Louella Berryman

I pass this little place, barely a month old, almost daily on my bus route to and from lectures and I’ve wanted to make a visit for a while now.  Vanilla Black, no connection with the famous vegetarian restaurant, is set on Windmill row, a set of a few gorgeous multi coloured shops, cafes and restaurants.  I love the surroundings in this area, the tall townhouses provide an interesting backdrop to your lunch!

I love the decoration in this place, wall to wall shelves stacked full of second hand books and vintage penguin classics hanging in the windows.  The whole cafe looks so warm and inviting so I’m not surprised that as the darkness of (now!) 4pm rolled in plenty of people started dropping in for tea, coffee and cakes.

I arrived for quite a late lunch so the cafe was quiet and calm.  The bar area where coffee, cakes and food is served was set out beautifully, however because we arrived past the usual lunch rush the selection of sandwiches and stuffed croisssants was quite small.  My friend and I decided to split both the goat’s cheese and roasted vegetable sandwich and a cheddar and tomato stuffed croissant for a proper taste of the veggie options.

I’ve never really had a proper stuffed croissant before, and this one was delicious! The cheese was smoky and not too overpowering against the butteryness of the pastry and sweet tomatoes.  This was my personal favourite out of the two, delish.  The bread that surrounded the tasty veg and cheese in the sandwich was definitely the star,  I love artisan bread, well actually most bread, at the best of times and this one was particularly yummy.  I’m not usually a huge fan of goat’s cheese but I really enjoyed the sandwich regardless.  All this was washed down with beautifully presented jasmine tea, elderflower drink and some really lovely coffee served in attractive glass cups.

If you’re in the area I would definitely recommend giving this place a visit, I can imagine it would be great for getting some uni work done in a nicer environment than a stuffy library (better coffee too!)