Monday 27 May 2013

Bath; Roman Spa, Nepalese food and ancient stones

Since coming abck from traveling we are trying to see more of england, so we drove after work to Bath on a Friday to make the most of the weekend.
We found our lovely little hotel Midway Place, which was 10 minute drive from Bath, and stopped for a cuppa in our room whilst watching the hairy bikers.
 
View of bath in the evening
The lovely hotel owner gave us a useful map and pointed out a few restaurants, having done my research I knew most of them and had scouted them out on trip advisor, happy cow and vegetarian places.
 
I tried to book a table whilst on the motor way to the Nepalese restaurant I has read about. Friday and curry go very together. They couldn't guarantee us a table, so we planned out visit to the later end of the night.
We parked up and walked over the bridge in the rain and strolled past Demuths veggie restaurant before finding our dinner for the night at Yak Yeti Yak. 
 
As soon as we walked in the door the smell of incense took us straight back to travelling in Nepal and India. The decor was equally as authentic, with all kinds of colourful fabric we were used to seeing near the Dalai Lamas residence in Dharamsala.
The menu looked great and I spotted the word vegan on the dessert section! I'm really not used to seeing that word on menus as we don't even have a vegetarian restaurant in my home town. 
 

We decided to order some vegetable momos to share, momos are Nepalese and Tibetan dumplings, these were really good and the sauce went to well with them.

For our main we ordered the Dahl baht; this literally translates to rice and lentil Dahl, and we also had the choice of which veg curry to add to the aloo channa. They gave us a few options but the seasonal Broccoli and Asparagus sounded the best. There was so much rice, and it came with popadom too, I didnt finish my meal, but enjoyed it so much. 
I had some how missed the bit where they mentioned a Dahl made "with vegan butter" and when I asked the waiter if it could be made vegan he was so well informed and I just had to take off the 'curd' which comes with the meal. We had fresh lime sodas to drink, very comon in India and Nepal.
 
 
We started the second day with our hotel breakfast of fresh fruit, tea, toast and an English breakfast; beans, tomato and hash brown, they also had Linda McCarthy sausages which are vegan!
 
We made our way into bath and parked at a church near the centre as the parking was fixed price all day and raised money for the church.
 
 
Once in Bath we queued for The Roman Bath House. It was a really intesting place with lots of roman architecture and of course you could see the huge steaming hot baths. At the end you could even drink some Filtered Spring Water. I also heard that this is the only natural hot spring in the whole of the UK, it must have been quite a treat to have hot baths anytime.
 
 
We finished looking around about lunch time and did a little shopping before picking where to have lunch, I had read about a mushroom burger with vegan cashew cheese and chilli juice, but couldn't remember which restaurant it was. We decided to eat at the Green Rocket, a relative new comer to bath; only opened in Feburary and fully veg with lots of vegan / gluten free options, there was one Raw main too!
 
 
After studying the menu I realised this was the place with the burger.
So we ordered: one Egyptian mezze platter and one mushroom rice burger. The mezze had falafel, hummus, carrot salad, flat bread and quinoa. Both came with a pesto drizzled salad.

To drink I had a pot of earl grey with soy milk, it made so many cups! They were fully stocked to make any kind of soya coffee and chai latte too.
 


They sell their famous chilli juice by the jar, it was really unique and complemented the burger so well. I tried the vegan cashew cheese on its own and it tasted so fantastic, I hope they think of using it for vegan Toasties in the future, because it is a star by itself.
We eyed up the extensive choice of cake but we didn't have room again.
Having said that we came back an hour later; I had vegan coffee & walnut cake, I'm not a huge coffee fan but it tasted great and was so moist with plenty of buttery frosting. Mr Dada had non vegan gluten free salted caramel cake and soya cappuccino. They also do gluten free brownies, which I was assured by the waitress are also really good. They had other choices for vegans including cupcakes, carrot cake, ninja bread men and huge coconut chocolate flapjacks.
 

 
We briefly visited the Metropolitan cafe with is above and inside a high street shop, and they had a huge range of gluten free cake but sadly no vegan ones.
 
We wanted to visit Demuths because it has a huge reputation as being one if the best exclusively vegetarian restaurants in the south west, but after splashing the cash at our last 2 meals we couldn't justify it. A set lunch is much cheaper than an evening meal, so that would be a great way to try it on a budget. Or for a special occasion I would be tempted by the hour and a half drive to Bath to eat here.
 
I would love to one day visit Rachel Demuths Vegetarian Cooking school, but for now I can at least read her blog!
 

I highly recommend Bath for a day trip or an over night stay (so you can eat more).
 
On our way home we stopped at Avebury to see the neolithic stone circles, it was lambing season and they were so cute!
 
 

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