The Kitchen on Great Moor Street

I live in a borough of Greater Manchester called Bolton which unlike other areas of Greater Manchester, like Chorlton and Didsbury etc. is not the most vegetarian friendly place to live, never mind vegan friendly!

We do have a few places through, one of which being The Kitchen on Great Moor Street in the town centre. This cooperative has been around for roughly two years now (I think? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) and serves vegetarian and vegan food, the menu consists of everyday items such as breakfasts, falafels and koftas etc. and they also have daily specials that change on a monthly basis depending on what's in season. In addition, there are always a selection of cakes, all of which are vegan- their chocolate fudge cake is probably my favourite cake ever!

Unfortunately, as I still work in Manchester, I don't get chance to go there that often, however when I do I nearly always go for their vegan breakfast, which is the same as their vegetarian breakfast but subbing the egg for tofu scramble.

As you can see, brown sauce is my condiment of choice at breakfast time!

The sausage and facon (that's not a misspelling that is the name I give fake bacon!) are redwoods, and I have to say I prefer redwoods to any other brand I've tried (Quorn facon- ewww!) but I never buy it myself for some strange reason.  I don't know where they get their bread from, I'll have to ask but it's delicious, it's a seeded brown bread, however they manage to get the ratio of seeds to bready goodness spot on, and as you can see from the photo, I could resist taking a quick bite of it before taking the picture!

Although they serve hot drinks to go alongside a breakfast, they also sell a wide range of Fentimans drinks, which are about as rare as rocking horse poo in most places, despite being awesome.  I usually spend a while trying to choose between dandelion and burdock (which is my favourite), shandy and ginger beer. On this occasion I decided to mix it up a bit and went for the shandy.

Apparently Fentimans now do a alcoholic ginger beer, which are available at selected Tescos, non of which are near me- booo!

I have a bit of a thing for glass bottles, and always have to resist taking every bottle of empty Fentimans home with me!

I've already mentioned that my favourite cake is their chocolate fudge cake, however I've not had it since I got my new fancy smart phone so here is a picture of vegan tiffin/rocky road- I can't remember which one it was but it was scrummy!

I think the white thing was vegan marshmallow- which you can buy from their small grocery section in the cafe.

The Kitchen is getting quite a name for itself, and you can often find them at a stall at most Manchester food events, I've seen them at the North West Vegan Festival in April and more recently at Manchester Vegan Fair this month.  And of course, they always have a stall at the Bolton Food and Drink festival, which seems to get bigger and bigger each year.

As a cooperative, The Kitchen is heavily involved in the local community and from what I gather a lot of the vegetables used are sourced from local community allotment schemes.  They even operate a fruit and veg exchange scheme which aims to reduce food wastage by encouraging people to bring in any excess fruit and veg from their own garden.

The recession has definitely hit Bolton's town centre hard, and it's sad to see more and more shops closing down.  However, despite this The Kitchen seems to be a small glimmer of hope in a very difficult time, and if you ever find yourself in Bolton, I highly recommend dropping in and supporting a local business that is trying to make a difference.