Flowering Tea at Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen

When do you ever order tea to go with your meal in a restaurant? Answer - in a Japanese or Chinese restaurant you do. Very excitingly a Chinese vegetarian restaurant called Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen has recently opened in the South Manchester area of Withingon. They don't serve alcohol, it's bring your own booze, but they do serve beautiful Chinese teas. We went for this three flower tea and the pot kept us going throughout the meal. It was really refreshing as well as being beautiful to look at.

We were really excited to get vegan prawn crackers! These are something that I used to love before I was vegan and never thought I'd have again. We munched on these whilst we picked from the extensive menu. It was a treat to have so much choice. Everything is vegetarian with a large percentage of the menu also being suitable for vegans.

I'd recommend going for this starter combo plate if you're dinning as a pair. There's crispy seaweed, samosas, spring rolls, BBQ ribs, prawn toasts and chicken satay skewers. Everything tasted freshly made and these were some of the most impressive mock meats I've ever come across. They are all made with different ingredients and the ribs and chicken had different textures and the prawn toasts tasted just how I remembered them. The website states that they use soya proteins, soya fibres, wheat proteins, mushrooms and yam flour.

For our mains we went for a crispy noodle tofu and vegetable dish and Sweet and sour King Prawns. Both dishes were excellent, these were the best mock prawns I've tried and the tofu was lovely and fresh. It was softer than the tofu often is in Chinese dishes and a nice contrast to the crispy noodles.

I was surprised to see on the website when I was getting the address to write this blog that none of the dishes contained onions, garlic or leek. We hadn't noticed at all and the food was so tasty it wasn't missed. Great news for people who avoid those vegetables! 

I can't recommend Lotus Vegetarian Kitchen highly enough. The standard of food and service were excellent . I've eaten at New York eateries who do mock meat and Vegan Chinese dishes really well like Red Bamboo, Zen Palate and Vegetarian's Paradise 2  and believe me Lotus is up there with them. If you're in the Manchester area do go visit. You won't be disappointed!