A brand new find for me today! This brand appears to be a local brand, based in St Albans in Hertfordshire, and it was their St Albans shop that we visited. From looking on their website, they appear to have started as a wedding and catering brand before opening their store in St Albans. They had options clearly labelled as vegan when we walked past, and you know I can’t say no to a new vegan sweet treat. Truly think I must have been a humming bird in my before life…
I cannot remember the last time I had a waffle. Despite how popular waffles are, it seems very few places actually offer a vegan option, which is actually pretty poor. The staff member I spoke with (who I believe may be the founder) said she could make us a batch of vegan batter in a few minutes and she truly did make it in a few minutes. I decided the try the namesake waffle wand, although they did also offer poffertjes, which are the tiny Dutch pancakes, as well as Stroop waffles. All looked very tasty though so may be worth another visit to try the others.
I went with a make your own waffle, although they did have set menu items if you didn’t want to choose your toppings. There was a pretty large selection of flavours, with at least half of them being vegan friendly, which was very impressive to see! The toppings are all unlimited too if you go for a make your own, and they were very generous with the toppings. I went with dark chocolate sauce, freeze dried raspberries, sprinkles (for some colour of course), biscoff crumbs, Oreo crumbs and then a drizzle of melted Biscoff. I think any more than that and it would have become far too messy to eat, as I very nearly found out. Now for me, the dark chocolate was a bit too dark and so was very bitter. Luckily Biscoff is a very overpowering flavour so it was hard to notice the chocolate through everything else, but with that many toppings it was definitely quite a messy eat. The waffle itself was crispy and fluffy, but again the actual flavour of the waffle was lost under all of the toppings. I believe they use just a basic plain waffle mixture, so I expect the majority of the flavour comes from the actual toppings.
Now I have to admit that I don’t really think I am the target demographic for this place. The waffles are made to be very aesthetic, and the whole brand seems to be very much image focused. The photos I have seen on their website are gorgeous and the shop also reflects this by having a very aesthetic design. It is the perfect place to go if you want a sweet treat but also want to post very pretty food pictures online, and the whole brand does absolutely cater to this. At one point I think I was one of the oldest people in the shop by at least 10 years, with the vast majority of the clientele being teenagers who were all busy taking very good pictures of their very pretty food. I don’t say this as a bad thing – I love pretty pictures of food as much as the next person and fully appreciate how important it is for a brand to have a very strong and very recognisable online presence. I mainly raise it because I sometimes feel that these types of brands that are very aesthetic sometimes can drop the ball a little bit when they focus on how the food looks more than how it tastes. Now the waffle wand was tasty, but on its own as a food product, I don’t think it was anything overly special.
The waffle wand cost £7, which may be a little expensive, but St Albans is quite an affluent area so £7 is very much average for any sort of food around the area. St Albans has a lot of independent stores and coffee shops, all of which are quite expensive, so in comparison to the local market, £7 is keeping in line with that. For me, St Albans is a bit of a journey (by train it is about 10 minutes, but by car it is about 30 minutes) and whilst I do think St Albans is a beautiful city to visit, I don’t think I would go out of my way just to visit this place. As I say the waffle was very tasty, and it did look very pretty, and I also think that the brand itself is very much ahead of the curve by picking to specialise in a food that you rarely see available for vegans. Whilst vegan waffles are not their main selling point, I still very much appreciate a small brand catering for us when there are so many big name dessert place and restaurants that still don’t offer this.
Taylor Talks Vegan 