Where once was Edge, now is Vedge: tucked away at the back of Wentworth College overlooking the lake, the University’s Commercial Services team have opened a trendy new vegetarian and vegan café.
The location’s soft opening on 20 October showcased their call order menu items, as well as the counter service salad options. The emphasis is on fresh, light, and healthy food that is both tasty and affordable: all of the call order items are less than £5. Judging by the portion size and the attention paid to the food, that’s extremely good value.
The counter service bowl is a fantastic and cheap lunch option. Choose from a variety of four breads, four salads, two hummus’s, three falafels, six dressings, and tea eggs to build your own meal. The beetroot and ginger falafel–a combination more commonly found in juice–were an unexpectedly harmonious combination, thus proving the old adage that what is good for the juice is good for the falafel. Bad puns aside, the salads were fresh, the dressings were nicely made, and the breadth of choice was refreshing. Although I am not a habitual eater of vegetarian and vegan foods, I enjoyed my lunch, and a member of my group more accustomed to this style of eating said that the food was a good showing of meat-free cuisine. The tea eggs, a hard-to-master staple of Chinese culinary tradition, were also rather good: the broth had been well-balanced, and subsequently the yolk was flavourful. The call order menu features bhaji burgers (never not good), grilled aubergine, celeriac shawarma, skin-on fries, loaded potato crispers (which were very tasty), and cauliflower steaks.
On to puddings, because frankly, what’s the point of a healthy meal if you can’t enjoy a guilt-free slice of cake afterwards. The cake was moist and very tasty – possibly the best slice of cake I’ve had out in some time. Vedge also serves delicious bubble waffles, another Chinese innovation. Apparently the team has long coveted one of the fantastic bubble waffle machines, and I can see why: the waffles are cakey in parts and crispy in others, come in a range of varieties from fruit to salted caramel to Oreo, are served with ice cream, and can be made vegan as well. The Commercial Services team have really hit the right note at Vedge: the food is modern and the menu is well thought through – one staff member explained how the concept was designed with accessibility in mind.
Crucially, Vedge also serves Starbucks coffee. So in summary: hummus, falafel, bhajis, waffles, Starbucks, and all for a good price. You have absolutely no reason not to go and give it a try. Plus you can sit and feel good about yourself as you save the planet, and yourself, one bite at a time.