I really did want to like Saf (here on Urbanspoon). My contrarian instincts extend to my own opinions too, so that a gourmet vegan restaurant that seemed like the very sort of place I should detest, actually might have been a perfect counterfoil for my sausage-eating tendencies. I wanted to put all my preconceptions aside and embrace these strange, pale vegan beings with their weird ideas about nut cheese and not heating things beyond 40˚C.
Initial impressions – it looks like someone has installed a cocktail bar in a green-walled vegan cafe. Were there pot plants and packets of incense for sale alongside the lavender cocktails? Might as well have been. There’s also a glass-walled kitchen where there’s a distinct lack of actual cooking and everything looks depressingly raw. (The chef – robustly barrel-chested – certainly isn’t eating Saf food.)
We sat in a courtyard out the back – a lovely opportunity to escape from the messenger-bag-wearing Shoreditch hordes outside. It was an August night in London, meaning that the efficient heat lamps, whilst giving us an extra suntan, were rather welcome.
A real shame that efficient is one word that could not be applied to the service – everything was painfully slow, from our initial order, to the interminable waits between courses to bill paying. One of us had to nip inside on two occasions – that’s just not good enough, especially when they’re not actually cooking most of the food.
On reflection though, I think the slowness may be a management strategy to induce such hunger in their patrons that they will be happy with just about anything that comes. Certainly, this was the most excited I’ve been about julienned raw carrots, ever. To be fair, I ordered spectacularly badly – I had the sea vegetable salad to start with (julienned beetroot, carrot, daikon and seaweed) followed by the pad thai (raw julienned carrots and courgettes, raw cherry tomatoes and some frighteningly hot raw chillies with seeds and all. Not imaginative or particularly appetising.) Other starters were better – a caesar salad with tofu was decent, according to Mr. R&R and the mushroomy gyoza were wolfed down. For mains, the risotto I tasted made with spelt, courgettes and broad beans was pretty good, although by this time I was starving.
Contrary to one review I came across, desserts were by far the best bit, and Mr. R&R is still talking about the coffee ice-cream – not bad for a gelato-obsessed Italian. The coconut/lime sorbet and green-tea/cardamom ice-creams were delicious and the daily special chocolate and orange cake was nutty and tasty (although not as orangey as it promised).
There was a final blow however: our friends who had generously stumped the whole bill found out on the way home that they’d been charged for three dishes we never had.
Bloody vegans. Sorry…
