From gloucestershirelive.co.uk
Stodgy sausages, slightly burnt toast, but change from £5
More people than ever before have gone vegan in 2019 and this is in no small part due to the huge increase in eating out offerings.
They're common questions to those on a plant based diet, "but what do you even eat?" or "is eating out not really hard?".
But with huge chains such as McDonalds, Subway and Greggs jumping on the vegan food wagon, it's no surprise it's come in a big way to pub heavyweight Wetherspoons too.
Wetherspoons has six establishments in Gloucestershire and they've been slowly expanding their vegan range over the past year or so.
So imagine the excitement in the herbivore community when it introduced a 'vegan breakfast' too.
For the gentle price of £3.75 a customer can enjoy Heinz No Added Sugar Beanz, along with two Quorn vegan sausages, two hash browns, two tomato halves, two flat mushrooms and a slice of malted brown bloomer with vegan spread.
So often though, when vegan meals have been thought up by someone who is not actually vegan themselves, you can be left feeling somewhat disappointed with the final result.
As a fully fledged vegan, reporter Zasha Whiteway-Wilkinson decided to head to the beloved budget bar to give it a go and see whether any fuss was needed or not.
Wetherspoon vegan breakfast review
Heading into The Lord High Constable in Gloucester Docks at just shy of 12pm, I was somewhat excited to see what was on offer from spoons in regard to their vegan breakfast.
Taking my seat near the fire place close to the entrance of the pub I already had my meal ordered on the app to save a trip to the bar.
Keeping it basic with the order I ordered the vegan breakfast no frills, with a black coffee and an apple juice.
Having no idea what to expect as I don't eat at Wetherspoons much these days I opened one of the seven menus to see what I could expect.
Frankly, it's a basic offering, about what I'd expect someone who wasn't a vegan to offer me for breakfast, not ground breaking but equally not bad.
Two of everything for £3.75 seemed good enough value to me.
The waitress brought over my food about 11 minutes after placing the order on the app, leaving me to contemplate how we now lived in a world where I thought 11 minutes was a bit long considering the foods not really cooked fresh.
I had to go back up to the bar to enquire on the progress of my drinks and I had heard hide nor hair of them.
After sitting back down they swiftly arrived but it's been so long since I've been to Wetherpoons I didn't realise you had to get your own coffee. The self serve machine was on the other side of the pub to where I was so up I got again to go get the coffee.
There was cow milk residue on the bottom of the machine and no napkins to be seen to mop it up with, so I was pretty nervous that it was going to drop into my coffee thus rendering my breakfast no longer vegan.
As it is I lucked it, but next time I'm taking my own napkins.
Stodgy sausage and sweet spreads
The meal had a good overall portion size and the sausages looked like 'proper sausages', whatever that means.
Unfortunately looking good on the outside and being filling is about all these Quorn vegan sausages had going for them. If a sausage could be stodgy and dense, this one was - and I was not a fan.
It might taste better with some mashed potato and Bisto, but I'd recommend a Sainsbury's brand for a nice juicy vegan breakfast personally, they have a little more air to breathe inside.
The breakfast came with two slices of fairly burnt looking bits of toast but as I was expecting to dip them in my beans, which Wetherspoons have proudly fairly recently added to the meal after Heinz took the honey out and made suitable for vegans - I wasn't too bothered about the breads crispy colour.
I was a little bit taken aback however when the waitress informed me that there was in fact no vegan spread so they wanted to offer me jam or marmalade instead.
Now, I love marmalade, and I love jam.
But with an English Breakfast, it's not going to be first choice for the toast is it. Not when it's going in the bean sauce anyway.
Follow this up with, what kind of maniac puts marmalade or jam onto plain toast with no spread unless you're just really hungry?
The pub did not have any vegan spread so it was a choice of marmalade or jam, an unexpected mix of sweet and savoury
I chose marmalade. The unexpected mix of sweet and savoury was okay, wouldn't choose it myself at home but I always like trying something different I suppose.
The apple juice which came in the biggest glass I've ever seen, I'd bet good money it was cordial not juice and that too, was okay.
The coffee was grim, I had two mouthfuls then left it. Maybe I'd had too much of the apple squash and it'd messed with my tastebuds who knows.
Mushrooms, beans and hashbrowns were all good and as expected. In hindsight I'd have left the marmalade and chucked the lot on the burnt toast, the mix of textures would probably have been really nice and made up for my missing spread and makeshift marmalade.
To be honest, it was nothing to write home about and about what I'd expect from Wetherspoons for under £4.
It was alright, wouldn't beg to go back but equally wouldn't say no to it either.
Overall rating: 4/10
https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink/tried-wetherspoons-vegan-breakfast-what-3637830
