Chocolate cake and Sunday roast in Deptford

Having mentioned recently how much I really love both being on holiday from university and museums, I treated myself to use some of the time from the former to go visit the latter.

This time, I stuck to South London (the best side of the river, in my totally unbiased opinion) and headed out to the National Maritime Museum for the Death in the Ice exhibition, all about the 1845 expedition to find the North West passage. Captained by Sir John Franklin, the expedition eventually ended in tragedy and has had a hold on popular imagination every since. It's a fascinating story, and a great exhibition if you're interested in naval history, Arctic exploration, or just gripping tales.

While Greenwich has no shortage of great vegan places to eat, we thought after we'd checked out the exhibition, we'd take a short walk to Deptford and go feed there.

First stop: The Birds Nest pub for Sunday lunch. The menu listed one vegan roast, but when we ordered it, we were told there were two choices: a chickenless pie or a seitan roast. Two of us, two choices - our way forward was clear: one of each please.

Here's what the pie looked like:

First up, the good bits. The roast is huge, which is what I like in any good meal. There's lots of veggies, including broccoli and roast potatoes, both of which should be on any good Sunday roast. And the pie itself was great: chicken type pieces in a tomato cashew sauce with a puff pastry top. Yes. All good.

And then... the mystery Yorkshire puddings. I wasn't expecting any to turn up, as we ordered a vegan roast and Yorkies aren't generally vegan. A quick Google later, and it looks like they weren't vegan and should have been left off the plate. Erk.

The appearance of non-vegan stuff on a vegan plate was a bit grim, but the rest of the food was good. Maybe the kitchen had a bit of a slip up, but still - what if I'd been allergic or something? Would I go back? Yeah, but I'll make sure those Yorkies are either vegan or nowhere near me.

After Yorkie-gate, we carried on to Vinyl, a record shop and cafe, about five minutes away. It's a really friendly, haphazard place crammed with secondhand vinyl of all sorts. There's a gig space downstairs too, and bands playing regularly.

The cafe is dinky, but has coffee, tea, beer and vegan cake. I have a lot of love for the last two, so I picked up some Whitsable Bay ale (vegan in bottles, annoyingly not in casks) and a slice of vegan chocolate cake while Mr Flicking the Vs went and ferreted through the record boxes. He was highly complementary about the place and the cake.

I'm looking forward to going back for the music, and the cake.

By this point, we were totally stuffed, but on the walk back to the train station we walked past the Full Nelson. Run by the same people as the Waiting Room, it's a veggie cafe where everything can also be made vegan. Oh, and the cocktails look incredible too. Deptford is clearly worth a return visit.