I was thinking about how far the vegan scene in London has changed over the last few years when I went to Wulf & Lamb, a vegan restaurant that opened around a year ago in Chelsea. It's not somewhere that I go often - it's a place more geared up for millionaires than medical students -- but at the tail end of December, I went to the Natural History Museum and afterwards, went to look for lunch nearby. And that's where Wulf & Lamb came in.
It's a two story restaurant down a beautiful little street, and when we visited, it was almost full. There's clearly a lot of demand for Wulf & Lamb, but I'm not sure how much is from vegans: I saw one diner in a Canada Goose jacket...
The inside is open and bright, and we grabbed a table next to a window to look down on that little street while we ate. Getting your food is a slightly odd set up: Wulf & Lamb looks like a high-end restaurant, but you have to grab a menu and order your food at a counter downstairs like it's a fast food place.
The food is a bit of the magpie approach to world food: a burger here, a Thai curry there, and pasta, Mexican, and Tex Mex for good measure. There's nothing to startle the horses here, but you're guaranteed to find something you like on the menu.
Wulf & Lamb has two burgers, one seitan and a spicy veg patty. Being a seitan phobe (too many stringy burgers have put me off wheat meat for life!), I went for the spicy veg patty, which came with slaw and wedges.
There were four wedges. Four. For £15. Complaining about prices in a Chelsea restaurant is a bit daft, but still - I was kind of expecting more wedges than I could count on the fingers of one hand. The slaw was nice though. The burger was a bit damp and disintegrated when I picked it up. There wasn't much spice - it tasted of liquid smoke, which I'm not entirely against. Like the wedges, the burger was on the small side. Maybe appetites in Chelsea are as small as wallets are large!
The open burrito with sautéed ackee, black beans, red rice, cherry tomatoes and peppers with chilli, coriander, lime and cashew sour cream was much more of an interesting proposition. I definitely don't have enough ackee in my life. All of the ingredients were great, but I was really hoping for something with a bit of spice. It was nice, but a bit bland.
The burger and burrito were fine, but not massively exciting and overpriced - it all reminded me of the old days of eating vegan in London, where you were just grateful about having something to eat, and you didn't really worry about whether it was good or not. Wulf & Lamb's food was fine, but there are so many other places to eat in London that are twice as good and pretty much half the price. Wulf & Lamb gets a lot of great reviews, so maybe I just caught them on an off day. Next time I'm in Chelsea, I might stop by - I'm just a bit relieved that just won't be any time soon.
Wulf & Lamb
wulfandlamb.com
243 Pavilion Rd
Chelsea
London
SW1X 0BP
020 3948 5999
what a strange sounding place - it does sound a little like it has some catching up to do with the amazing vegan food on offer in london - most of your places you go sounds so amazing I want to get on a place but I feel we have better places than this round the corner so if this was all london had to offer I might just stay at home.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your review of this place! Sounds like it is pretty expensive and I know what you mean about not frequenting it often because of that! Glad it exists...but...I am with you...I wouldn't be able to go there often even if I lived right around the corner from it :)
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