Life's Sweet @ Sweet Beat

If you live in Sligo you may know that an exciting new café has entered the scene. Sweet Beat is a vegan café serving healthy, fresh food. It's refreshing to see something like this in Sligo - although there isn't a massive vegan crowd in Sligo the café thrives and already has quite the following. I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian myself so from this review you'll see you don't need to be to enjoy what Sweet Beat has to offer.

I was greeted by Carolanne, the owner of Sweet Beat, and her sister Denise who was more than happy to show me around and explain the menu. If you frequent Strandhill People's Market you may know Carolanne under her pseudonym Green Warrior.

After a quick tour of the café and a study of the menu it wasn't hard to decide what I wanted to get. I did plan to get one of the super salads as the weather has been nice lately but when I went in yesterday it was a dull day so I went for the vegan lasagne, their Daily Warmer. They also do brunch - avocado toast (which has caused quite the stir, I hear), hummus toast and their own homemade beans on toast. I treated mum to lunch and she chose the hummus toast which she enjoyed but said it was a little too spicy for her taste, which I did agree with. 

As well as all those yummy offerings they also serve raw vegan brownies, chocolate and homemade smoothies and juices. I went for a Rocket Cow smoothie (I assume this is a play on 'raw cacao' - I like it!) made with almond milk, nut butter, banana and cacao powder. 

The service was very quick considering it was the lunchtime rush and they were rushed off their feet. Mine looked and smelled great so after taking a few snaps I dug in. I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't sure how a vegan lasagne was gonna work but it was delicious - so full of flavour. It did taste like a normal lasagne but 'cleaner' and obviously without the mince. It was served with 2 super salads - chickpea and green bean salad and carrot salad, both yummy.

The Rocket Cow smoothie also didn't disappoint - I make this kind of smoothie quite a lot at home anyway so I knew what to expect. It's like a healthy chocolate-peanut-butter smoothie and it was surprisingly filling. So smooth and creamy considering it's totally dairy free. Among the other smoothie offerings was a turmeric smoothie (not sure how I'd feel about that), iced coffee, wheatgrass shot, ginger shot and a beetroot, sweet potato and ginger juice - as well as the usual tea and coffee. 

I was extremely tempted by the tempting brownies on the counter but I decided to be good and I was extremely full up - my lunch kept me going for the whole day.

You can find Sweet Beat on Bridge Street (where Chapters used to be, sob) or check them out on Facebook here. I give it my (non-vegan) approval!

Thanks a million to Carolanne for inviting me along and for the yummy lunch.