If you’ve spent the last year in a remote part of the desert with no Internet, then you may not have heard about Unity Diner – the newest restaurant to hit the London vegan scene. This isn’t just another ‘Instagrammable’ eatery jumping on a trend; UD was founded by dedicated animal activist ‘Earthling’ Ed and his partner, and all the profits from the diner go to Surge, an animal-rights organisation also co-founded by Ed.
If there’s one thing I wanted to accomplish while being home for the Christmas break (forget uni work), it was going to be to pay at least one visit to Unity Diner. After obsessively waiting for the restaurant to open and then jealously tracking their Facebook posts for the past three months, it’s been long overdue. On the pretext of treating my sister for her birthday (I mean, I did actually treat her) I finally managed to visit a few days ago – and although you can probably already guess what the tone of this review is going to be, I wanted to share my experience, and a few drool-worthy food photos.
It’s not often that I start a restaurant review not talking about the food, but before we even got there, the customer service that we received was worthy of praise. Knowing that it was likely to be busy, I called up the day before we were planning to visit to ask whether I needed to book a table. The member of staff who spoke to me not only reassured me that we wouldn’t need a booking (there were only three of us after all, and we were visiting around lunchtime rather than for dinner) but told me to mention his name if we had any problems, and he’d make sure we got seated. As soon as we arrived, we were met at the door and given a choice of tables, and I found that all the staff members were consistently attentive and friendly throughout our visit.
I think drinks menus can be one of the most underrated aspects of the restaurant experience – usually because they’re not that exciting, so I just get tap water and move onto the food. But in this case, the drinks menu had so much choice that we were each poring over them for a while before finally deciding. There was a selection of both hot and cold, with four different plant-milk options to shake up a coffee or hot chocolate. In the chilled section we could choose from fizzy drinks, juices, and of course alcohol, well-stocked at the bar right beside our table.
While I’d usually go for a hot chocolate, I wanted to save as much room for food and possible, so I opted for something I hoped would be refreshing, and chose one of the three available flavours of kombucha (which is basically fermented tea, usually with other natural ingredients to create different flavours). For anyone wanting to try kombucha but worried about not liking it, I’d say this lemon, lime, and mint combo is definitely the one to go for (unless, of course, you don’t like any of those ingredients) since the flavours reduce what can be quite a sharp gingeriness in some versions of the drink. While I find that drinking something fizzy during a meal usually makes me more full, drinking this actually had the amazing effect of making me feel like my stomach was also being refreshed, allowing me to get through the last of the food when I was close to full-on food coma. Placebo effect, or miracle drink? Either way, I think it’s definitely worth a taste!
We decided to go with the Tofish Bites for starters, and the only disappointing thing about them was that there weren’t more to go around. I’ve had tofu ‘fish’ once before and found it to be a bit tragic – a slightly soggy block of unseasoned tofu coated in batter. But these bites were the perfect combination of soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside, with the tartar sauce providing a zesty burst of flavour so addictive that my cousin was eating it out of the pot even after the bites themselves had gone.
The main menu, which can be found on the Unity Diner website, covers a lot – probably more than I really had time to consider. There are four different burger options, including the popular Moving Mountains B12 Burger, each with a unique combination of sauces and fillings. They’ve got an ‘Epic Salad’, which actually does sound good despite my usual opposition to salads – you can even add ‘bakon’ to it. One of their more intriguing dinner menu items, which I might have to try on my next visit, is the ‘Chickpea and Seitan Steakk’, served with potato wedges, salad, and gravy.
The restaurant also has a separate breakfast menu, served only on weekend mornings. From this, my sister chose to order the full English breakfast while I ordered the waffles (and my cousin went with the seitan burger from the main menu). Each of us thoroughly enjoyed our food. I knew I wanted to order something sweet, and I was intrigued by the combination of the savoury ‘chicken’ and ‘bacon’ and the sweet maple syrup. The waffles looked small on the plate, but once I’d cut into them and seen the gigantic piece of breaded seitan that constituted the ‘chicken’, I realised that it was not going to be as easy to devour as I thought. My cousin and sister both similarly found that the food was really filling, and the portion sizes were pretty bang-on.
As a lifelong vegetarian, I can’t comment on the ‘accuracy’ of the fake meats in my meal, but I thought that the taste and texture of both the ‘chicken’ and the ‘bacon’ were absolutely delicious. Not only were they full of flavour, but they complemented the sweetness of the syrup perfectly. My sister and I were also impressed by the sausage included in her full English, as we found it not only to have a good flavour, but it was moist on the inside – I’ve found that a problem with veggie sausages is that they tend to be quite dry. The only complaint about her dish was the ‘scrambled eggs’, which perhaps tasted too strongly of turmeric – that could be a personal preference, or maybe something else is needed to re-balance the flavours a little.
Towards the end of our meal, I turned to see Ed wiping down glasses at the bar. I was quite surprised – although it’s his restaurant, for some reason I didn’t expect to actually see him around. But he told me that he comes in on a regular basis to work, which I thought was really cool – while I imagine that he must be a really busy guy, you can tell that he’s passionate about the restaurant and genuinely enjoys being a part of it. I had a really lovely chat with him, and he seemed truly pleased after I told him how much I’d loved Unity Diner.
We also discussed the Animal Rights March in summer, where I’d briefly heard Ed speak, and I could tell once again how genuinely happy he was to hear about how much I’d enjoyed the experience. It felt as though he really valued my opinions, both on this and on Unity Diner. I found him to be really down-to-earth and friendly, and his personality so clearly reflects the compassion that he has for all sentient beings.
If you’re in London and looking for your next eating out adventure, I’d look no further than Unity Diner. It’s not the cheapest meal, but I don’t think there’s much to complain about when it’s the occasional treat (and no more expensive than other for-profits of its kind) – it’s especially fitting that our bills are funding the opening of a new animal sanctuary just outside London, which will enable more animals to survive and be treated with love. Unity Diner are doing a special Veganuary menu at the moment too, so if you get the chance to try that, let me know what you think!
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