Carb your enthusiasm at London’s Pastan Barbican

Pasta seems like an obvious and easy option when it comes to serving vegan food, but so often it’s ignored or limited to predictably dull tomato sauces. 

Not so at Pastan Barbican where the choices include Florentine creme spinach torteloni (Firenze), mini ravioli with mushroom with truffle oil and crumbled chestnuts (Countryside), and pasta umami stroganoff. With branches in Barcelona and Malaga, there are also a couple of clearly Spanish influenced dishes – Catalonia, Formentera and an orzo-based Paella. 

Inside the restaurant is simply decorated and generally pretty full, with a fairly quick and efficient turnover of customers, while managing to feel like there is no rush.

My own starter recommendation would be the loaded gnocchi, which comes with a range of sauces to tempt most tastes. We opted for the cheese, but there are also tomato, and blue cheese options. Pastan Barbican is conveniently and centrally located and they offer predictably good food so I’ve eaten there several times; my meal has always included this dish. The gnocchi are deep fried and slightly chewy, and it’s a chunky enough portion to make you wonder whether there’ll be space for the main course. Of course there always is.

On my most recent visit this was Green Velvet.  A healthy sized ten pieces of pea and shallot ravioli dressed with salsa verde and asparagus. As you can imagine, this tastes very green, but with a creamy smoothness to the sauce.

My companion chose the Amalfi Orzotto.
The Italian town of Amalfi, as reconstructed on a plate by Pastan, includes orzo pasta cooked risotto style, lemon, peas, fresh mint and ginger. This dish is topped with crispy kale, asparagus and crystallised ginger bites. She declared it heavy on the lemon, which for her was delightful, and only remembered the ginger as a slight lingering heat in the mouth when reminded of its existence. For me the fact that it wasn’t overpowering sounded like a plus. 

Past visits have also included the Comfort You mac ‘n’ cheese, which, with its crispy onions and toasted breadcrumbs, is definitely worth ordering.

There were a few of us eating together, and so although normally too full for dessert it was worth ordering a small portion of the Biscoff doughnuts. These are served hot, crispy and rolled in icing with a Biscoff centre. Honestly, if you can save the space, it’s worth it.