Looking For Vegan-Friendly Food In The North - The Blue Moon Café In Sheffield

Sheffield, city of steel, eccentric indie bands such as Pulp, cutlery, all the romance of being oop north and, er… excellent vegan restaurants! One of these being the rather famous Blue Moon eaterie at 2, St James’ Street right in the centre of the city.

When I decided that my other half and I needed and deserved a day out – on a shoestring, though – Sheffield struck me as the ideal local destination. A major metropolis and shopping magnet that I’d never really explored, with any number of art galleries, museums and cute little nooks to check out. All this as well as some mighty, mighty musical behemoths for those of us who love a bit of wonky, eccentric Brit art rock and electronica. (Not that we actually spotted anyone famous during our day out. In Leeds, now, it sometimes seems as if you can't move without tripping over a local luminary - Carl out of Cud, Rob Newman - hey, these are celebrities to me!) But no, no Jarvis or Phil Oakey to be seen, although those in the know tend to claim the ubiquity of the Human League frontman, too. And does Jarvis Cocker still live in Paris?

Ooh, Vegan Chocolate Cake!

Only trouble was, my dear one is a freshly minted vegan. And we were surely going to need some substantial sustenance during a hard day out trekking the mean streets of Sheffield city centre and environs! Bearing that in mind, I did a little good old interweb research and came up with a few possible eateries for a lunchtime stop-off. Then one after another was discarded, only for the Blue Moon cafe to remain as the last food joint standing.

So, after a whistle-stop morning buzzing around every museum and high-culture joint in the city, we eventually found ourselves at the most famous and lauded vegan eaterie in Sheffield. (Although I'm not entirely sure how much of an accolade that really is!)

The Blue Moon has a rather 'school dinner hall' -ish vibe to it. The tables and chairs are strictly functional, the colour scheme has that anodyne flavour of a secondary school, and you queue up in an orderly fashion in order to be served your dinner from steel trays of hot food. (Although no school I've ever attended ever served glasses of fine vegan red wine along with the vegetable bake. Weak highly diluted orange squash was more the order of the day.).

My dear one chose the vegan tomatoey pasta dish and pronounced it marvellish, while I went for the 'cheesey' vegan cauliflower vegetable bake. At least, it was advertised on the menu as being 'cheesey': however it actually turned out to be more actually downright cheesey, when we actually came to check how come something with parmesan was labelled as vegan. Innocent mistake, could happen to anyone, but most vegans I know would be pretty unhappy if they were caught out that way. So be careful out there, vegan dudes and dudettes!

How about puddings? I had the full vegan chocolate cake, and my chap had a kind of flat chocolatey biscuit traybake thing. This was allegedly yummy: I certainly had no complaints regarding my sweet thing! And all washed down with a delicious glass of vegan red wine, too. I thoroughly enjoyed my meal at the Blue Moon – and if you're vegan and ever in Sheffield, city of steel and vegan chocolate cake, you really shouldn't miss it.