Prickly Pear on Mansfield Road is a new Vegan cafe that has recently opened up in Nottingham. They serve up breakfast between 9.30 and 12 with Vegan Bacon Cobs, and a cooked breakfast amongst the options alongside smoothies and healthy juice drinks.

Then between 12 and 5.30 they switch to lunch with vegan versions of burgers, chicken sandwiches, grilled cheese, mac n cheese and chilli tacos on offer and more.

I had seen that they were open and had looked at a few pictures of the food on Instagram, it all looked pretty good so I headed over last weekend to check them out

The lunchtime menu was looking pretty good with quite a few options that I fancied trying out. Even though I had already decided that I wanted to try the chilli tacos / Zero chill tacos part of me was just wanting to get the Dr Greenthumb which is the Homemade Hemp Burger. That is because I always seem to get a burger, so I stayed strong and went for something different this time.

Zero Chill Tacos

The Zero Chill Tacos for £7 were described as “Homemade Bean Chilli in either soft or hard shell tacos with Frijoles, Fresh Guac, mild homemade salsa, lettuce, nacho cheese style sauce and a sprinkle of coriander”

Something that they didn’t mention was that each Taco had a whole birds-eye fresh chilli sitting in amongst it all , daring one to take a bite, or in my case just waiting to be fished out and set to one side. Looking back and thinking about it now I should have taken all three home to chop up and cook something with. I do wonder how many people actually do eat them though.

I was quite taken with these tacos, just forget whether or not they are Vegan or not, to be fair a chilli made of beans and vegetables is always a winner in my mind, it just so happens that often they are also vegetarian and vegan too.

They had put together a nice combination of ingredients, were really good, tasty and had lots of great flavours and texture. I could have easily eaten a bowlful of the chilli just on its own. Size wise I thought that this was pretty good value as well.

Kids Mac and Cheese

The full size Mac n Cheese is described as ‘Macaroni pasta in a thick cashew cheese sauce topped with melted cheese and sriracha drizzle‘. I didn’t think that I could eat a whole portion as well as my tacos so I asked if they did a smaller sized one.

I was offered the children’s version which I think was a lot more basic, no hot sauce, and I think really was just the pasta in a cheese sauce.

I looked on instagram afterwards and saw the full size version and you could see that it was topped with melted cheese and had a thick creamy sauce so I think I should get the adult portion next time.

I am pretty sure I could have eaten both anyway 🙂

Breakfast Menu

I quite fancy popping back in to the Prickly Pear to check out the breakfast menu as I am always up for a bit of breakfast action and I like a decent plateful. I reckon that the Tofu Scramble would be my plate of choice.

“Lightly spiced tofu scramble with onion and garlic, served with thick toast, sausages, avocado, sunflower seeds and a splash of sriracha” for £6..50 sounds like a fair amount of stuff to fill me up

If I was just passing by though on a bimble I might be tempted to just pick up one of their breakfast cobs for £3 which is a ‘bacon’ and ‘sausage’ cob with BBQ sauce. I saw a picture on their instagram and it looked quite good and like a well sized cob.

Sunshine Smoothie

I pretended to be healthy by ordering one of the Smoothies, opting for one called Sunshine. This was a mixture of pineapple, mango, and orange. It was quite nice, a bit thick but I slurped it all down, to be honest I was being a bit dim and forgot that smoothies are not just juice! DOH!

Afterwards I figured I would have been better off with one of their ‘Juices’. The one I would have picked out purely based on the name was the Jeremy Corbyn which was a mix of ‘beetroot, carrot, pepper, broccoli, lemon and orange’ which does sound a bit weird but hey I would give it a whirl!

Prickly Pear is located at 127 Mansfield Road right next to the bus stop at Frogmore Street where the 68, 69, 70, and 71 buses stop. It is also opposite Mama’s Inn Guest House, and next to Sarangbang Korean Cafe.

You can also see what they are up to on their Instagram Feed which was where I was looking to check the food out before I came over to eat.