Ah. Surprisingly there’s a new hidden cafe opened for about 2 months on a side street of Walworth Road. It wouldn’t catch your eyes unless you live or walk around the area… Easily missed if you were on the bus too… I spotted this as I was heading towards New Kent Road via the back streets. 

The original cafe, The Juice Pharm, is in St Albans (the area I got off to get to Whipsnade Zoo)… I think the owners have chosen a GREAT location for someone to try and blog about this place. 😅

It’s quite a small cafe with 2-3 tables and then there’s a couple of benched tables along the front window and wall. Fairly cosy.

That Saturday evening was very beautiful… This picture doesn’t show it well.

You know what?

I’ve never been to a vegan or vegetarian restaurant before. I’m a meat eater and I know I should eat less of it.

So “clean-eating” came up in a conversation with my colleague Miss Vegan last week – an extreme type of vegan eating of raw foods. We were talking about vegan sauces in the Asian markets – and there are a few, you just have to find them. Very hard to spot because the bottles are so small and are quite expensive!

Whilst looking up clean-eating, I clicked onto a restaurant called Nama Foods which is based in the Notting Hill area, so I said to my colleague I will drop by to have a look… It’s my week off this week, but thought I should start the weekend by doing most of the things I needed in case of bad weather and if something else came up. So after popping into London Zoo once again, this time I got my membership card! Yay! I went bus hopping to get to Nama Foods. I took the 274 from London Zoo, got off at Baker Street area, then took the bus 18. Got off at Royal Oak Station and then walked for about 15 minutes along into Talbot Road. It’s not hard to find… just a longish walk from where I was. You could easily get the number 7 bus from Oxford Street!

Well. Was it good or bad timing entering between 2 and 3pm? Uh, it was bad timing. Already busy with the locals and the waiting staff seemed overwhelmed. How do they cope? No idea.

I got seated at the bar section. I didn’t mind but got to see a lot of people trying to use the single toilet available. Quite embarrassing when people tried to open the already locked door (I do that sometimes…). It took a while to get a waiters attention. They kept going up and down the stairs. But finally got someone’s attention! Phew… the waiter took my order without a pen and paper. I read an article in The Guardian (yes, I read The Guardian online… used to be The Times fan for a bit but got sidetracked) that restaurants should encourage their waiters to take note using pen and pad with people’s orders… In this restaurant I think they should do that unless they’re being eco-friendly…

The first item that came out was this Chocolate Heaven smoothie. Hmmm, a chocolate smoothie. They use almond milk in this. Tasted exquisite. I think I was the last person that afternoon to order this. ^_^ By the way, the free water was behind me. You have a choice of cucumber or lemon water. I chose cucumber.

The one item I was most intrigued with was the Italian Pasta which Miss Vegan kind of told me about where clean eating restaurants would use courgettes as spaghetti.  The food is cold by the way as everything they use is raw. The Italian sauce was amazing, vinegary and went well with the courgettes. I think the only thing missing was some sort of bread that would have gone well with the vinegar taste.

And the last item I had was this Blueberry Cheesecake. The cheesecake itself is made of a blend of cashew nut cheese (I’ve never heard of that before) and blueberries creating a sour taste. The crust part was nice, nutty and sweet. Amazing what vegans can do with raw foods!