As you might know I have been doing Veganuary this year. I took part in it last year too and the main difficulty I had was finding delicious vegan food when eating out. However in the last 12 months so many restaurants have stepped up their vegan food game. One of my favourite restaurants, Turtle Bay invited me and my partner to their Manchester Oxford Road restaurant to try the vegan options from their menu.

We decided to book in for a week day lunch as they had a great £10 lunch offer one which includes a burger/roti, a side and a soft drink. We also decided on the 3 sides for £8 offer, to share. The sides we chose were fried plantain, Caribbean dumplings and pick-up slaw. These are actually the sides that I would normally go for so it was good to see that they were actually vegan too.

The sides were incredible especially the fried plantain which is always a firm favourite of mine. As delicious as the dumplings were they are always better alongside one of Turtle Bay’s delicious stews and curries to dunk into. However that didn’t stop us from eating it all. The slaw is always a great side even better topped on fries. Does anyone else do this?

My main was the vegan motherclucker burger with a side of sweet potato fries. I had previously seen other diners raving about the motherclucker on Instagram, so I had decided to order it before I even looked at the menu. It is described as chicken style vegan patty in Jamaican spices, smashed avo, wild rocket, pink onions, jerk may and BBQ. It is one of the nicest vegan burgers that I have ever tried. Crispy on the outside with a filling which could fool even the biggest meat eater into believing that it’s chicken! It was also oozing with smashed avo, literally a dream combination. My partner went for the kernal vegan burger, sweetcorn patties, roasted red pepper, baby gem and mango mole. This had a lovely sweetness to it and was incredible too, we both have this one the edge out of the two burgers (we both had half of each burger). It makes such a change from the usual bean burgers that restaurants offer and we really want to try and recreate the kernal burger at home.

You would think that we would be full by now, but I can never say no to dessert. I went for the chilli chocolate brownie which comes with chocolate ice-cream. This is my favourite dessert on the menu which I always order. It’s not as spicy as you might expect but it has a great little kick to it which I love. My partner ordered the rum & coconut poached pineapple. Simple but really good, I definitely dipped my fork in for a taste or two.

As always we finished off the meal by ordering from the 2-4-1 cocktail hour menu. We ordered the Koko Kolada’s which is one of a wide range of vegan cocktails from the menu.

We were very impressed with the vegan options on the menu and the thought and effort has been put into the recipes to stop them from being the usual brand offerings that many other restaurants have when it comes to meat-free food. Turtle Bay also offer brunch which includes a few vegan options on there too, including the big vegan grill down, which sounds amazing!

For more great vegan options you could also try Wagamama vegan menu .

*The meal was complimentary in return for an honest review*