Power to Plants

The Retreat Kitchen: A vegan brunch that will make you forget about eggs.

We were lucky enough to get a chance to sit down and chat with Maggie and Claire from the Retreat Kitchen to hear more about their amazing story. We will share this with you when its ready but let’s talk about their brunch!

Now the whole team went to try this one and being fully fledged meat eaters we were intrigued to see what on the menu would catch our eye. Samantha loves a good salad, I personally only eat salad when I’m feeling super sad (usually before a holiday) and feel like I need to at least pretend like replacing a calorific-carbalicious-fatty meal with a salad will make me skinny overnight and I mean the closest Dan gets to a salad is couscous.

Now we know that being vegan doesn’t mean just eating salad but if you try and tell me that if you are a meat lover and the first thing you pictured when I said ‘vegan’ wasn’t a whole lot of green, well then let’s be honest, you were definitely lying.

It was a seriously beautiful day to be strolling around Richmond which if you have never been before, is THE cutest high street. Its about a 10min walk from Richmond station in more or less a straight line and you get to this adorable cafe.

Before we even ordered, here are some serious pro’s:

• Tap water has cucumber and strawberries in it – I wont repeat myself again because we all know my feelings on this by now.
• White roses on the tables – perfect
• Tray of cakes always in sight – even better

As we were actually interviewing Maggie and Claire, they talked us through a bit about the menu and also their coffee which I would like to take some quick time now to mention.

The Retreat Kitchen source their seriously FANTASTIC coffee from a company called Old Spike. Now the reason I wanted to really go into the coffee is not because of how great it tastes – even though it does, but Old Spike also aim to help combat the country’s homelessness by providing them with expert training, jobs and housing support.

How incredible.

The particular coffee bean we tried was from Columbia and we were told by Maggie and Claire that the bean tends to change dependent on what Old Spike have have bought in at the time of order. For people used to maybe a routine when it comes to coffee, this may unsettle you but we think this is brilliant! Why would we ever be mad about getting to try loads of different and truly authentic coffee beans from all around the world in one place!

So if anyone is looking for a new provider I would strongly recommend Old Spike.

Now after a that quick tangent, we must start on the smoothies. I checked these out before and I was super excited but that didn’t even compare to how excited I was when it actually arrived! Shout out to @theplantpoweredprincess for her ridiculous layered smoothies that looked and tasted divine. They have so many flavours with all these ingredients that are great for your body. Have a look at the below:

Not to mention they also do

VEGAN WINE 

prosecco is also stocked 😉

Now food, as I mentioned we were concerned about how full we would be having being acustomed to a certain stack of meat but we were pleasantly surprised!

I think I actually prefer this veggie sausage to actual sausages.

I ordered the English muffin (Maggie said that the specifically picked this dish to adapt for the menu as it’s one of her favourites) with its own adaptation of vegan hollandaise sauce – seriously good. They added some paprika in the sauce and I personally think that everyone should do this with hollandaise – vegan or not.

Samantha had the smashed avocado on toast with chilli flakes – again YES

Dan had the Brunch Plate which is basically a vegan full english. You would be surprised to hear that the quote above was actually from Dan when he tried the veggie sausages in his meal. He also ordered pancakes which were truly….beautiful. Like we were obsessed with this for a while, taking snaps of it from all kinds of angles and then when me and sam were distracted with our meals, Dan ate the whole bloody thing but he said it was delicious. Samantha also ate more or less a shot of straight maple syrup…with her finger…don’t judge, I was impressed.

After finishing that meal, we literally forgot that we hadn’t even touched an egg…during brunch? Surely not?!

Well it’s true, no egg needed………un-egg-cessary some would say – wahey.

So what I would recommend is that everyone try this plant-based cafe in Richmond as they have a truly inspiration story which will be shared on our blog soon. You will not feel like you’re being starved from meat and the smoothie and coffee selection is some of the best we’ve tried so far.

If you love your homemade cakes, they also have an adorable selection of vegan goodie’s on the counter.

The Retreat Kitchen is perfect for:

• Foodies of all kinds
• When you want to detox
• When you fancy a smoothie

Not ideal for:

• Serious meat lovers
• Massive parties – it’s only small!

So tell us what you think and we wish them the best for their official launch next week!

Menu including smoothies here.

J💋