Tea and Sympatico

If you saw this recent blog post you'll know that we are big fans of Topaz Cafe in Ashton. This veggie cafe is part of the Mind Centre in Ashton Under Lyne and serves up beautiful fresh, veggie food with lots of the ingredients grown on their own allotment or sourced locally. On a recent visit Matt went for this colourful meze whilst I had stuffed pepper. One of the things I love about this place is that they will cook to order veganising vegetarian dishes and in this case omitting the chilli for me. It was still full of flavour though and my pepper was stuffed with tofu in a homemade pesto sauce. We noticed that Topaz had started advertising their Christmas offer . They are doing Christmas lunches through December and also this one off special evening event on Thursday 18 December. We've booked our tickets and are looking forward to sampling three courses of delicious vegan Christmas food.

Matt's new job has taken him to the town of Ashton Under Lyne. After spending the last couple of years working in Manchester's Northern Quarter which caters brilliantly for vegans, he was a little worried about lunch options. Ashton however caters surprisingly well for non meat eaters. I joined him over there for lunch one Friday afternoon. Our choice of cafe was Topaz . Topaz is on the ground floor of a centre run by mental health charity, Mind. All of the food is vegetarian and most of it is either vegan or veganisable. They also use veg which they grow on their own allotment. Matt went for kolrabi fritters with a gorgeous sweet pepper dish. I had tagliatelle with homemade pesto, olives, broad beans and rocket. Both dishes were delicious and really fresh tasting. We managed to squeeze in some dessert too.  This chocolate cake was pretty good but the real star was this apple crumble and custard. We had a quick chat with the head chef Kevin before...