Vegan Pizza Hut

A couple of weeks ago I learnt from one of my lovely followers that Pizza Hut are now serving vegan cheese for a limited trial run period at certain selected restaurants (*Update - now available in all Pizza Hut restaurants!). I have to say that I was really surprised when I first heard this as I hadn't seen any promotional ads anywhere for it, but maybe that was just me!? Either way there hasn't been much talk about it online from what I have seen so I decided to go and try it out for myself.

After looking on the vegan page of their website I found out that nearly all of the selected restaurants to trial this new vegan option are based in Kent. I thought this was really odd to be honest! I mean why not space the restaurants out a bit or at least pick restaurants in some of the UK's major cities? But no, there's only 5 restaurants where you can try this option and 4 of them are in Kent. Fortunately for me I don't live too far away from Kent and so I decided to head over to Bluewater one day to get myself a pizza lunch and find out what eating vegan pizza at the Hut is like.

We rarely go to Pizza Hut as we have always viewed it as more of a kids restaurant than the kind of place we like to eat out at but we have on occasion enjoyed a take away pizza from there. I happened to visit on a lunch time so it was really busy with families for their famous bargain buffet lunch deal, but going in childless meant we got seated pretty quickly.

I was preparing myself for a lengthy conversation with the waitress about the option of having vegan cheese on my pizza but when I opened the menu I was really pleasantly surprised to see it standing out as a 'Vegan Alternative' and 'New!' at the bottom of the page. I was also really impressed to find the Violife logo and some blurb about ordering vegan and gluten free. As this is only being promoted as trial run I really wasn't expecting it to be on the menu so this definitely made life easier when it came to ordering. I do think having to pay £1 extra for it is a bit cheeky though! 

I decided to create my own pizza and I went for an individual size pan pizza with toppings of sweetcorn, mushrooms, mixed peppers and caramelised onions on a tomato base. Because the restaurant was so busy with the buffet customers I did feel that my order had been forgotten about as my husband had made multiple trips to the buffet before my pizza had even made an appearance. On enquiring about its where about's the waitress was really apologetic and I ended up getting the price of the pizza taken off the bill which I thought was really generous. 

Anyway, when the pizza did finally arrive it looked really delicious and packed with toppings. I actually felt like it had been a long time since I had enjoyed a really deep pan pizza so I was looking forward to diving in and seeing what it tasted like. Again I was pleasantly surprised! The pizza was really good and tasty. The vegan cheese did have a slight after taste about it but aside from that it was a definite hit for me. I've been so used to the likes of Pizza Express and Zizzi for my vegan pizza fix, both of which are excellent options, but this did make a really nice change.  

After reading Pizza Hut's vegan page it was good to see the amount of choice there is in this restaurant but the most amazing piece of information I learnt by far was that their salad bar bacon bits are quite shockingly vegan friendly! They used to be a favourite of mine back in the day so I was really happy to find this out. 

I have to say that lately I'm  feeling so impressed by chain restaurants overall responses to the rise of veganism. It really seems that most of the high street chain restaurants are getting on board to ensure that options are available for vegans too which makes such a refreshing change! It's so nice to go out and to feel that you have options on where to eat opposed to being forced into one or two places. 

This trial run is only on until November 26th so you need to act quite quickly if you want to be in with a chance of trying it before it's presumably removed from the menu. I am guessing that if this trial run goes well then it could be a permanent feature on all of Pizza Hut's menus? If that's the case I'd suggest going along and showing your support if you are within a reasonable distance from any of the selected restaurants. 

What do you think, have you already tried it out? Or will you be making a visit soon!?