The Lansdowne is a large bar on London Road, about 10 minutes walk from the city centre. It's a favourite of ours for numerous reasons: great music (when we were last there, the playlist veered from Johnny Cash's Boy Named Sue to Fleet Foxes to the Sam Cooke soul classic You Send Me in the space of minutes), a wide range of lagers, ciders and ales - including plentiful vegan drink options - and incredible retro furnishings.
The Lansdowne always delivers on atmosphere, with friendly and helpful staff. As it's very close to the city centre and train station, but also to the university and Clarendon Park, it tends to have a nice mixture of customers, from young families eating lunch to groups of office workers, lecturers and students, or people killing time before their trains. Most importantly, The Lansdowne always has at least four vegan, and numerous more vegetarian, options on the main menu, plus regular veggie or vegan specials. It's fantastic that pubs and bars in Leicester - and around the UK - are becoming more conscious of catering to vegans. Just in the two years T & I have been together, we've noticed a sea-change in the amount of options we have when eating out.
Minus one half of the sandwich - we'd already tucked in by the time I remembered to get my camera out.
On our recent visit, T opted for the houmous and roasted vegetables ciabatta with potato & sweet potato wedges, which was the weekly sandwich special. Other vegan options currently include vegetable pie, Mediterranean stew with mashed beans, and a smoked tofu and rice pilaf.
However, once you deviate from the sandwich and burger menus (and their current veggie burger is sweet potato and halloumi, so not vegan-friendly), we find that the vegan offerings - although tasty, inventive and interesting - come in small portion sizes. As T is 6'4" and with the hearty appetite of a lumberjack, they just don't fill him up. This tends to be a common issue with vegan food - especially when made by non-vegans. The movement seems to be connected in non-vegans' minds with concepts of health and 'clean' eating, and an assumption is made that vegans don't want a big plate of hearty food. And having seen T polish off six vegan enchiladas in a row, I can assure you that's not the case!
The food is reasonably priced for the non-vegan main meals, with a sandwich costing around £6, plus a bit more if you want wedges, and main meals hovering around the £9-£11 mark. But with portion sizes so tiny for the vegan mains, we can't really say they offer value for money.
