London - Mojo

Mojo. I'm afraid this place ain't got none.

This salad bar/juicery has recently opened up on Berwick Street in Soho, and having some time to kill around lunchtime, I wandered in. From the outside it looks promising. With it's bright green front and happy folk clutching trays of tasters alongside reassuring smiles, you feel kinda good about going in. Everything is geared towards telling you that you're making a wise, healthy, happy choice. Unfortunately, I came out feeling deceived, and almost as if I had made an escape from the happy, smiling Moonies. I'm sorry, taster tray-holders, but it's true.

At lunchtime they have a choice of three staples, alongside which you add two salads. The staples are: two roast chicken thigh fillets, a baked salmon fillet and an beetroot and quinoa quiche. Sounds good, I thought. I was going to opt for the quiche but it looked so heavy, and even slightly unhappy with itself, that I ended up going for the chicken. Now although it was a salad and salads are cold, these chicken fillets were really very cold and even with their slightly odd 'teryaki' sauce it just wasn't very enjoyable. The salads too were a shame. One was raw, and consisted of red cabbage, courgette and fennel. But it didn't have any kind of a dressing and so you were munching through pieces of raw veg that, in my opinion, weren't being drawn together at all. The other salad was much nicer and largely consisted of shredded carrot in a slight sauce, but unfortunately, this came with greasy ribbons of white onion that I kept having to skirt around the plate, and so again overall wasn't that pleasant. The plate was about £8, which wasn't as cheap as it could have been, and was money I wish I had spent elsewhere.

They also do juices, which fared a bit better. However, I would recommend getting one made at the counter and not picking a bottle up from the fridge; the difference in size is astonishing, and I think the counter ones were actually cheaper.

I'm afraid to say that Mojo is therefore a no-no in my books and I'll be skirting around it in future.

If you want a good salad in Soho, head to Mildred's.

- J

Raw Vegetable Pad Thai Salad

Ashamedly, I love hearing about the newest health food craze. I even recently bought two litres of aloe vera juice thinking I was pre-empting the 'next big thing'. Damn you, Holland and Barrett one penny sale. I'll now be taking teaspoonfuls of the stuff until the day I die.

As you might have been aware, one of the latest trends was to eat everything raw, or, as the advocates preached via glossy instagram snaps: 'as nature intended it'. So obviously, and fairly self-consciously, I gave it a go.

Here is the recipe for a raw pad thai vegetable salad that was actually delicious. Honest.

p.s. I don't own a spiraliser, for some reason I'll buy aloe vera but not utensils - so just use a peeler/chop finely and keep going at it, you'll feel like you've earned it more that way.

Ingredients:

- 1 courgette, spiralised/peeled/julienned (you just want thin strips of it)
- 1/2 a red cabbage, thinly sliced
- 1 red pepper, thinly sliced
- 1 carrot peeled/thinly sliced
- 200g peeled broad beans
- handful of sesame seeds

For the sauce:

- 1 tbsp peanut butter
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon grated ginger
- 1 thinly sliced garlic clove

All you do is: in a large bowl mix together all the prepped veg, in another mix together the sauce, pour over, and scatter with sesame seeds.

It's super yum, healthy and pretty filling. Although I have an insatiable appetite and so had mine with some homemade pitta and aubergine dip on the side. No-one likes to be hungry.

Enjoy!

- J