Resto no.96 : The Wala Room, Torremolinos

Funny name for a restaurant. Apparently the owner kept the name of the previous restaurant. By the way, this is a vegan outlet!! My first time ever eating proper vegan food so I was very excited and looking forward to this excursion. There is a really nice beach nearby too, and because the location of this resto is on the eastern edge of Torremolinos, its not so touristy, it's pretty Spanish. Plenty of great chiringuitos if you don't fancy trying vegan food.

We went to the restaurant then to the beach for a few hours and had a lovely day.

So, onto the proper review...

We had reserved a table as I had no idea if it was going to be busy or not and it was a weekend too! But I think we were only the second table to arrive and we had a nice one in the corner. The waiter who might also be the owner was very friendly and explained all the dishes on the menu in the right amount of detail. To start with we shared Vegan Spring Rolls (Vegetables wrapped in cabbage leaf). I was totally blown away! I like spring rolls but the traditional ones basically make me fat, so give me these any day! I have to say that the preparation and presentation of the dishes gets top marks at Wala Room 5/5. We also shared for a starter Shitake and mango tartar. Check the picture. It kind of fell apart a bit easily, but I can't argue with the taste. 5/5 for the starters. The main courses were slightly disappointing overall, especially as my expectations had been raised sky high from the starters. My partner had Spirali Carbonara, which looks exactly like Spaghetti Carbonara, except it is made with zucchini (courgette) strips instead of pasta. I thought it tasted pretty good, but she wasn't overly impressed. The biggest disappointment was my burger. The reviews that I had read were all going on about the burgers, so I had the classic veggie burger. I think it is made with lentils, which don't really taste anything like beef. I found it a bit dry and not to my taste at all. This brings me to my main problem with veggie/vegan food at all. Why do they really have to name it and make it look like non-vegan food? Like veggie burgers, veggie sausages, vegan bacon (!) and vegan spaghetti. I believe they have banned the use of these descriptions in France as they are misleading.

Why make fake-meat at all? They are basically admitting that meat tastes great and we all want meat and so they have to make things look like meat. Or pasta. Why not come up with some new names and new shapes? Everything seems to be named after a non-vegan thing, as if to try to trick your mind that you are eating non-vegan food. Overall my experience of a vegan restaurant was a big positive and I was surprised how fresh and tasty most of it was. I would probably eat in the Wala Room again (just not have the burger). I really like the area it is in for a day out in the summer. Overall food 4/5 . Service 4/5.