address: 224 Brixton Rd, London SW9 6AH

Telephone No.: 020 7501 8539

https://www.facebook.com/pipocavegan

Open every day except Monday

This is a Vegan restaurant/cafe offering food and shopping. Bar stools and small tables are included in the cafe but you can (and we did) sit in the most charming section in the shop with our own private table in the window surrounded by jars and bottles. Those with long memories will recall that once upon a time here was Floridia Bakery.

This is described as a Vegan creperie but also serves small and big plates, as well as a list of sweet and savoury crepes. There is a warning about the seeds included in the crepes (flax, hemp, sunflower and pumpkin) but no description of what they are made of, but they are marked GF, which we assumed was Gluten free. We chose two courses – one to share, the mezze bowl (chickpea and potato croquette, roasted peppers, roasted courgette and aubergine and lots of other stuff) and then one each of a Dujhan (portobello mushroom, asparagus, sundried tomatoes, caramelised onion and rocket and spinach) and a Romana (vegan cheese, tomato sauce, aubergine, courgettes, mushroom, peppers, artichokes, butternut squash, chili olives, almonds, basil and rocket).

The plate to share was really interesting and allowed a certain amount of browsing – I ate most of the croquettes.

Then we headed into the galettes. The Dujhan was a great success and my colleague gave it a 9 out of 10 – from a meat eater that was incredible. My galette contained more of my five a day than I really wanted. A few less ingredients would have been better, especially so I could taste the cheese. I ate rather slowly (we were chatting about work issues) and so my crepe went a bit cold. At that point it does feel, I imagine, like eating cardboard. This is not a reflection of a vegan crepe but, for any crepe, speed is essential.

This is a BYO, so we nipped out to the Co-op and the most expensive bottle of wine was £8.50. Pipoca provided the glasses and water. The bill came to £30.94 including service. The last few places we have reviewed have been vegan and this isn’t our top choice, but we would certainly return.