Vegan Eats in Chester

My work week this week has been a short one as I had taken a couple of days off and believe me I could get used to working three days a week! On Thursday my friend and I had planned a day out in Chester. Can you believe it, I'd never been been to the actual town itself before. I had visited the outskirts before albeit over 20 years ago and walked down by the river but never ventured into the town and the shops! So as you can imagine I was looking forwards to it.

Unfortunately I hadn't managed to research where to eat which is always a worry for me! I do get very grumpy if I'm hungry! So, before I set off to pick my friend up, I took to twitter and asked for advice on vegan eateries in Chester. And twitter didn't let me down. As soon as we arrived we did a quick recky of the options that had been tweeted, to see what took our fancy. 

The hands down winner without a shadow of doubt was Yo! Sushi, but at the end of this post are some of the other places we checked out! 

Yo! Sushi wasn't recommended to us but when I saw it memories of a Japanese restaurant in Darwin came flooding back to me and I remembered that there were a fair few vegan dishes on the menu. So we entered to see what they had in store....

Yo! Sushi is a Japanese restaurant chain that delivers food to cutomers via a conveyor. It was founded in 1997 and its first restaurant opened in Soho, London. Since then it has a number of restaurants around the world, the first restaurant outside London opened in Birmingham in September 2003. 

What is super exciting about this restaurant chain is that the vegan choice is absolutely amazing! Why I have not come across this before now is beyond me! But now I have found it I will be back for more and more and more and more! Birmingham here I come.

The restaurant in Chester is utterly brilliant and the staff there are fabulous and extremely helpful, which made the experience of eating there even more amazing. Becca, Bexx and Kat were great and here they are posing for a photograph!

Bexx, Becca and Kat

The restaurant itself is extremely clean and from what I could see after each dish was made there was a big clean up. In this place you certainly don't have to worry about food contamination. Even the toilets had a self cleaning handle! I know! How cool is that!

Each dish is presented in a dish or on a plate which is colour coded and the colour depicts the cost, so easy! They have 8 different prices, starting with all green plates costing £2, blue plates £2.70, purple £3.60, orange £4.10, red £4.50, grey £5, yellow £6 and white (their Sumo size bowls) £8.

We were really fortunate too, as on Thursday they were sharing their 'Blue Monday' offer where 40 dishes were at the blue dish price - bargain! To make it even more fabulous all of the vegan dishes were on there! Can you see why I was so excited to be dining there?

As I said the vegan options are amazing here and Bexx brought out their nutritional and allergy booklet so I could see which dishes were suitable for me. I really was astounded at how many I could eat. It was a good job I was hungry as I ordered so many different dishes, all in all I ordered 8 dishes but I did share some of them!

On each table are taps to help yourself to still or sparkling water and if I remember correctly they were £1.70 each but you can have unlimited refills. Also on the table was the obvious wasabi paste, pickled ginger and soy sauce.

To start us off we had the aubergine salad and the Kaiso salad, which is sesame marinated Japanese seaweed, edamame, carrot and su-miso and absolutely delicious as was the aubergine salad. We could have easily tucked into another one but we didn't dare as so many other dishes were on there way!

Next up were inari pockets, and if you love tofu you will love these, they were soy bean curd pockets filled with rice, delicious dunked in soy sauce.

I seriously could have eaten more of the inari, so simple but yet so delicious but I needed room for the other dishes heading my way. Next up Vegetable Yakisoba, noodles with Asian vegetables in a mild tangy sauce, yet again utterly delicious. At the same time two other dishes arrived, Vegetable Gyoza, vegetable dumplings with soy & vinegar sauce and Vegetable Tempura. By this time I was in food heaven I'm actually surprised I managed to take photographs!

 

The Tofu Katsu Curry was the next dish I delved into, the fresh tofu was deep fried in Panko breadcrumbs which sat on a bed of rice. It was topped with curry sauce and sliced spring onions. You can order this dish as a Suma dish if you wanted a larger portion too. I prefer the smaller portions because you can have more of them! The tofu melted in your mouth and the curry sauce wasn't too hot and very flavoursome. I was making a lot of mmmmm noises.

               

Last but by no means least was the pumpkin Katsu, which was also deep fried in breadcrumbs. I left this dish till last as pumpkin is sweeter then most of the dishes I ordered so to me it was my dessert. Once again it was utterly delicious and looked extremely pretty.

So 8 dishes later and I was stuffed! I've been asking myself which dish was my favourite but I change my mind every minute. Every dish I ordered was to die live for, and each dish was a taste sensation. Hats off to Yo! Sushi for your vegan creations and I can't wait to return for another visit. During my next visit there will be dishes I haven't tried yet so I'm looking forward to it already.

A massive thank you to Bexx who made our visit an exceptional experience, she couldn't have been more helpful and was extremely knowledgeable with all the dishes.

I got talking to Kat after our meal, the branch manager and I've persuaded her that the next venue should be my home town Stafford, so fingers crossed sometime in the future a Yo! Sushi will open here and you won't be able to keep me out of there!

Whilst I was in Chester I couldn't leave without visiting another recommendation from a fellow tweeter. I had to call into Chester Health Store and say hi to Nicki. Nicki has an absolutely gorgeous shop which offers a wealth of herbal supplements and health food options. Nicki has over 20 years experience in the world of health, nutrition and supplements and can help you choose the most appropriate product for you. I couldn't leave without stocking up on my nutritional yeast! I also treated myself to a small vegan chocolate bar - cheeky! If you're visiting Chester then do pop in and say hi, I'm pretty sure you will find whatever you're looking for in there. Plus the shop is gorgeous! Thanks for the recommendation Katy!

Other vegan eateries in Chester 

Katy from Lil' Miss Meat Free told me that Carluccio's has a vegan menu! So we headed straight there to check it out. Carluccio's is an Italian restaurant that is open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner and serves quality, authentic Italian food. It also has a foodshop so you can buy some of the Italian loveliness to take home. 

The vegan menu didn't offer many choices but the food did look very tasty and you can have any of the vegetable risottos tweaked to be vegan friendly, and there were two, mushroom or butternut squash. So if you fancy some Italian food then this is the place for you. 

Sarah told me all about Hanky Panky Pancakes too, they can make you a vegan buckwheat pancake and you can choose your filling. Now our intention was too come here for dessert after Yo! Sushi as this place looked so darn cute! But unfortunately our eyes were far bigger than our bellies and we ate far too much at Yo! Sushi. A visit here will have to wait until my next trip to Chester. *Sigh*

Rose and VBitesBrighton both told me about the Holland & Barrett More Store which is a super store in Chester and they have a massive selection of vegan products from food to toiletries and more. Quite recently Heather Mills started a partnership with Holland and Barrett and opened a third VBites cafe within the Chester store. The food sold in the VBites cafe is mainly mock meats (which I'm not a massive fan of) but they also sell gooey brownies, cake and according to Rose do an amazing hazelnut milk late!

Jasmine x