New Order: Oyster mushrooms in vegan XO sauce at Grain Store

Phoebe Luckhurst dishes up everything you need to know about this robust vegan option in King's Cross
Go vegan: oyster mushrooms in XO sauce

The dish

Brambletye Farm oyster mushrooms in vegan XO sauce, with a wasabi pea coulis and crispy morsels of herb tofu, at Grain Store (£17, Granary Square, N1, grainstore.com).

While not strictly meat-free, Grain Store is a sustainable restaurant notable for its robust vegetarian options, involving complicated flavours and unexpected ingredients. The restaurant has recently added this oyster mushroom dish to its repertoire — it’s vegan, and wasabi gives it oomph not usually associated with restrictive diets. The veg is tender, and the tofu light.

The USP

Mushrooms as you might not know them. ’Shrooms are a hallmark of vegetarian menus — usually served stuffed, or sandwiched between a brioche bun as a vegetarian burger, but this dish tries far harder. Spicy coulis offsets the richness of the fresh mushrooms, sourced from a farm in east Sussex.

Best vegetarian restaurants in London - in pictures

1/7

The drink

King’s Cross is reanimated: go for a digestif at Spiritland (9-10 Stable Street, N1, spiritland.com), just up the road. Its bombastic sound system is a bespoke creation built by super-engineers Living Voice, and its cocktail menu is as poetic as lyrics (drinks include the Sonoteque and Under the Cherry Moon).

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in