6th February 2010, RESTAURANT: Saf

The venue for this meal was chosen because one of our party was vegan and one coeliac. Saf have a completely vegan and almost completely gluten-free menu so, despite the pricey menu, was as good a choice as we were likely to find. We ate late, which meant that we were given the last remaining table, which is normally used as some kind of special table where you can pay to watch the chefs cook. Ace. We were higher than everyone and we could see into the kitchen. I'll be honest, not much happened in the kitchen. This, quite possibly, is because the majority of the food available at Saf is raw. So, not much cooking there, more just putting stuff on plates. It seems some people think it's healthier to not heat your food above 48 degrees c. And it might be, who knows? Whatever, the food here was fantastic. The menu was kind of hard to take in, because although many of the dishes were familiar (canneloni, thai curry etc.), the descriptions were quite alien. Anyway, choose we did and with each meal presented to us we were given an explanation of what we had and how it came to be by the waitress. This was probably my favourite bit. The descriptions were amazing. I didn't understand most of it and could hardly take half of it in, but you got carried along with it, convinced that the food in front of me was some kind of incredible experiment. I had 'cavier' to start with. I put the '' in because obviously no fish eggs were involved. Instead the 'caviar' was made from apple and beetroot. I'm pretty sure algae was involved at some point too. They came on these biscuit things and with sauces that were lovely. For main, I think I chose badly, going for the thai yellow curry, which was fine but unremarkable. The others had dishes that were way more bizarre than mine. i sometimes think that vegetarian restaurants make more of an effort and this was no exception. A brilliant meal.