Deptford High Street. 

A Poundland. 

A handful of Thai restaurants.

And The Waiting Room. 

A small, unassuming cafe the likes of which you'd find in Hoxton, is, it seems, paving the way for a 'new Deptford'...

It’s named “The Waiting Room”, with perhaps unintended irony, as that's exactly what you'll find yourself doing - waiting. Service is measured and slow. But that's the point. It's as though time stands still in this cute cafe.

And as time slows, you can take in the quirky decor of distressed wood, sarcastic scribbles on the wall and a menu written in fridge magnets. Sarcasm is, so we were told by the wonderful staff, a speciality, to be served daily with your decaf.

Substantial lunch choices of Brick Lane beigels, sandwiches and burgers. And milkshakes to die for. We indulged in the V.L.T. Which is not for the faint-hearted, as our friends at the Waiting Room are not afraid of dishing out generous dollops of their dairy free mayo...

Anywhere that gives us this many options (vegan, vegetarian, soya, decaf, cupcakes, flapjacks, brownies) can't be bad. And it's almost just as much fun watching the array of customers who congregate here.

Spotted: a chatty man waiting for his double shot espresso who systematically asked everyone in the queue how their day was (maybe the extra caffeine is a bad idea?) and a glamorous goth with her vegan lap dog (yes, really!)

Go, sit, wait, eat, enjoy.

PS While you're there, get yourself snapped with the Chippendale look-alikes!

There are not many things that will get us up before 11am on a Sunday morning, when we should be having a well-earned lie-in, catching up on repeats of Come Dine With Me or putting on Netflix for a Suits-athon. But this Sunday morning was special. So special in fact that, in another part of the country, Mike had earlier pulled himself off Canal Street at 4am, showered, slept briefly, and jumped on the 7am train from Manchester. It made our 30-minute trundle on a worse-for-wear Northern Line train pale into insignificance.

What could have us disrupting our weekend routines? Simple. A date with Melissa. She rocked up (literally rocking, in her 1950s attire) in her bunch skirt, polka dot headscarf and bright red lipstick, flanked by her tattooed and blacknailed sidekick Phoebe. Who were these mysterious women?

We were of course in the presence of the fabulous Ms Cupcake, and her general manager, and, while we could be forgiven for thinking we were to be extras on the remake of Grease III The Old Street Years, were in fact in the hallowed halls of the Central London Cookery School, about to start Ms Cupcake’s day-long vegan baking class.

Of course, you exclaim. That’s why we left the house so early. Very few things get between a sweet-toothed vegan and her treats.

Let’s face it: it is not beyond the realms of possibility for  6 chocolate and vanilla-iced cupcakes, 4 giant caramel sugar biscuits and an entire 9" double layer Victoria sponge cake to be devoured in under 24 hours by a cake-starved vegan.

As beginners to the vegan baking scene, we were slightly nervous about attending Ms Cupcake's full-day vegan baking class. Followers of our twitter feed (@ukextraveganza) may recall the coconut scone disaster, and previous attempts at vegan baking have often involved recipes that required a minimum of 25 exotic ingredients, half of which we could not pronounce and half of which were not available in Waitrose or Planet Organic!

However, after our day with Ms Cupcake, we were changed beings. Our experience showed us that vegan baking can be simple, fast, extremely delicious and even more fun than 'normal' baking (probably due to the fact that Melissa and Phoebe are amazing and there was so much edible glitter everywhere we felt that a unicorn might appear at any moment). If we had a criticism, it was that even we, lovers of indulgence, were surprised at quite how much sugar and fat went into a cupcake. However, so long as you don’t live on cake alone, you’re allowed the occasional blow-out.

We kicked off our day meeting the other vegan baking enthusiasts. A full array including a Slovenian vegan (a Slovegan!?), a vegetarian from Manchester (a Manchetarian?!), an owner of a London vegan restaurant, and a bakery-owning mother with a son with an egg allergy!  

Melissa and Phoebe demonstrated, step-by-step, each of three recipes (cupcakes, sponge and cookies) that we were to learn on the day, and also threw in some top tips on perfecting vegan baking, and some product substitutes that we could use to adapt the recipes to fit our free-from diet.

Our favourites tips of the day: (a) when you need tea and biscuits, go for Jammie Dodgers and Bourbon Creams (both APF)! (b) as an egg substitute, you can use apple cider vinegar to curdle soy milk (eww!) as well as mashed banana and fruit juice (c) when you’ve messed up on your icing creation (pretty likely, we think), take a handful of chopped nuts and roll your creation in those: voila, a nutty surprise that looks like you planned it that way!

Oh, and next time you pass Carluccio’s and automatically start salivating at their meringues as big as your head, buy some Orgran’s No Egg (http://www.orgran.com/products/174/) and get whipping and folding. It works just as well and makes gluten-free vegan meringues to rival old Antonio’s! These girls really know it all when it comes to free-from!

What really surprised our cold London hearts was how willing Melissa was, and is, to offer business advice and support to blossoming bakers and entrepreneurs. Ms Cupcake's mission is to spread veganism, and so for her, the more the merrier.

And being schooled by such cool-looking chicks who looked more like they belonged to a rock or punk band than arguably the most successful vegan bakery in London confirmed what we knew: sexy, cool veganism is on the rise. And it’s much easier than it looks. Like we say: free from, it’s simple!"

We recently hightailed it (well, in so far as you can 'hightail' it in London, meaning we battled the crowds on two tubes and an overground train!) to Olympia for this year's Allergy and Free From Show. Thanks we should say to those kind folks at the Vegan Society and VDelicious

What a great show it was. There are some amazing options out there - milks, magazines, marshmallows and much in between, from a new generation of merchants who are innovative and more in-tune with the demands of the modern vegan. A quick survey among returning exhibitors confirmed what our instincts told us as we surveyed the queues at each stand: numbers of visitors were definitely up on last year. So, extraveganzans, we are slowly growing in numbers and strength...

This show was a great treat for both of us - options and alternatives that are Extra and Vegan friendly, and a testament to the exciting, new things happening in the UK.

Now for our top picks of the show ...

Good Health Box (www.goodhealthbox.com)

We are so glad this trend has come to the UK. Make your own box of treats or opt for an in-house creation, with a rolling subscription or buy-as-you-go. What set this company apart from competitors are the larger goody boxes you get (= more treats) and a range of products that we genuinely have never seen before in shops (and you know we’ve seen a lot!) If you find yourself always resorting to syrupy snacks at your desk, then just order in the Vegan Box, or for your dairy-allergic child there’s the Youth Box too.

Part-time Carnivore ( http://www.parttimecarnivore.org )

Extra loved this non-profit and found a kindred spirit in Pete, co-Founder of Part-Time Carnivore. This movement starts with an online pledge to have meatless days in your week, and connects you with other Part-Time Carnivore teams. You can create your own group, or join with others, all around the world. Currently, there are 2656 members who have pledged in 37 teams worldwide, making efforts to reduce meat consumption not only better for the environment, but also a friendly competition. It’s a fun accessible website that you should shove in the face of all your meat-eating non-vegan-believers!

Mozzarisella on Venice Bakery pizza base ( www.venicebakery.co.uk )

Now we think pizza is just about the hardest AFP food item to get right. Where is the cheese that doesn’t taste like styrofoam? And we often crave a hot slice of margherita pizza, dripping in cheese. So when we stumbled on this stall, with not only that but also a base that is gluten free too, well, let’s just say there weren’t many samples left when we finally walked away from the table! We love these people, and the only problem we see is the pounds we'll be putting on. All the team were super-friendly and passionate about their product so it was a nice place to hide when the crowds got to us. Didn’t hurt that their product was quite so fantastic.

Trina’s Delicacies ( trinasdelicacies.com )

There's a new baker on the block! Fun and sweet, and that’s just Trina! Her cupcakes and cakes (including gluten-free options) are made-to-order in her kitchen in Brixton (you can track her and her cakes down every Saturday morning in Brixton market). These cakes have lots of delicate flavours and delicious jam-filled centres. Totally yummy for your tummy. We still love you Ms Cupcake, but wow is there some Brixton competition!

Amy's Kitchen ( www.amyskitchen.co.uk )

Thank you for cooking, Amy! And thank you for now selling your products in the UK (available online, or in Wholefoods, Planet Organic and Tesco from September)!

Ready meals for a lazy night in: get in your pjs and scoff down our favourite, Chinese noodles & veggies in a creamy cashew sauce. Although, don't think that the others weren't a close second. These ready meals have all the naughty comfort food feeling you want, and they're vegan. We're sure you'll be popping down to Planet Organic to try the vegan burger and Spanish stew. 

Since our mantra is 'Free from. It's simple.' We really enjoyed the opportunity to meet and eat with people who want the same thing for themselves and their lives.

So, we don’t want to make you jealous, but we managed to get ourselves tickets to Wimbledon last week. It didn’t rain, we got to pretend we were tennis regulars, we drank some Pimms (100% vegan by the way, even the new fancy Blackberry & Elderflower version which we haven’t tried - but, if you're reading this Pimms HQ, feel free to send us some, you know, for a review…) and had some vegan food which we had to smuggle in. (N.B.: Definitely no vegan options in and around the court - the strawberries and cream were pre-made so we couldn’t indulge in that tradition). But we got our very own seats on court No. 1 and it got us thinking...

Why aren’t there more vegan athletes in the UK?

Are we really still thinking of vegans as weak, pasty and deficient in some way?

Or is it because the largely carnivorous British public put such pressure on our athletes that for them to adopt a vegan diet would create a backlash from fans?

In the U.S. veganism has been embraced as a clean, healthy and powerful alternative for such high profile stars as the Williams sisters, Carl Lewis and Mike Tyson and also a number of well-known NHL and NFL players. In the national sport, American Football, many players have converted to veganism entirely, and others have, at least during the playing season, embraced veganism for extra energy and speed. US athletes and coaches alike have been quicker off the mark in adopting veganism to complement training and performance than their UK counterparts.

Over here, we’ve got Olympic silver medallist Lizzie Armitstead flying the flag for vegetarians, former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye going vegan and Forest Green Rovers Football Club going vegetarian for players and punters alike, but this is hardly challenging the mainstream.

Top athletes spend hours in training under the guidance of coaches, nutritionists and dietitians and their livelihoods rely on their bodies being in the most healthy, powerful and effective state possible. Why is it then that only a handful have embraced a vegan diet?

A plant-based diet has many proven benefits including lower blood pressure, less body fat and increased energy levels; there is plenty of evidence to show that although more food may have to be consumed more regularly to reach the desired number of calories, a vegan diet is not only a viable option but also a desirable option for athletes.

Okay, animal sources of protein are more bioavailable (the body can make use of them more readily), but with a little mixing and matching of vegan sources of protein, athletes can get just as much as they need - and isn’t that what the nutritionists and chefs are there for anyway?

MORE PROTEIN THAN YOUR PRIME CUT...

The following foods have more protein per 100 calories than the standard steak:


And, what's more, they don't have all the saturated fat and cholesterol. Now of course, 100 calories' worth of broccoli is much more of a mouthful (or mouthfuls in fact) than 100 calories' worth of steak, but it is also much more nutritious calorie for calorie. And for athletes, efficient eating is what it's all about.

So is it then that sports stars are unwilling to consider the vegan option because of the public stigma of  veganism?

Meat-eating is still closely linked with popular ideas of masculinity. In their 2011 study, Ruby & Heine recorded how male vegetarians were scored as less ‘manly’ and ‘weaker’ than omnivores, even by non-meat eaters and women who might have been expected to be more level-headed on the subject of diet. Since it is the World Cup, let’s look at the popular image of football players: masculine, with tattoos, a love of expensive cars and popstar/model girlfriends. Would a high-profile footballer identifying as vegan affect his fanbase?

And since football is tied up with national identity, here and in lots of countries, a high profile athlete identifying as vegan might be problematic, too, in terms of marketability - sports stars (particularly in Olympic sports that still; have the veneer of being "amateur") often need to rely on sponsorship and endorsement deals, in lieu of any substantial prize money. Is it too far-fetched to think that these stars aren’t even exploring a vegan dietary option, or being presented with a dietary alternative by their management team, for fear of reducing their earning potential and altering their status in the public's affections.

We are so lucky to live in a country where fresh fruit, vegetables and unadulterated food are readily available and relatively cheap (just try and buy something in the States in a mainstream supermarket that isn’t laced with high fructose corn syrup, we dare you…), and yet over the pond a larger proportion of the public choose a plant-based diet, notwithstanding its expense. We can only hope that our national sports stars, being held up as role models and national icons, will lead the way and introduce more people to a life free from animal products...maybe then we might win more too?