The vegan chef Alexis Gauthier is weaning himself off milk: “I drink black coffee, black tea; I don’t eat cereal. When else would you use it?” But at his plant-based restaurant in London, Gauthier Soho, he can’t ignore our craving for the satisfying richness that milk lends to many foods. “Part of my USP is French gastronomy. I get why people expect the classics, without animal fats. We use a variety of mainly nut-based plant milks.”
Clearly, milk is going nowhere, even if the milk we drink is changing. Last year, the research agency Mintel found that almost one-third of Britons drink non-dairy milks. Sales of plant milks at Waitrose rose 18% between 2019 and 2021. Oat milk is the supermarket’s biggest seller, as it is nationally, followed by almond, soya and coconut.
