Review | The Stable's Vegan Menu & Cider Tasting Experience

The Stable is a pizza, pie & cider specialist with a number of restaurants dotted around the UK. My first ever experience with The Stable was at the beginning of last year when I attended an event at their Winchester venue, whilst I was still living in Hampshire. Back then I was eating meat but now I'm at the transition stage between a vegetarian and vegan diet, so I was really enthusiastic to be invited back to their Whitechapel branch to taste their vegan menu and experience a personal cider tasting session with their in-house 'Cider Master'. I mean, is there any cooler job title out there than a 'Cider Master'? Probably not.

The Stable are pretty serious about cider and the Whitechapel branch serves over 80 different ciders to their customers, which are also personally selected by the instore Cider Master. Their cider tasting experiences allow customers to up their cider knowledge whilst sipping on some of the drinks that the restaurant has to offer. Our Cider Master, Joe from the Whitechapel, guided us through a tasting board of ten different, and totally vegan, ciders. During the tasting he thoroughly explained the process of making cider and how we could identify type of cider from another.

The tasting experience takes you through a wide range of ciders from the popular, elegant sparkling ciders to the classic, full-bodied, traditional scrumpy ciders and you'll even get to sample The Stable's own brew, 'Rapscallion'. I personally tend to drink the flavoured, fruity and sparkling ciders (Älska are my favourite vegan, sparkly cider brand, FYI, because a couple of other popular fruity cider brands that you may have heard of aren't vegetarian-friendly) and I have tended to steer clear of more traditional ciders. I put this down to myself drinking one too many bottles of Strongbow in the park during my teenage years and having always associated scrumpy ciders to those days. However, I was surprised to discover that my two favourite drinks on the board of ten were the still, traditional ciders including a matured, oak-aged cider that had notes of vanilla. Vanilla is a taste I never expected from a cider tasting, but how wrong I was!

The 'cheesy' vegan garlic bread

The cider tasting board

A selection of every vegan pizza option available on the menu

Throughout the cider tasting we were also treated to tasting The Stable's vegan menu with a 'cheesy' sharing garlic bread for starters, a selection of their vegan pizzas for mains and their indulgent vegan brownie as dessert. Vegan cheese is often 'hit or miss' for me as I find a lot of vegan cheese tends to taste really artificial and I often can't stomach it. The Stable use Bute Island mozzarella for their vegan pizza bases and I'm gonna put it out there - it actually tastes better than standard mozzarella!

We had two pizzas between us but split the toppings in half so that we could sample every vegan option on the menu: the 'One Potato, Two Potato', the 'Allo Aloha', the 'Bute Island Blazer' and the 'Hazel Nutter'. We both found it impossible to pick a favourite as every option was delicious, including the one with pineapple & avocado as a topping and I'm not usually a pineapple on pizza kinda gal. The Bute Island Blazer is a little on spicy side, but we powered through it with our eyes streaming because it was too delicious to leave. As a huge fan of potato on pizza, the One Potato, Two Potato was a carb-addict's dream and the Hazel Nutter's adventurous combination of asparagus, chopped nuts and spinach was unlike any pizza I've ever tasted before.

Cider experiences at The Stable start from just £15 per head but increase in price if you want to add on pizzas and dessert. However, the full shebang only costs £30 per head which is pretty reasonable considering how much cider and food you'll get to taste and they can cater to vegans - hurrah! The experience is the perfect gift for a cider head or a unique, affordable experience for you and your pals on a Sunday afternoon.

To book your own cider experience, get in touch with your local The Stable restaurant.

 

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