Archive for April, 2006
V-Rating: Super V Mother Chu’s was the first vegetarian restaurant I tried in Sydney and like any first love it still holds a very special place in my heart. Mother Chu’s is conveniently located on Pitt Street parallel with the Metro or George Street cinemas. It makes a great choice for a fast and delicious meal before a gig or a movie, and last week I successfully lured a non-veggie friend there before seeing V for Vendetta. We ordered the eggplant and tofu with miso sauce, and noodles with gluten and vegetables. The food was so good that we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave any behind. This meant we missed the first 15 minutes of the movie (but who needs establishment anyway.) The Mother Chu’s menu is extensive, drawing on Taiwanese, Chinese and Japanese influences. I always plan to order something new, but end up seduced by the beautifully soft tofu and eggplant in miso sauce. Other favourite dishes are the honey pumpkin and soy bean rolls. However, I’ve eaten at Mother Chu’s many times and have never been disappointed. Mother Chu’s is founded on a Buddhist philosophy so no alcohol is allowed. However, they do serve non-alcoholic wines and beer (it’s like light beer … kind of.) Some might see this as a downside, but I love being able to fearlessly order my glass of sparkling grape juice. Mother Chu’s is a modest venue with chairs and tables that wouldn’t be out of place in a cafeteria. However, the restaurant has a warm and inviting atmosphere with friendly service. The eponymous Mother Chu can usually be seen sitting at the restaurant’s back table, keeping an eye on everything (including the occasional cute grandchild) while her daughter takes charge of the restaurant’s smooth running. Mother Chu’s was love at first bite for me and remains one of my favourite restaurants in Sydney. Something I’ve noticed since starting this blog: my capacity to eat outpaces my ability to write. Obviously there’s a correlation. The more lunchtimes and nights I spend eating out, the less time I have to go online. However, posting in ad hoc, slightly delayed fashion means the posts aren’t reflecting what I’m doing in any kind of systematic way. Recently I asked some friends to give me some feedback on this blog. A few people said they wanted to see more personality, and I guess, to feel that the blog is telling a story. I agree. You may see a bunch of posts appear over the next few days. That’s because I’m trying to clear the decks and get all the reviews up the site in a semi-orderly fashion. From now on, I’ll try and put my posts up in a chronological order and and do it shortly after I’ve eaten out. Let’s see how long the resolution lasts!
V-Rating: VV The eastern suburbs in Sydney is synonymous with the rich and beautiful, and all the trappings that accompany them. However, a visit to the Anzac Parade restaurant strip in Kingsford provides a healthy reminder that there is another very diverse and interesting side to the area. I’m a fan of the Anzac Parade restaurants. There’s a great range of Asian restaurants to choose from, including Indonesian, Malaysian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. With the University of New South Wales just around the corner, the emphasis is on cheap and cheerful food pitched to a student budget and milieu.
Last Sunday Andy and I thought we’d make the most of our rental car and try out the delights of Anzac Parade. We settled on Ratu Sari, an Indonesian restaurant that is relatively ‘up market’ by comparison to its neighbours. We were lured to Ratu Sari by the long list of vegetable dishes on the menu. It was only when we got inside that we realised ‘vegetable’ was not the same as ‘vegetarian’. Most dishes contained shrimp paste, prawn crackers or occasionally chicken. While this was a bit disappointing given our initial high hopes, there were still a few wholly vegetarian offerings and full marks to Ratu Sari for being clear about their contents of their vegetable dishes. For entree we tried the deep fried cauliflower and krupuk singkong (deep fried cassave chips - always a favourite with Andy). For mains we shared the sayur lodeh (a vegetable curry in a coconut milk base) and the vegetarian cap cai. The last dish was a recommendation of the waiter after we explained that we were vegetarian and keen on a dish without seafood or meat products. The mains were both surprisingly good using authentic Indonesian ingredients. The vegetable curry was our favourite, and used choko, as well as more conventional vegetables. The sizzling, fresh cap cai was so big that as much as we wanted to, we couldn’t finish it.
V-Rating: V-ware Back in the day when I was a (nearly) Balmain local, pubs in Balmain were generally a little dirtier, grungier and less reliant on stainless steel as a design feature. Basically, they had atmosphere. However, The Monkey Bar was always a shinier, more polished location in which to eat and drink — and not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it’s nice to go somewhere with floors that don’t stick to your shoes. Recently I was visiting a friend in Balmain and he suggested we pop into The Monkey Bar for a spot of Sunday lunch from the bar menu. Unfortunately, I was less than impressed with the vegetarian options. My companions quickly selected what turned out to be very nice steaks and chicken burgers while I was left floundering. My choices seemed to be limited to bruschetta, chips or wedges. Luckily, there was an additional specials menu at the bar that offered a single veggie breakfast option: a leek and mushroom omelette, which was lovely. Confusingly, the bar menu offered on The Monkey Bar’s website contains a number of pub-standard veggie meals that were nowhere to be seen the day I was there. So, great for a drink, great for a steak, but not so great for vegetarians who desire more than deep fried potato. Reviewed 2 April 2006. SDEB.
V-Rating: VVV Gertrude and Alice is my platonic ideal of a bookshop slash cafe. The cafe’s namesakes are Gertrude Stein and Alice. B. Toklas, iconic writers and lovers. Apparently they liked good food and wine in the company of creative types. More power to them. Gertrude and Alice is an Inner West refuge amongst the havianas, sunshine and oversized sunglasses of Bondi. Shelves of overcrowded second hand books fill three rooms, and create nooks and crannies to seclude yourself in. Tucked around the bookshelves are chairs, tables and a couch for reading, eating and daydreaming (pretty much my favourite ways to pass the time).
The regular Gertrude and Alice menu doesn’t really feature dinner. For this, you have to check out the specials above the kitchen serving window. Of the ten special dishes, seven were vegetarian. Only one was vegan on paper, but a few more seemed adaptable because the dairy product came as a garnish. There are also hearty, regular salads to choose from which are more than a meal. It was a hard choice, but I went for the Mexican bean soup with corn chips and sour cream. The mixed beans in the soup were fresh, and the soup was only slightly spicy with a tomato base. I liked the corn chips floating in the soup so you could scoop up the larger veggies and eat them with sour cream. That’s neither gross nor impolite when the food comes that way. Gertrude and Alice is BYO. You pay a corkage fee per person, and ask at the kitchen service window for glasses. Mine were mismatched, which suited the general mien. Gertrude and Alice that makes me feel I’ve rediscovered my childhood, accidentally stepping through the pages of a book to an unreal place of libraries, dusty, overflowing bookshelves and wooden step ladders. It’s certainly in a world of its own on Hall Street. Reviewed 5 April 2006. KP.
V-Rating: VVV When I first moved to Bondi Beach there was a dark period where I thought there was no local Indian restaurant. While a life without palak paneer might not seem a high price to pay for a golden surf beach and beautiful sandstone cliffs, there remained a lingering emptiness in my heart (and my stomach) that only a tasty eggplant curry could fill. Then I discovered Bombay to Bondi (formerly Haveli 87) tucked away at the upper end of Hall street and my life in Bondi became complete. Like most Indian restaurants, Bombay to Bondi has a good range of vegetarian dishes, most of which are vegan. All up, there are six veggie main choices. These include a not too creamy palak paneer, an eggplant and chickpea curry, a sweet vegetable curry in an almond yoghurt sauce and dahl. There is also the chef’s special mushroom curry which gets two thumbs up. I last ate there on a Saturday night when most tables in the restaurant were full. As my friend observed, Bombay to Bondi has avoided the Sydney restaurant trick of putting in hardwood floors to amplify the noise and make the restaurant seem full of life and busy. As a consequence, you can eat at Bombay to Bondi on a busy night and still hold a conversation. Bombay to Bondi has its quirks. The decor is an interesting mix of fairy lights, crystal chandeliers and Indian religious iconography, and the landlord will happily regale you with stories about his colourful career. However, this just makes my love it more. It’s also unpretentious, with friendly, helpful staff (sometimes rare qualities in Bondi restaurants). It’s possible you’ll find better Indian food in Sydney. However, if you’re in the Bondi area it’s a great choice for vegetarians and Indian food desperados alike. Reviewed 1 April 2006.
V-Rating: Super V Soul Mama is the vegetarian restaurant which I take all my interstate and international visitors to when they come to Melbourne. It is a consistent and reliable winner with my carnivorous family members who find themselves surprised and delighted by the range of food on offer, the groovy young things who wait at table with headsets and palm pilots and the spectacular views of Port Phillip bay. Even my eldest sister, a diehard meat eater, entered the spirit of the “world peace and don’t eat meat” vibe of the place exuded by the randomly scattered buddha statues and even laughed at some of the famous veggo-quotes on the menu. This is a real triumph for me, after years of missing the mark taking them to cafes up and down the east coast which have done more for the success of late night hotel room service than the reputation of vegetarianism amongst my clan. Soul Mama offers a buffet for which you can choose different sized plates and up to 4 different hot courses or salads. The style of food on the menu ranges from Italian (field mushrooms in a napoli sauce and polenta) to Asian (one of my favourites is the Asian salad, involving beanshoots, cabbage and a nutty sauce). The restaurant keeps the costs down because of the buffet arrangement, so a medium plate (3 different dishes) is a low $14. The food is not necessarily the best vegetarian fare you will ever eat, but it is definitely tasty and there is enough variety to suit everyone in your group. It is a crowd pleaser for you and your non-veggo guests. Rating : Super V |
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