Restaurant Review: Arapina

Vegan treats in store...

When my cardiologist told me I had to change my diet I thought it was the end of the world. I assumed it would mean no more steak and a drastic reduction in my cheese intake. What I didn’t expect was for them to more more dramatic. “no red meat, no chicken and the jury is even out on oily fish. Vegan is best.”

I really didn’t know how I’d cope. No more pork belly? And then someone told me about a certain store’s vegan range. Yes, there is plant-based pork belly. My life was back on again. (I won’t name them as it looks like they no longer sell it. Maybe it was a cheese dream, except I can’t eat cheese). And then I started reading about processed food ands how bad that was for you. The rule of thumb was the more ingredients the worse the food is. This store’s pork belly had a list that makes Proust’s A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu feel like a novella.

So it was back to square one. And then I came across Arapina in Lordship Lane. This is a vegan bakery that first started in Greenwich and has now expanded due to its success and has opened this light airy, pastel-hued SE22 outlet, so it must be doing something very right. However, some people on the East Dulwich Forum have suggested that it is doing something very wrong and that the name, which Arapina’s website says is the name of a famous Greek chocolate cake, can also have a negative connotation.

I’m not going to enter into that debate here. What I also saw on the EDF was a heated ding dong about their vegan hot chocolate. How can hot chocolate itself not be vegan, someone asked. Surely it was only the milk that made a hot chocolate non-vegan?

So just to confuse matters I ordered a hot chocolate and had one with semi-skimmed milk (oat milk is another option). So regardless of what’s in the hot chocolate itself this was definitely not a vegan drink.

But what about the taste I hear you ask? well, I don’t have hot chocolate very often but when I do I’ve graduated from my childhood Bourneville at bedtime to Green & Blacks whenever I effing like because I’m a grown-up. (I sometimes have cereal at teatime, but I digress). Somehow I’ve convinced myself that G&B’s hot chocolate is healthier as well as posher. I have been advised by the eminent Dr Google that dark chocolate is still permitted as long as it has a very high percentage of cocoa.

The hot chocolate in Arapina certainly tastes like strong dark chocolate. There is nothing creamy and childhood bedtime about it. I can see why it might not be to some people’s tastes. There’s an almost sour bitterness to it which some may not like. In fact, full disclosure, I asked for more milk just to soften the sharpness (and to make it less vegan).

It comes in a nice big cup and I think after a few sips my taste buds became acclimatised. I’m not saying you should recalibrate your sense of taste to enjoy anything, I draw the line at sprouts. But I thought the hot chocolate was, as Larry David might say, pretty, pretty good. And Larry knows about hot drinks. In Curb Your Enthusiasm he opened a cafe next to another cafe – a spite store – after falling out with the owner, Mocha Joe.

Oh, I should add, it was £3.95, which is not cheap. But for that price I also got an image of what looked like a dog, maybe a brown greyhound or whippet, smiling back at me through the froth. I can’t guarantee you will all get one.

Anyway, it looks like I’ve reached the end of my word count without actually reviewing the food. Arapina does have a small savoury menu, mostly pastry-based. I also had a mushroom roll with a small side Greek salad (both also £3.95 each). The roll was soft and oily and probably not that heart healthy even though it is vegan (they use vegetable oil).

The salad was excellent though. Plump olives, crisp cucumber, fresh sliced tomato and a decent dressing. And feta cheese. Apparently you can get vegan feta cheese. Yes, you can get vegan feta. Maybe my healthy eating future is not the end of the world.

Arapina, 48 Lordship Lane, London SE22 8HJ.

(check opening hours, it’s mostly only open during the day. It’s more of a cafe than a restaurant, I know, but I’ve put Restaurant Review at the top because that’s the house style).

They do takeaway of course - prices quoted above are for eat-in.

All meals paid for and identity not revealed before or after.