“We want to give the five star service of Michelin star restaurant but without any of the kind of
things that we deem unnecessary such as you know, serving from a certain side or all that kind of stuff. We want to deliver amazing food, amazing service in a relaxed setting. We’re a 100% vegan south east Asian restaurant in the heart of Brighton in Baker Street. All small plates. We pride ourselves on high energy and low kinda… poncey-ness…

We’re with Amy Bennett, co founder of Bonsai Plant Kitchen. 

“So basically, Bonsai was started by myself and Dom. I’m 22 and he’s 27. So myself and Dom are both college dropouts and both just jumped into the hospitality industry. 

“I became a waiter, he became a chef. I had no intention of being a chef, but kind of worked really  really hard and the head chef kind of said to me “I’ve seen your work ethic, do you want to come into the kitchen?” So my whole chef career started that way, coming all the way up to a sous chef and then head pastry chef. 

“I was always vegan but was working in really meat heavily dominated restaurants. So
then I decided that I wanted to move to Brighton to work in a vegan or vegetarian restaurant, moved to working at Food For Friends, met
Dom, he was head chef, I was the head pastry chef. And decided that we wanted to open our own thing. He wanted to do something Asian. I wanted to do something vegan, and so we created Bonsai.

Tell us a bit more about the food. What’s your favorite dish? “OK, so we’ve got a tempura cauliflower that’s probably my favorite, because any kind of vegan restaurant that you go to, they offer you some kind of battered cauliflower dish. So when people kind of see it on the menu, they don’t really think much of it. They think ‘Oh, here we go again, another battered cauliflower dish’. But it’s just absolutely phenomenal. People tend to walk away and say that that is their favorite dish.”

A longer version of this interview is featured on The Brighton Whistler podcast, available at all the usual places.

Bonsai Plant Kitchen

44-45 Baker St, Brighton BN1 4JN. 07514 336086

https://www.bonsaiplantkitchen.co.uk

As we head into an autumn of change, the double whammy of cost of living and climate crises means fewer take away pizza boxes strewn across the city streets (Ed: you wish) and less in the bins behind the back of our favourite restaurants as they pare back their waste. And that is not a good look for the birds of Brighton.

But ‘eat less, but better’, is what Great Uncle Gull has always told us, reminding us what happened to our favourite childhood treat, the earthworm, when animals were put in cages in vast factory farms. So, your gull has taken flight to check out the latest plant-based kitchens and chefs who care about where their meat, fish and dairy comes from.

This Gull loves little more than good pub food, and particularly when it’s a pop up like Kokedama at the Roundhill with glamorous plant-based small plates. 

A peck at the leftover Gochujang Panko Cauliflower Wing and the skin-on Fries topped with Apple & Fennel Kimchi, Spring Onions, Gochujang Drizzle, Cashew Parmesan, Wasabi Mayo and Furikake sent your bird’s spirit soaring onto a passing thermal to check out its other locations in East Street and Lewes. But not before clocking that Sunday lunch roast is a feather light £15. 

Portland Road may seem a long old flight for a hungry bird, but the word on the wing is that Ciaran’s is a properly sourced treat for a Sunday lunch. Its crispy belly of pork with sage stuffing, roasted duck fat potatoes, glazed carrots, sautéed cabbage and apple cider gravy all comes from within a 40-mile radius. 

The pigs come from Calcot Farm in West Sussex where this bird has witnessed them larking in fields, playing with their siblings and pals until their time comes. She’s also spotted the Ciaran-mobile buying fish from Brighton and Newhaven Fish Supplies, the preferred fishmonger of the most responsible of Brighton eateries. 

His dairy is delivered from Bristol’s Estate Dairy which Cousin Gus from Southville, Bristol’s grooviest neighbourhood, says is the work of a collective of young passionate individuals dedicated to producing and bottling the highest quality milk and cream from the Chew Valley. He’s been very picky about tahe ethics behind his dairy since he developed a taste for ice cream on a brief visit to Brighton as a chick. 

It was Cousin Gus who spotted a cool young eco-warrior at Veg Fest back in 2013, feeding a Bristol crowd vegan sushi burrito and environmental activism like they were baby birds. Anna told them that they couldn’t love the ocean if they ate fish, and well, you can imagine how that’s gone down in the gull world. 

But when Anna moved to Brighton, set up Happy Maki in Pool Valley, the gulls were all over it, as were festival goers throughout the country as word got out about the fake fish that tastes so delicious. 

Let them eat fake if it helps them give up junk food. As the tractors harvest the fields of Sussex, this gull is up, up and away to pick at the worms coming back to the cow-mown farms, and breathe in the beauty of animals on the land. 

For more information, see Gilly Smith’s feature with Philip Lymbery