It’s alright to break the rules sometimes – especially if you’ve made them up yourself. Have that fourth pint on a weeknight. Nip to the 24-hour bagel shop for a post-dinner snack. You won’t get ill from oysters this time. Because, sometimes, very special things come from such rebellion: a miraculous non-hangover, a quiet joy, or one-of-a-kind deliciousness.
In a decade of vegetarianism, I’ve been to few places better
Depending on your degree of plant-based militancy, Holy Carrot’s second restaurant either vaguely bends its own rules or totally upends them. At the original outpost in Portobello, head chef Daniel Watkins’s live fire cooking and ferment laboratory established Holy Carrot as one of London’s great pioneers of vegan cuisine. But this new outpost in Spitalfields is not vegan, with all manner of dairy- and/or egg-based wonders across the menu. I previously reckoned that the first Holy Carrot was ‘[not] out to blow your mind’. Well, the second very much is.
Their ‘sexy’ tofu – two mighty chunks loaded with a raucous display of Watkins’ fermenting chops (pickled carrot, onion and more) – shone in a blaze of fried orange and golden yellow. Each bite – thick with crunch but juicily tender inside – was accompanied by an eye-widening flash of sweet pickle and creamy smoked carrot XO. Burrata was my first experience of non-vegan Holy Carrot, and made for a similarly vivid sequence of textures and flavours: a plump dollop with a delicately brittle lemongrass pineapple hairdo, twangs of citrus and piercing smoked pepper.
Any of their dishes would be a showstopper in London’s other top vegetarian restaurants. For mains, the tempeh and smoked tofu schnitzel was a marvelously executed bombardment of flavour: effortlessly balanced thickness of fry in the breaded centrepiece, the lentils curried with colourful spices and the celeriac coiled on top. The king oyster mushroom vol-au-vent followed, a handsome parcel loaded with loveliness, the mushrooms resembling slithers of beef, and with smutty spurts of cream in the peppercorn sauce.
But it isn’t just the grub that makes the second Holy Carrot superior to the first: it’s the space. With white tiles and table cloths, linoleum flooring and uncomplicated timber dining chairs, it was designed with Spitalfields’ fruit-and-veg-flogging history in mind. Earthy and simple, but charming, too. I adored how the unfussy minimalism was interrupted by two bright pink, borderline psychedelic murals of giant mushrooms and gloopy trees.
Holy Carrot’s sequel is more chill than its first outing, so it’s fitting that their greatest dish is also its most casual. Pizzettas and flatbreads made using fermented koji and silken tofu get their own section of the menu – and rightly so. One was served with a boat of rich, peppery smoked chilli mushroom ragù that radiated from plate to nostril and had a formidable, lingering heat. The other was a luxurious take on Georgian khachapuri, with oozing egg and molten cheese. The memory of the latter still makes me drool.
As for the rest? The cocktails were as well-thought out as anything on the food menu, and a fragrant, deftly spiced sticky toffee pudding and silky tiramisu rounded things off. In a decade of vegetarianism, I’ve been to few places better.
The vibe A spectacular levelling-up from one of the country’s top plant-forward chefs.
The food Vegetarian dishes so good you won’t just not miss meat – you’ll forget you ever needed it.
The drink Curated and ethical: a tidy selection of wines, plus homemade kombuchas and low-waste concoctions. Try the Floral cocktail if you’re after a colourful highball, while the Umami is engrossingly earthy.
Time Out tip Leave your three-course maximum at the door – the pizzettas are unmissable, but so is everything else.