Pied à Terre has lengthy championed sustainability. The London Michelin Star restaurant refuses to serve water from plastic bottles, prioritizes recent, locally-sourced produce, and even shares eco-friendly rest room paper. Since 2017, its intensive plant-based tasting menu has stood proudly alongside its meat-focused counterpart—pushed by the identical dedication to high quality, ability, and taste.
Whereas plant-based fine-dining choices can typically fall flat, even in a vegan-forward metropolis like London, that’s not the case at Pied à Terre. Right here, plant-based meals is way from an afterthought. For an intimate, high-end eating expertise in London’s Fitzrovia district, this iconic French eatery must be on the prime of your checklist. Right here’s what you will discover on the menu.
From pig trotters to crops: a short historical past of Pied à Terre
Pied à Terre has come a great distance because the Nineteen Nineties. Again then, the menu was all about “sweetbreads, pig trotters, and brazed pig heads,” the restaurant’s proprietor David Moore instructed the Worldwide Enterprise Instances final yr. “If I’d have mentioned ‘vegan and vegetarian menu’ to [head chef] Richard Neat, he would have stabbed me within the eye,” he added.
It’s hardly shocking. Again then, vegan meals (and even vegetarian meals) was restricted to the fringes of society. Tofu was for hippies, meat was for the mainstream. “Neat didn’t give attention to vegetarian dishes. Not one of the cooks did,” defined Moore. “If we return and I mentioned to one of many cooks ‘I’ve obtained a vegetarian on desk 10, what do I do?’, he would have mentioned: ‘Give them the f*****g seabass with out the seabass!’”
Pied à Terre
The angle within the restaurant trade stayed this manner for a very long time—many years, actually. It’s solely not too long ago that extra eateries have began to embrace plant-based choices, because of the rise of flexitarians within the UK. In 2023, analysis means that as much as 23 p.c of Brits have been lowering their meat consumption for his or her well being and the surroundings.
Cooks are adapting. Even prime British celeb chef Gordon Ramsay, notorious for as soon as saying that he was “allergic to vegans,” not too long ago admitted that he “really loves” cooking plant-based meals.
At Pied à Terre, it was head chef Shane Osborn, who took over the kitchen within the late Nineteen Nineties, that noticed the tables flip within the favor of vegetarians—nonetheless forward of the curve in context with the remainder of the trade on the time.
“I mentioned I wished a printed vegetarian menu each night time, and I instructed them that it may be the identical for the entire week or month,” recalled Moore. “I simply didn’t wish to run to the kitchen to ask what we have been going to do for the vegetarian on desk 10.” A vegetarian menu was certainly printed, and round 18 years later, the restaurant’s first vegan menu arrived.
What’s on the vegan menu at Pied à Terre?
There are a number of vegan eating choices at Pied à Terre. You possibly can keep on with a two- or three-course à la carte menu, however the actual showstopper is the tasting menu. Paired with wine or cocktails, the eight- or ten-course tasting menus rejoice the flexibility of crops, showcasing them in modern and surprising methods. When you thought substances like beetroot, artichoke, or barley have been boring, put together to be confirmed incorrect.
Take, for instance, the third course of the ten-course tasting menu: Jerusalem Artichoke and Périgord Truffle. A rigorously crafted dish that includes artichoke hazelnut cream, Piedmont hazelnuts, and roasted artichokes, it’s an ideal steadiness of earthy flavors and opulent textures. This comes after programs with substances like vibrant citrus-infused carrots, delicate beetroot meringue, and a “fricassée of winter greens,” and simply earlier than the decadent Pumpkin and Sage Agnolotti with dairy-free ricotta, aged maple syrup, and crispy sage.
Pied à Terre
When you weren’t offered on useful mushrooms, the Textures of Lion’s Mane dish—that includes sea greens, barley, pine nuts, and Madeira foam—will make a fungi lover out of anybody. To complete, the Chocolate Mousse made with ethically sourced 80 p.c pink Honduras cocoa redefines “melt-in-your-mouth” indulgence. And that’s simply scratching the floor of what this fine-dining hotspot has to supply.
Pied à Terre is situated only a quick stroll from the Goodge Avenue and Tottenham Courtroom Street underground stations. It’s open for dinner from 5:30 pm till 10 pm, Tuesday to Saturday. Discover out extra about tasting menus, costs, sustainablity practices, and—most significantly—easy methods to e-book a desk right here.
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Charlotte is a VegNews editor and author based mostly in sunny Southsea on England’s southern coast.