Farmacy: Not a mean-spirited hippie in sight

You could poke fun at a lot of things in this clean-eating restaurant, says Grace Dent, but the food isn’t one of them
No joss-sticky atmosphere: Farmacy is capacious, spotless, airy and noisy
Grace Dent31 January 2018

Food: 3/5

Ambience: 3/5

In Piccadilly Circus in the mid-1990s, a famished huddle of supermodels — rather hysterically — opened a restaurant. Well, I laughed a lot. Fashion Café required diners to suppose that a pre-show Claudia Schiffer stuffed buffalo wings and milkshakes down her gullet. And Naomi? She couldn’t get enough of battered cod and fudge puddings. In a pre-internet world we were gullible, sure, but not that bloody daft, and in time the Fashion Café folded.

But nowadays all the slim, pretty things are determined to prove that they eat. Not food as such, but borderline edible items like bark, pollen, nightshades and activated sprouts. The new supermodels are winsome, girl-next-door Instagram stars who dedicate their lives to the online ordering of rare seeds and arduous bouts of pre-soaking, milling, grating and steaming.

Due to millions of women now believing that duck confit followed by a Paris-Brest would kill them stone dead, it is shrewd business sense for Camilla Fayed to open a chic, wellness-focused vegan restaurant Farmacy in Westbourne Grove. I tried for a walk-in on a Monday lunchtime and was squeezed into a spot at the bar, hemmed in by gleaming skinned women eating the ‘chef’s clean curry’ or foraging nobly through a huge bowl of leaves. Because that’s all a vegan salad is, really. Rinsed foliage. Nevertheless, Farmacy boasted the busiest start-of-week lunchtime room I’ve seen in London for some time.

Proper lunch: go to Farmacy for a giggle, but the food is the real deal

Of course, there is much comedy mileage in Farmacy. It’s a ‘veggan’ restaurant for the sort of vegans who still eat eggs, selling novelty syringes of life-enhancing potions and ‘earth bowls’ of buckwheat with baba ganoush. It is set in Notting Hill, and owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed’s daughter. It caters to people so removed from average, earthly people with 9-to-5 jobs that it may as well be the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars.

But still I liked it a lot and would definitely return. Farmacy is not, as it may sound, remotely po-faced or preachy. Nor is it joss-sticky or, as these places often are, run at a snail’s pace by mean-spirited hippies. Farmacy is, in fact, capacious, spotless, airy and noisy. It serves espresso martinis and ‘clean cosmos’ as well as smoothies and matcha lattes.

I’m not saying that Farmacy will float your boat if you’re a strict meat, heavy carbs and knickerbocker glory person; but it’s a good place to whisk wellness-fixated dinner companions to without feeling, oneself, that the night will be a pointless waste of lipstick.

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I had a glass of Vouvray Brut served in a chilled coupe and shared a mezze feast plate of well-seasoned, humbly presented sprouted hummus, quinoa tabbouleh, olive tapenade and sweet pickled carrots. We chose the ‘OMG farmaceutical syringe shot’ containing flaxseed oil, cannabis oil and grapefruit to give us beatific calm. It tasted like Satan’s armpit, but I’m pretty sure these things should.

Clearly, a butter-free crumble has limitations, but with a scoop of non-dairy coconut, ahem, ‘nice-cream’, I didn’t feel swindled

My friend’s Farmacy salad was a drab affair of leaves, herbs, goji berries, a rumour of avocado and a drizzle of spirulina dressing. I felt bad for them when my burger arrived. Yes, it was a patty hewn of millet, black bean and mushroom, but it arrived in a wholewheat bun with goji ketchup, garlic aioli and, importantly, chips.

Noticing that I was the only woman in the room drinking alcohol, I bucked convention further by ordering the apple crumble. Clearly, a butter-free crumble has limitations, but with a scoop of non-dairy coconut, ahem, ‘nice-cream’, I didn’t feel swindled. Damn it, Farmacy, I went expecting a giggle. You gave me proper lunch.

Farmacy

1 Mezze feast £13

1 Sweet potato falafels £6

1 Farmacy burger £14

1 Farmacy salad £12

1 Freedom Helles £5

1 Vouvray Brut £6

1 OMG shot £5

1 Apple crumble £8

Total £69

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