Three generations of vegans walk into a bar. Actually, it wasn’t a bar but a restaurant in London’s Spitalfields on a rainy day in January and I was there with my family, having the good fortune of staying in the home of friends while they were visiting South Africa over the Christmas holidays.

The trio of generations was me, my daughter and my 21-month-old granddaughter and the restaurant was Unity Diner. It was, as you can read on its website, founded by a  group of close friends on a mission to make a positive difference through plant-based food, the profits of which help fund an animal sanctuary. One of its founders is Earthling Ed and on the day that we visited — the first day the diner was open after the Christmas break — the vegan educator, speaker and author, whose real name is Ed Winters, was there signing copies of his indispensable book, This Is Vegan Propaganda (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You) which has just been released in paperback. 

Unity Dinner. Image: Unity Dinner website

If you’ve ever seen Ed in action, especially his ‘Debate a vegan’ series where he sits at a table and invites passers-by into conversation on the topic “veganism is a moral obligation”, you’ll know he’s wonderfully approachable and so we asked him to sign a copy of his book for us. 

We had a short chat about raising a vegan child from birth and his YouTube videos that include short, powerful, often very amusing commentaries, like this one on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s utterances on vegans. We weren’t the only ones who were delighted to find Ed in the diner: soon after we returned to our table to order, another family — by the look of it, another three generations — left their table to talk to Ed. 

We ordered several portions of tofish and chips — beer-battered tofish that comes with mushy peas, chunky chips and tartare sauce and is big enough to share between two (which is good to know if you’re travelling on the rand). We also tried plump southern fried drumsticks, chilli-flecked calamari rings and a pork burger heavy with caramelised onions and pickled cabbage. It was one of the most joyful vegan dining-out treats we’ve had in the past year.

Unity Dinner Menu. Image: Unity Dinner website

Unity Dinner Menu. Image: Unity Dinner website

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Actually, Unity Diner is also a bar but the cocktail bar is not the reason why we were visiting, as tempting as it was to sit at the counter and order one of their signature mocktails or cocktails. On another visit, I plan to try piers morgan’s tears, made of alcohol-free gin, coconut water, pea flower lime juice, tonic water and peach and named for the broadcaster who, amongst his quiver of reactionary arrows, has taken aim with one at what he calls the “joyless existence” of “munching lentils” that he deems to be the life of a vegan. I’d like to sit there, sipping on the broadcaster’s tears, prop up my phone and watch Ed break down Morgan’s oft-repeated — and frankly juvenile — argument about California almond milk and the hypocrisy of vegans.

For your amusement, you can also see Morgan get hot under the collar about a humble sausage roll. When UK bakery chain Greggs announced on Twitter that it was going to be selling a vegan sausage roll by saying “the wait is finally over,” Morgan weighed in. “Nobody was waiting for a vegan blood sausage, you PC-ravaged clowns,” he said. “Oh hello Piers, we’ve been expecting you,” Greggs coolly replied. Since then Morgan has never missed an opportunity to use Greggs’ vegan sausage roll as a gateway into his belief that being a vegan in the 21st century is akin to the life of the gruel-eating orphans in Oliver Twist. Be warned though, in this 60 Minutes Australia and other interviews, Piers can’t resist bringing up the almonds and the Avos and the bees and the names for our food again. See? Tiresome.

“Here’s the truth about vegan sausage rolls,” says Morgan in the 60 Minutes clip, “nobody likes them. It’s a total global myth.” In fact, Greggs’ vegan menu — built around that first vegan sausage roll — is so popular it’s just been expanded to include Vegan Cajun Chicken-Free Roll, Vegan Southern Fried Chicken-Free Goujons and Vegan Southern Fried Chicken-Free Baguette. And the truth is, for a vegan on a budget in London, it’s a brilliant way to eat on the run for around £3.00. In fact, on our way out of the city, we grabbed a few sausage rolls at Greggs in St Pancras to have for our dinner on our evening Eurostar trip back to Rotterdam. Sorry, Piers. But we liked them. A lot. And we’re also sorry to tell you but, according to Fry’s, their 4-pack bake-at-home sausage rolls (around R60 at Checkers) is one of their most popular offerings so the global myth about vegan sausage rolls that you speak so confidently of might really not be true at all. 

As for gruel? Well as any vegan or someone who’s happily curious about plant-based food will tell you, our food is oftentimes extraordinarily tasty — whether it is home-cooked sweet potatoes with chickpeas and tahini or Mildreds’ sublime blackened cabbage wedges or spinach gyoza (another treat on our London trip) or Lexi’s Healthy Eatery’s Farmer’s Breakfast — at R79 one of the yummiest and most reasonable brekkie offerings you can have when next you find yourself in Rosebank, Johannesburg. DM/ ML

Read in Daily Maverick: “On sharing the joy that being a vegan brings me”