Archive for November, 2006ARRRRGH! I’ve just spent the last hour Last year we had a similar group, and were really disappointed when the restaurant we went to only offered one vegetarian choice, which was potato gnocchi in a heavy cream sauce. So not what women want on a hot Sydney afternoon in December! We’ve finally settled on The Wharf Restaurant at the Sydney Theatre Company. It has a couple of veggie mains, plus veggie dishes, not to mention a great location and view. Will let you know what it was like shortly. In the meantime, here are some suggestions for places that will not leave the vegetarian in your team wanting. Feel free to leave more tips. Just make sure you get in early - we were too late for a Friday lunch with a largish group for the first three places in the posh choices list. Posh choices Glass brasserie (this is where I wanted to go) If you’re having a Christmas dinner, you could also try Oh Calcutta! or Libertine. Affordable choices Red Lantern (haven’t been here but has an extensive list of veggie options) Ok, so it’s week two / three of the vegie delights challenge and I’m already up against it. We devoured the vegie delights sausages I bought in the first week, but unfortunately threw out the packet so that doesn’t count. I still haven’t used the soy mince, but found a recipe for san choy bow on their website so will give that a whirl this week. This week I bought some of their smoked soy fritz product, and polished off about half of it this afternoon. It’s weird, but now that I’m vegetarian the fake meat products I like the best are the ones that imitate the lowest grade type of meat. Perhaps that’s because there isn’t much difference between the real and fake thing. Anyway, given I’m struggling at this early point in the competition, I’m not sure that I’ll make it to the end (and can’t really imagine that many other customers would, either). Well, you know, woman’s prerogative and all that, I’ve decided to change a couple of ratings based on repeat visits. First, Purple Lotus is moving into the coveted Super V category. The upgrade comes because we tried their yum cha, which was great, and because of their lovely staff and reliable normal menu. Also, I consistently get good, unprompted feedback from other readers about Purple Lotus. Second, Bondi Trattoria is moving up a notch to VVV. I reviewed Bondi Tratt when I was first starting out, and gave them a harsh VV because I didn’t want to award VVV lightly. With ten months of veggie reviewing under my belt, I’ve come to appreciate their four veggie main options, fantastic service, and warm, stylish decor. The breakfast menu is also great (I get cravings for the chilli baked beans on baked polenta). It’s easy to become status obsessed when you’re a blogger. First, there was Tomato’s ranking of Australian food and wine bloggers. Then Ed showed me hot to check out Google’s page ranking of different websites using the Google toolbar. Now, the crew at Australian Blogs has come up with a list of the top Australian blogs. The rankings are based on the number of links to sites registered with Australian Blogs It was awesome to see some of my favourite bloggers, like Trevor Cook (50), Grods (139), crazybrave (101), and morsels and musings (250) feature high up on the list. For the record, Veggie Friendly came in at 285, which seemed pretty fair to me. There was only one catch to the rankings - you needed to be listed with Australian Blogs to qualify. That meant top notch blogs like Grab Your Fork weren’t rated, which is a pretty big oversight when you’re talking about the best, and noisest, Australian blogs.
V Rating: VV Bill Granger is the celebrity chef du jour in Sydney. He writes a weekly column in the Sydney Morning Herald, hosts a cooking show on pay TV, and publishes copious cookbooks filled with impossibly bright, light, airy photos and casually brilliant recipes. Oh, and he runs a few restaurants as well.
So, when a good friend of mine came to Sydney on the weekend I promised to take him to a special lunch spot - bills Surry Hills (formerly bills 2). Unfortunately, we arrived at 11.30am. Lunch didn’t start until 12.00pm. As a line was already starting to form for tables we didn’t like our chances of coming back in half an hour - so we had breakfast instead. I ordered the ricotta hot cakes with banana and honeycomb butter because every review I’ve read about bills make mention of them.
The hotcakes were thick, light and fluffy. The fairly meager slices of banana (bloody cyclone) were tucked cosily underneath the hotcakes. The slices of butter on top of the hot cakes looked surprisingly like slices of banana - making for a not so pleasant first mouthful. The hotcakes were good - don’t get me wrong. But not as good as the reams of glowing reviews suggested. Andy and our friend had the good sense to order sweet corn fritter, with tomato and spinach. On the menu it comes with bacon, but they had it with mushrooms instead.
The truly amazing thing about these babies was the succulent, whole pieces of corn. Even though the cakes were fried, the corn still retained a strong, fresh, sweet taste. And yes, I had food envy the whole meal. The thing about bills was that if it were a cafe I’d wandered into from the street I probably would have thought it was an amazing find. But because Bill Granger has such a mythic status in Sydney, by the time I tried it out it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. The cafe is stylish and funky. The food was clearly made with high quality, fresh ingredients. There are some good vegetarian options on the menu… but maybe next time I’ll wait until 12pm and try lunch.
V Rating: VV Expensive restaurants, in my experience, are unkind to vegetarians. French restaurants are even worse. Hence, I was in a highly dubious frame of mind when I arrived at the expensive, French restaurant Bistro Moncur. In some ways I was right. Bistro Moncur doesn’t offer a lot of choice for vegetarians. However, the exceptional quality of the food, combined with the relaxed, welcoming atmosphere, put me in a forgiving mood. It helped that Bistro Moncur is located inside a There were a decent three vegetarian entrees on the menu (double the usual number you find at these types of places). I chose the vine ripened tomato salad. It was essentially just large, ripe tomato slices in a light dressing. Refreshing, to be sure, but a leetle bit underwhelming for $16.50. The other vegetarian option was a salad of celery, roquefort, radicchio, pears and walnuts. in a walnut oil and coddled egg vinaigrette. The person next to me chose this salad, and it looked far more exciting than my dish. Sigh. Apparently one of Bistro Moncur’s signature dishes is the french onion, blue cheese souffle. I didn’t feel up to ordering this for lunch, especially with a main to come, but this may have a been a fatal mistake on my part because it gets rave reviews on Sydney restaurant sites. This is just one vegetarian choice for main, a seasonal vegetables with a pumpkin and mostarda custard timbale, flageolet beans and lentils in a tomato broth. Each aspect of this dish was fabulous. The custard timable had a soft, delicate, frothy texture that melted in my mouth. The pumpkin and mostarda (an Italian fruit mustard condiment) gave it a predominantly sweet taste with a slight kick. Flageolet beans are large and white with soft texture. They reminded me a cross between canellinni and kidney beans. They combined well with the lentils and the lovely tomato broth. It was clear that chef Damien Pignolet had put this dish together carefully using some more unusual ingredients like mostarda and flagolet beans. While sometimes unsual ingredients feel like they’ve been included solely to add some ‘fashion’ to a dish, in this case the meal had a hearty, down-to-earth feel. My only criticism is that even though the flavours complemented each other, there was no strong relationship between the food, so it felt like a tasting plate rather than a ‘meal’. As a general note of caution about Bistro Moncur, you can’t book and it is popular so get there early or expect a long wait. Although I’d normally only give an expensive restaurant with one vegetarian main a v-ware, because of the three veggie entrees, lovely atmosphere and unusual main dish I’ve awarded Bistro Moncur VV A few weeks ago I bought the nondescript looking ‘Vegetarian‘ cook book by Jody Vassallo in the Health for Life series from a suburban newsagency. I know these cook books aren’t all that fashionable, but I instantly liked it because it had a recipe for salt and pepper tofu, some interesting twists on simple recipes, and a focus on healthy eating. I recently tried my first recipe from the book, roast veggies with miso jus. I am a huge fan of roast veggies, particularly potatoes (one reason why I would never survive a no carbs diet). I liked the idea of using miso flavoured jus as a alternative to gravy, and was also excited about finding an excuse to cook with verjuice, which is totally my new favourite ingredient. The recipe 4 medium potatoes, unpeeled, scrubbed, cut into quarters Method 1. Preheat oven to 200 C 2. Put the potatoes, sweet potatoes, capsicum and garlic head into a large mixing bowl. Add the olive oil, rosemary, thyme, sea salt and cracked black pepper. Mix well to coat all the vegetables. Transfer to a large baking tray and bake for 45 minutes. Add the tomatoes and 2 tablespoons of the verjuice to the tray and bake for a further 15 minutes. 3. Put the bok choy in a steamer and cook over a pan of boiling water for two minutes. 4. To make the jus, put the remaining verjuice and palm sugar into a fry pan over medium heat and bring to the boil. Add the stock and boil until reduced by half. Remove from the heat and stir in the miso. 5. Divide the roasted vegetables and steamed bok choy among the plates. Drizzle with the jus and serve immediately. Serves 4. What I actually did So, you know what they say about best laid plans. I reckon that applies doubly in the kitchen. First off, it turned out that 5pm on a weekend night was not a great time to track down white miso. So I substituted normal miso paste. The flavour was interesting, but quite strong and didn’t meld with the verjuice or complement the roast veggies quite as well as I expected. Next time I’d try the white miso or go a bit easier on the miso paste. Also, making roast veggies got me feeling nostalgic, so I couldn’t help but throw in a couple of parsnips and a swede. As we were only two, and the original recipe was for four, things got a little out of hand. So I didn’t add the bok choy. Next time I’ll try to temper my impulse to add in every vegetable I like, and use the steamed bok choy to offset the richer, oily flavour of the roast veggies. I loved the verjuice and can’t believe it’s taken me so long to start using it. It’s made from the juice of young, unfermented grapes, so it has acidity but is much sweeter than lemon juice or vinegar. It made a lovely glaze for the vegetables, and I’m sure it will be great in salad vinegarettes as well. I used the Maggie Beer brand of verjuice. She has plenty of recipes using verjuice on her site. Vegetarians may feel wary about a product that comes from a place called Pheasant Farm; however, I paid a visit to the Maggie Beer farm shop in the Barossa Valley at Easter and was pleasantly surprised at how many of her products, in the shop and on the menu, were vegetarian. Best of all, Maggie Beer was at the shop, running around and getting her hands dirty amongst the busy Easter crowd. What an awesome lady. |
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