V Rating: VVVVV
Where: 182 King St., Newtown
When: Sun - Thurs 10am - 10.30pm. Fri - Sat 10am - Late.
Tel: (02) 9550 5234
Price: Entree: $5.50 - $9.50. Main: $16.50.

One of the embarrassing things about getting a Google map was that it proved how Eastern Suburbs centric my blog is. The really shameful thing is that I’m sure there are more vegetarian and vegetarian friendly restaurants in Sydney’s West.

So, with the benefit of a public holiday, Andy and I decided to eat somewhere further afield. Unfortunately our plans to eat at Green Gourmet (in either St. Leonards or Newtown) were dashed by the closed sign hanging on the door.

Hungry and down at heel we wandered disconsolately down King Street, only to discover that the strip’s second vegetarian restaurant was doing a roaring trade (again, Inner West, very vegetarian friendly).

Green Palace Thai is located right by Newtown station. The front of the restaurant houses a bain marie with a decent selection of takeaway dishes. The lunch special - two choices with rice for $6 - looked like great value.

We hurriedly took our seat and scanned the menu. As we waited abut half an hour for our food to come we were struck by the amount of people who’d ordered a dish that came served in half a pineapple.


For starters we ordered the mixed entrees. It included the fried mushroom toast, curry puffs, spring rolls and golden parcels.

For mains, we ordered the Pad Prik Heang, a soy-sauce stiry-fry with vegetarian chicken, capsicum, onion, carrot, stir-fried with dried chilli and cashew nuts. We choose this dish because I wanted something with vegetables after a weekend of not-so-healthy eating. I found the soy sauce a bit over-powering and so the dish wasn’t as refreshing as I’d hoped.

We also chose the Hor Mok - a vegetarian seafood steamed curry, with tofu, mushroom, lime leaves, vegetables, coconut milk and fresh herbs. It came in an earthenware bowl served on a bed of banana leaves. The vegetarian seafood was actually fake calamari strips with an eerily similar texture to the real thing. This was an unusual dish which I really enjoyed. However, the richness of the coconut base meant we were unable to finish it.

Green Palace is a Buddhist restaurant, like most vegetarian place in Sydney. However, the fact that it is run by Thai Buddhists, as opposed to the more usual Chinese or Vietnamese Buddhists restaurants, makes Green Palace unique and means that you can find food here that isn’t available elsewhere in Sydney. It was certainly a lovely change to be able to order Thai food without worrying about fish sauce. Also unusually for a Buddhist restaurant, Green Palace is BYO.

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