Losing my Rawligion

Off Tottenham Court Road, near Goodge Street station, there's a new raw place you might have heard about. People have been raving about their caramel shortcake, and celebrating another plant-based cafe opening in London.

Depending on who follow on Twitter or Insta, you might even have seen people calling it a vegan place. That's exactly what I saw, so I decided to go check it out. 

I was told by the perky staff that everything was vegan and vegetarian, which would have been great news, if it were true. Most of it is indeed vegan, but there's some dishes with honey in, and one thing with dairy in -- that caramel shortcake. 

Normally when people tell me everything is vegan and vegetarian, I don't bother reading the ingredients to see if there's anything animal-derived included. Handily, Rawligion does list the ingredients under every dish -- and they're clear that there's dairy in the shortcake. To be fair to Rawligion, the cafe doesn't claim to be vegan and the v word doesn't appear on its website, so you can't blame them for not stocking all-vegan food. Maybe someone should tell the staff though: in an age of dairy allergies and veganism, telling people everything's vegan when it's not is probably a lousy idea.

Brief rant over, how's the eats? Though Rawligion has a couple of small tables, the music is club-loud and the decor is a bit hectic, so it's more of a grab-and-go place.

If you're after liquid refreshments, there's lots of creative juices to be had (albeit ones that are significantly more costly than most London pints) and coffee too. For more solid sustenance, there's a fridge with lunch or breakfast dishes, and desserts.

For hungry raw-ists, there's courgette marinara, thai slaw, a raw wrap, and a Lebanese box with hummus-type dip, raw falafels and tabbouleh.

I picked up some rather good-looking sushi, with cauliflower taking the place of the sushi rice. The cauliflower is wrapped around veggies like pepper and cauliflower topped with alfalfa sprouts and vegetable caviar. There's a side of tamari if you're in a dipping mood. While my home experiments with cauliflower rice have been pretty dismal, I've generally enjoyed it every time I've had it in sushi - and Rawligion's was equally pleasing. For a vegetable known for its blandness, Rawligion gets bonus points for packing in the flavour into its sushi and still making it pretty as a picture.

For dessert, I steered clear of the dairy-carrying shortcake in favour of the pancakes, which are equally good looking with their pastel shades and flour garnishes. While they were full of good fruity taste, the textures were a bit jarring -- the pancakes were amazingly soft despite being raw, but the filling was weirdly robust, which is equally surprising, given how lovely and pillowy raw cashew icing can be.

Rawligion, then, is a vegan-friendly place, but not a vegan place, so don't forget to check the ingredients as you would in any non-vegan establishment. Other than that, the menu's worth a cautious explore, if you're feeling flush or looking for raw food in the centre of London.

Rawligion

http://www.rawligion.co.uk/

3 Tottenham Street
London
W1T 2AF