Last night we went out with friends and they chose All Bar One in Oxford. They had a voucher for the chain that expired yesterday, so All Bar One was it.
I knew that I would be reasonably okay at AllBarOne because I have found vegan options at their airport outlets - and that was a year or two ago. On arrival we were amazed they had a LOT of vegan options. Not only did they have a separate extensive vegan menu just for Veganuary but the main menu had as many items again! In total it seemed about half of their menu choices were vegan!
A couple of menu items were designed by high-profile vegans, one by Naturally Stephanie whose youtube channel is youtube.com/channel/UCeJwqp...
So what did I think of the menu? Well it is very oily, very low carb. All the vegan options, excepting one, had coconut oil in them. I try to avoid coconut oil and so when I spotted on the burger menu the Beyond Meat Burger without any obvious coconut in it I thought "what the **."
I don't consider a Beyond Meat burger a health food especially since it is served with fries. Not that there is ANYTHING wrong with potatoes, except when they are slathered in fat and salt.
It turns out that the flavour of meat is carried in the iron. So I knew before I started that this would have a lot of iron in it. Iron is associated with cancer as a possibe carcinogen, so I also knew that if I ate this burger (or any meat equivalent) regularly that would increase my risk of cancer. But just this once... And anyway my heavy legume & veg laden diet is very anti-carcinogenic.
Besides the burger obviously it comes in a bun. This is poor quality wheat made to look pretty. The burger stack had a slice of tomato which I extracted and gave to my wife, tomatoes being part of the nightshade family and being a key trigger for my arthritis. It also had vegan mayo and vegan cheese. The whole thing was topped with fried onions and had some vinegared vegetables in their as wel.
So all in all this was a poor choice in health terms. But...
For a drink on their menu was a smoothie with broccoli, celery, mango and a bit more. That was very healthy, very tasty and I could drink that by the bucketload. At least, I thought one of those will act as some kind of protection for me against the enslaught that was heading to my mouth.
In for a penny, I decided I would eat the BM burger as is. Faced with the stack I just wondered how on earth I would even get it near my mouth. But I did, of course. Nibble, nibble and you get into the burger et al.
And there it was, the memory of meat. Gosh, it is 40 or so years since I last ate meat but the recognition of that flavour came back in an instant. So what Did I say to myself, "mmm must have more of this." Well there was no desire to have more iron just to get that meaty flavour. It was an experience and for me a one off.
The whole burger was not overly oily, as I had expected. It did bleed red into the rest of the bun as I ate through it, but not an oily bleeding. So that was a rather outcome than expected.
I can see that, for a meat eater, this burger will be a very good alternative. Not that I pretend to understand meat eaters at all. But for example, come July I will be with a large group of friends and I can see them having a go at Beyond Meat burgers this year, and next year I would not be surprised if the only burger on the meat bbq is the BM, or equivalent.
For me, I survived the experience. This morning I had my usual large bowl of porridge with a banana. Today I will be strict to ensure I give my body the best chance of fast recovery.
Oh, I won't be going back to All Bar One in a hurry - too noisy, the service left a lot to be desired and a very low-carb oily menu is not attractive.
I'm so glad I'm now a Vegan