MoFo Post #5 Goji, York

Goji, York

This weekend was my birthday, the big 3-0. To celebrate I headed up to York for the weekend, a perfect meeting point for me, from London and my family who are based in The North East, Leeds and North Yorkshire.

I stayed in a lovely hotel called The Coach House and they were very accommodating of my vegan needs. They let me bring my own homemade vegan sausages and cooked them for me! They did say they would normally get some in, but I prefer mine to the ones in shops.

On the night we arrived we weren't sure what we were going to eat and we were cautious of spending too much money as we're buying a new home at the end of the month and things are a little tight.

As we were unpacking our things in the hotel room Paul pulled a cosmetics bag out and asked me why the hell had I packed that, it was full of foreign currency. I think his plan was to keep it for another 4 years in case he ever takes me to Turkey. He'd had the currency since a holiday with his last serious girlfriend! After changing the money we had about £45. In London that would be about enough for 1 person to have a 3 course meal (why exactly are we staying in London?).

We headed to Goji, a vegetarian restaurant which I had overlooked previously as I thought it was just a cafe. On their website it said they closed at 16:00. Further down it also said that it reopens at 18:00 but I hadn't read that far the first time. Doh!

We were the only couple in there to begin with but the place soon filled up. We ordered two vegan starters: a Saffron Kedgeree and Chicory Boats with flageolet bean puree and sauteed mushrooms. They were both very nice I particularly liked the pistachios in the Kedgeree.

Chicory Boats

For our mains we both really fancied burgers. That's quite unusual for me in a vegetarian restaurant, I'll most likely go for something I wouldn't be able to get in a regular restaurant.

The burger was advertised as a mushroom burger, Paul got his with Halloumi and my vegan option was with smoked tofu.

Now, I have a little bee in my bonnet about what I think constitutes as a burger. In my humble opinion a burger should be mashed up things in a patty. A mushroom burger would therefore contain mushrooms but also other ingredients. This burger was a mushroom between bread and therefore I think it would more appropriately be named a mushroom sandwich. However, the mushroom was cooked very well, it was flavorsome and juicy and the smoked tofu was absolutely delicious, it had a nice strong, deep flavour to it, almost 'meaty' you might say. Whether it was a mushroom sandwich or a burger - who cares! It was really, good. I had vegan mayonnaise to dip my chips in, which was flavoured with lemongrass - I was a happy girl.

Mushroom Burger

Because the prices were so reasonable and we were still basking in the glory of finding free money (sort of) we got the dessert menu.

It took me about 0.5 seconds to decide on a vegan ice cream sundae, which we shared as it was pretty huge. It had what I think was strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream. The quality of the ice cream was superb and even the dutch waffle biscuit it came with was vegan.

Vegan Sundae

We were both really impressed with Goji. The staff were friendly and helpful and they played consistently good music the whole time we were there. I even found their hand soap was by my favourite cruelty free toiletries company - Faith In Nature.

I would definitely recommend Goji to anyone visiting York and was so glad that I never had to resort to my list of chain restaurants for the whole visit!