be described as utter crap. (Not quite toast sandwiches, but not far off.)

For reasons that seemed good at the time, I shunned the curry. Himself made a better decision, and here's what he got:

Looks nice, right? And it was. The cauliflower pakoras were a little shy of the deep fat fryer (a bit on the raw side, rather than the yielding cruciferous pillows they should be) but the curry was nice and mellow - gentle spices in a smooth tomato-based sauce.

But you don't want to see that. You want to see this:

 

That little beauty was banana fritters with rum-soaked raisins and vanilla ice cream, and it was worth the trip to Food for Friends on its own. The light snap of batter gave way to a soft banana on the inside, all brought to a beautiful place with those very distinctly rummy raisins.

I pretended to share the pudding with himself. I didn't want to, but I did. I felt like a better person for it, but I would have been happy to have been a little bit worse of a person with a bit more of that wonderful dessert.

Food for Friends

www.foodforfriends.com/
17-18 Prince Albert Street
Brighton
East Sussex
BN1 1HF
01273 202310