Name: inSpiral lounge
Address: 250, Camden High Street, London, Camden, NW1 8QS, UK
Telephone: +44 (0) 207 428 5875

Options for raw foodists in the capital are greatly improving, as more and more restaurants are offering gourmet-standard meals where the ingredients have been dehydrated or cooked at low temperatures. Saf pioneered this, and now there are a number of slick operations like Down to Earth and 42 Raw. There are obvious health benefits to a raw food diet - not using high temperatures means nutrients are preserved, and it’s a plant-based diet, so no horsemeat scares - but whether the raw food trend will gain momentum as a response to the current craze for meat remains to be seen.

inSpiral Lounge, overlooking Camden Lock, began life in 2008. All the food here is vegan, and roughly half of it is raw.

The variety of dishes on offer is impressive. There’s a vegan version of spanakopita, Greek lasagne, made with layers of flaky filo pastry filled with spinach, leeks, onions and “cheese” made from cashew nuts; it’s then topped with a dollop of black olive tapenade. The cooked foods include root vegetables and roast potato wedges with paprika, at other times they have things like potato dauphinoise with celeriac and hazelnuts. Salads include a particularly tasty Caesar salad with lettuce, capers and beans, an apple and beetroot salad, and coleslaw. They even do dips: a bright yellow and very hot garlic mayo, ketchup and pesto that taste very close to the real thing. The only slight dud is the raw pizza, which has a slice of dehydrated toast covered in what is meant to be a layer of cheesy cream, but it tastes nutty and the texture is grainy. However the tomato sauce and herbs closely mimic pizza flavouring, and it’s completed by piling sliced olives and leaves over the top.

Main dishes are a bargain priced at just £5.45, but the main draw has to be the cakes. We try a tangy passionfruit cheesecake and a rich carrot cake, we’d never have guessed these were raw. Other options include Black Forest gâteau and berry cheesecake; they also have cakes boxed up ready to go. In addition their ice cream counter backs on to the pavement so you can buy them from the street.

They sell other products too, like dehydrated kale crisps, which taste far more appealing than they sound. There are sweet and savoury varieties including cacao and cinnamon, raspberry, wasabi wheatgrass, baobab and onion, and some very moreish cheese and pepper crisps, where yeast flakes provide the cheesy flavour. They say this curious alternative to crisps is packed full of nutrients, and they’re clearly confident about it as a recent crowdsourcing campaign successfully raised £250k to help expand the business.

It's licensed (vegan wine and beer is available) and opens all day, but they also host music events late into the night, as the humble space packs a DJ booth in one corner. Staff seem to genuinely enjoy working here, and there is a very mixed crowd of families, young people with laptops (there is free wi-fi) and ladies of pensionable age. Plus it’s only midday and it’s already busy, but this makes perfect sense as inSpiral Lounge is very good indeed.

inSpiral lounge

inSpiral lounge Picture Gallery

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