Archive for March, 2007
V Rating: Super V Never has one meal been so highly anticipated. The first “serious” meal of our honeymoon, we had planned to eat at Millenium some three or four months ago after learning that it had been named the best vegetarian restaurant in the United States. We had even chosen our hotel based on the fact that the Millenium was housed inside the Hotel California . I can’t remember a meal where the bar had been set so high before we’d even arrived in the country. The Millenium had itself contributed to this sense of high expectation by choosing quite coincidentally the only night that we were in San Francisco to offer its monthly prix fixe degustation “aphrodisiac” themed dinner. And this on the first night of our honeymoon in the United States, no less. Kate looked appropriately glamorous in a sleeveless black silk dress – and I didn’t look too bad myself – as we went downstairs and were seated in the Millenium. The setting was beautiful, a chequered black and white floor, a vintage bar in the centre of the room, and long, hanging lights covered in netting. While there was an option of having wine-matched courses, neither of us felt like drinking a lot, and so we opted for 2oz “tasting” sizes of French and Californian wines to accompany our meal. At about a third the size of a regular glass of wine, this was ideal, and something I wish more restaurants offered. It’s no exaggeration to say that Millenium is the best vegetarian restaurant I’ve ever eaten at, and their aphrodisiac dinner is one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Full stop. The meal began with two appetisers: an oyster mushroom and pink grapefruit ceviche, and an avocado-jicama salad, crisp tortilla wedges, aji chile-green olive vinaigrette, and sea vegetable caviar. Traditionally, ceviche is a Peruvian marinated seafood salad that’s served cold. Millenium’s substitution of oyster mushrooms was a masterstroke, because the texture and absorbency of the mushrooms was a great alternative to seafood. The pink grapefruit was served to the side, and made a refreshing complement to the main salad. The avocado-jicama salad was my favourite dish of the night. The consistency of the avocado was incredibly light, but the dish had a lot of flavour thanks to the chile-green olive vinaigrette which the avocado accentuated. Jicama is a vegetable from South America. In this dish it was cut up into small cubes and mixed in with the avocado. Although it’s a vegetable, it looks opaque, and was quite moist like a melon. It didn’t have a strong taste, but gave the avocado some structure. Most impressive, the avocado was topped with what looked (and tasted) like caviar, but was derived from sea vegetable. The next course was edamame gnocchi with grilled oyster mushrooms, tatsoi, ginger caramelized chippolini onions, sweet miso-Jerusalem artichoke coulis and shiso pesto. The bronzed, ginger onions were lovely mixed in with the dish, and the gnocchi was well matched to a dish that had largely Asian flavours. This was followed by a light, refreshing sorbet of cara cara-coconut to cleanse the palate. We had a choice of mains, including stuffed truffled roulade. This consisted of french lentil and black chanterelle ragu, roasted chesnuts, black truffle butter, smoked pimenton cream, roasted maitake and exotic mushrooms, sauteed broccoli di Cicco with currants and pine nuts and mushroom syrup. This dish was very rich thanks to the truffle and smoked pimenton (ground, smoked chillies) cream, but it was perfect for a cold winter’s night. The other main was berber spiced Chickpea-nettle wot, a Ethiopian Injera crepe, seared brasicas (a cross between cauliflower and brussel sprouts), preserved lemon, almond and mint and beet habanero chutney. A wot is an Ethiopian stew, and it’s traditionally served on the savoury Injera crepe, which has a light, fairly fluffy texture. My favourite parts of this dish were the brasicas, which I hadn’t tried before, and the preserved lemon which is quickly becoming one of my favourite ingredients for the bite it adds to dishes. Dessert was a very light, soft chocolate mousse with cocont vanilla bean cream, wonderfully spicy ginger-chile tuile, and acai-chocolate sauce, and served with love potion #9… One of the things I loved about Millenium is that each dish incorporated ingredients and often techniques I’d hadn’t tried before, like jicama and brasilicas. This was partly due to the availability of ingredients and the influence of Central and South America, which doesn’t often make its way to Australia. But it was also a tribute to the daring approach that Millenium takes to its food, and their belief that vegetarian, organic food can also be gourmet and innovative. Right down to the last touches – the friendly, and knowledgeable staff offered us two complimentary glasses of champagne and a final plate of chocolate truffles complete with celebratory candle to blow out to mark our special occasion – the experience was an absolute delight. Not only did Millenium meet the ludicrously high expectations that we set for it, it blew them away. It was an instant Super-V and, more than that, the best top-notch fine dining vegetarian restaurant that we have ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
V Rating: VVVVV A block or so down from the famous cross street where the Summer of Love was said to have begun in 1967, Haight and Ashbury, we came upon the Peace Cafe at the Red Victorian, which identified itself as the international headquarters of a peace-building meeting place movement and offered a variety of unpretentious vegetarian and vegan café meals. After a 14 hour plane flight we were happy to sit down and take the weight off our feet and listen as a piano player in the back of the store tinkled out a few melancholic tunes including David Bowie’s Nature Boy. I ordered the mock chicken enpanada with side salad while Kate ate a savoury crepe. The empanada turned out to be a pastry filled with lightly spiced vegetable and “chicken” filling which was very pleasing. Kate’s crepe also made the grade. Both were tasty meals and just the right size and the staff lived up to the promise of being helpful and positive. KATE’s TWO CENTS: The Peace Cafe is part of the Red Victorian guest house, which prides itself on promoting Peaceful World Travel. Each room in the guest house is individually and brightly decorated according to a theme (for example the ’summer of love’ room). You can choose your own room online, and it’s worth a quick look to marvel at them. Nicest of all, every Sunday morning the Peace Cafe holds ‘breakfast conversations’. Anyone is welcome, and you sit at a table with 4 - 9 people and talk about big issues. A suggested topic card is on each table, but you’re welcome to suggest your own ideas. The purpose is to bring together a diverse group of strangers, including the guests that are staying at the Red Victorian, to talk about issues that matter. How neat! This week, as you might have gathered, Andy and I got back from a glorious honeymoon that took in San Francisco, New York and Jamaica. Following our wedding and Sunday yum cha (thanks so much to AC and Marie for reviewing them respectively), you might have thought food would be last thing on our minds. You’d be wrong! Throughout our honeymoon we made a concerted effort to try great vegetarian food, especially if the ingredients or techniques were hard to come by in Australia. Food even dictated our choice of destination. We spent a day in San Francisco so we could eat at the best vegetarian restaurant in the US, Millenium, and chose Jamaica over all other Caribbean islands because the local rastafarian food, Ital, is vegetarian. (Yes, it’s true, we’re slaves to our stomach and vegetarian ideals. I guess that’s why we’re so well suited). One of the reasons I love travel is that it exposes you to ideas and experiences that you don’t encounter in everyday life. This was absolutely true of our trip, and the food we ate. The most exciting discovery for me was vegetarian and vegan restaurants in New York and San Francisco that are making innovative, gourmet food. This approach successfully fuses techniques and ingredients from different cultures in each dish, much like “Modern Australian”, and is different to anything I’ve tried in Australia. It avoids the traps of serving individual vegetarian dishes from different countries all over the world, which can create an in-cohesive, patchwork menu, or offering over-complex dishes that unfortunately fit critics’ stereotypes of ‘hippie rabbit food’. The best examples of this were Gobo in New York, and Millenium in San Francisco. But the discovery didn’t end there. In the US we ate at a vegan Korean restaurant (an amazing concept given we usually avoid Korean restaurants like the plague because they are mega meaty), and tried “raw food”. This is a movement which believes that important enzymes, vitamins and food are destroyed if food is heated above a certain temperature. Food isn’t necessarily served completely raw, but it’s never heated above a low temperature. We also discovered some nifty tricks, like the US habit of calling gluten by the much more appetising name “seitan” and never mock chicken, beef, duck etc. As Andy pointed out, this means you don’t compare it against the meat that it’s supposedly imitating, and you also don’t feel like you’re eating a replacement for a product that you’ve deliberately chosen to avoid. Jamaica also offered some unique and eye-opening food experiences. We explored Ital food, which comes from the word vital, and is eaten by rastafarians. Ital food is very healthy and contains no meat, and generally no seafood. We also tried ackee for the first time, an amazing fruit that’s eaten as if it’s a vegetable, and has been adopted as the national breakfast of Jamaicans. In our two weeks, we had barely any bad food experiences. We both agree that Millenium and Candle 79 were highlights. I also loved Gobo and Caravan of Dreams in New York while Andy was impressed by Hangawai, and fascinated by our raw food experience at Pure Food and Wine. We didn’t blog about our fabulous experiences at the time, seeing as how we were on our honeymoon and all, but we kept a diary and took some photos (except during the first week). Over the coming days I’m going to post about the different places that we visited. As there were a lot, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way and start from the beginning, with a charming little cafe in San Fran’s famed Haight Ashbury district… V-Rating: VVVV It is my pleasure and honour to have the role of presenting a ‘review’ of the wedding of Kate and Andy. Having been tasked with this role some weeks in advance of the wedding, I was forewarned and forearmed. I would do a stellar job, I had decided! What better occasion to make my first foray into the exciting world of food photography! I would make this the first post in which I would include photos of the food I was reviewing, like Kate does. So I took my camera, and took numerous pictures of each entrée, main and dessert. (I admit to forgetting to photograph the side dishes.) Unfortunately (and after such a build up there had to be an “unfortunately”) I am a luddite and still very much a WordPress novice. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the photos to work: they either appeared so massive that you could not see the whole image on the screen at once, or so small as to require the viewer to squint and use a magnifiying glass. So you’ll just have to be satisfied by my descriptions. (Unless and until I email Kate the photos I took…) This failed experiment in food photography in part explains the more-than-three-week delay in getting this review on the site, so that now Kate and Andy have both been on their honeymoon, returned, and been back at work for a week in the time it has taken me to post this review. That delay is also partly explained by my tendency, as Kate would no doubt be aware, to leave half-written reviews in the draft section of the admin part of this blog for weeks on end… (Sorry Kate and Andy! Better late than never!!) And so it was that, after having witnessed a beautiful ceremony on the balcony of Ravesi’s, overlooking a sun-drenched Bondi Beach, after having taken the opportunity to catch up with several mutual friends I share with Kate and Andy, after having made cooing noises over some truly adorable small children, and after having had a couple of glasses of champagne (as one does at a wedding), I sat at my table with my friends around the beautiful floral arrangement (by Andy, I understand) in a glass vase (by Ikea, I understand) and examined the menu. As my friend the lovely Jess and I sat salivating over the delicious sounding menu, we simply couldn’t make our mind up over which of the entrées sounded the more delicious: the fresh figs with goat’s cheese, walnuts and balsamic glaze, or the red peppers stuffed with feta cheese and herbs, with rocket and parmesan salad. I don’t know which of us it was that suggested that, rather than deciding between the two of us who would have which dish, we should “go halves” in both (and likewise for mains and dessert), but I’d like to claim the credit for it because it was an excellent idea.
Embarrassing confession of a sometimes food blogger: I have never eaten a fresh (raw) fig before. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect: I love the dried varieties, and fig jam, but raw figs are a curious fruit when you’re not familiar with them. They kind of look like they should be cooked. I mean, I did know they can be eaten raw - I wasn’t that I was thinking “you can’t eat raw figs!”. (In fact what I was thinking of was the scene in which Halle Berry rather unattractively spits part of a fig into Pierce Brosnan’s mouth in the stupidest James Bond movie ever.) Now, I am glad to say that thought is banished from my mind. The figs were simply delicious. Mouth-watering is a term that is overused, not to mention slightly gross, but the fig, cheese and walnut combination was truly enough to get your salivary glands flowing.
The stuffed peppers were gorgeous: the tartness of the peppers was set off by the feta and the peppery rocket. They reminded me of the stuffed peppers I buy at the deli, and to which I have to confess an (expensive) addiction. But these ones were so much better: not least because of the parmesan, which added a bite to the combination of flavours and gave some real tang to this dish. Why have just one type of cheese when you can have two, I say?
For main, the two options were pumpkin, pistachio and ricotta ravioli served in a roasted butter squash pumpkin, or roasted vegetable lasagne layered with sweet peppers, eggplant and spinach. I am not an exceptionally attentive reader, especially at a wedding where there are people to talk to and wine to drink, so even having read the menu I still managed to be surprised when the pumpkin-filled ravioli came out served in a little pumpkin. I have to take Ravesi’s to task here: I believe it was actually a golden nugget pumpkin, not a butter squash pumpkin. Tsk tsk! (I am probably showing my lack of pumpkin expertise here: feel free to tell me in the comments if those two types of pumpkin are in fact one and the same, and I will eat humble (pumpkin) pie.) I must confess to loving the idea of pumpkin containing ravioli containing pumpkin. But why stop there? The golden nugget pumpkin could have been wrapped in a mammoth ravioli pasta shell, which could then have been served inside a much bigger pumpkin. Then you could have pumpkin containing ravioli containing pumpkin containing ravioli containing pumpkin. After all, Andy and Kate have demonstrated a fondness for stuffing big pumpkins! But enough self-referential humour. The pasta was delectable, and the cooked pumpkin with it was a nice touch (given that the filling of ravioli can so often be disappointingly small, it was nice to be able to add to the pumpkin filling with some extra pumpkin).
Sadly I didn’t get to try much of the roasted vegetable lasagne. Jess had by this stage disappeared to talk to some other people, and didn’t realise her dinner was waiting for her and getting cold. Tempted though I was just to tuck in and eat half her main course (as per our arrangement), I thought I should probably leave it untouched for when she returned to the table. And by the time she did return I had devoured most of my own dish, leaving me feel like I couldn’t very well scoff down a good part of hers too. Still, from what I did taste, it was a very nice lasagne. But as good as the mains were, I cannot review this wedding without mentioning the side dishes. More specifically, the mashed potato. I don’t know if Kate and Andy necessarily want their wedding to be strongly associated with mashed spuds, but this mash was simply the best mashed potato that I have ever tasted. Seriously. Previously whenever I have seen mashed potato available on a menu as a side I have thought to myself, why would you get mash when you can have wedges/fries/some other deep-fried potato product. But now I stand corrected: mashed potato can make a meal. If you think I am gushing or being facetious (moi?), then I assure you I am not. And I certainly don’t mean to take away from my praise of the other menu items (did I mention that the figs were mouth-watering?). I simply did not know before how tasty, morish and divine mashed potato can be. Thank you, Ravesi’s, for showing me the error of my ways. Desserts were a green tea crème brûlée with apple sorbet and caramelised pineapple, or a chocolate and macadamia pound(ster) cake with cinnamon mascarpone and coffee cardamom ice cream. Faced with these two options, I didn’t know which I would prefer. But by this stage of the evening most people were full, not to mention a little tipsy, and also were occupied by talking to other guests at other tables. So I was able to help myself to both! The crème brûlée really was green: a little disconcerting at first, but lovely-tasting and perfect with the apple sorbet. I must confess I didn’t notice the caramelised pineapple: perhaps I didn’t get that far (I too was feeling quite full by this point). What I ate of the pound cake was soft, crumbly and scrumptious. Unfortunately I didn’t get all the way through that dessert either: I think I dashed off to boogie along to “Drop It Like It’s Hot”. (Yo.) All in all, it was a refreshing change to have a set menu event at which I could eat everything on the menu. Yay for vegetarian weddings! I’m also informed by Jackie that those with special dietary requirements were very well taken care of. But more than that, the food was universally delicious. So kudos to the happy couple for organising, and to Ravesi’s for delivering the goods! My thanks to Kate and Andy for having me at their delightful wedding, and for asking me to review this event (did I do ok?!), and my congratulations and best wishes to them. - AC (I see that I’ve just been pipped at the post by the reviewer of the Bodhi yum cha brunch! Rats! Not that it’s a race or anything…)
V-Rating: super V The experience of eating out is never just about the food- a range of factors influence the pleasure of the whole experience and subsequently, the enjoyment of the food itself. So it was following the excitement-fuelled pre-wedding BBQ and the wedding banquet feasted upon by a room filled with guests riding a wave of celebratory joy, that the (slightly less populated) wedding party floated for a last hurrah and Sunday brunch yum cha at Bodhi’s Restaurant and Bar. We were a little weary but basking in the glow and warmth of the post-wedding delirium. For Bodhi’s this meant a large party of agreeable guests, whose first consideration with every mouthful was not to debate whether this restaurant was indeed the Best Vegetarian Yum Cha in Sydney (well, at least in the 15 kilometre radius of the CBD), but simply to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. Bodhi’s is nestled between a pool and a cathedral in Cook & Phillip Park. In the middle of summer, Bodhi’s was outside dining only*. A large courtyard area has tables laid out under big umbrellas that proved to be excellent shelter (for nearly all of us) from both the sun and the brief shower that passed through while we were dining. Dining outside at Bodhi’s offers a view further down the hill and out to the gardens when (if?) you manage to lift your head to pause between mouthfuls. The table and seating is basic: square-seated wooden stools that fit into the long, low wooden-slatted tables that dominate the eating area (seating twelve). There are some potted miniature bushes between some of the side tables (for smaller two-to-four person parties) and a few large trees offering shade that manage to bring some of the nature of the nearby gardens up to the urban, concrete space we’re occupying. For a group as large as this, yum cha was the perfect solution for the final gathering. Being a post-wedding brunch guests were coming and going over the course of the two or so hours we spent at Bodhi’s, as long return journeys to far-away homes beckoned. While the numbers fluctuated, the food was nothing if not consistent. Although there was a little wait for the onslaught to begin, once the small plates of delicacies began to arrive they continued at a consistent pace for over an hour. So the yum cha experience: basically one of the small army of waiters would be dispatched to approach groups seated along the long tables with plates of savoury fragrant sticky rice in wanton skin (among a million other dishes) and we would say ‘ooh yes please’ and accept a plate to share, followed in quick succession by other dishes. The time it took for each plate to be cleared was the most effective measure of time passing, as the morning became afternoon there was a noticeable shift in pace, and even refusals to the offer of new dishes- as delicious as they looked. The food, on the whole, was excellent. Yum cha is a wonderful way to experience many different dishes and to ensure everyone will find something they really enjoy. A quick survey of fellow diners saw a range of dishes nominated as the most memorable: from vegetable curry puffs to cream corn crispy wanton to steamed BBQ buns to a brown rice & seaweed stuffed fried tofu pocket. In the small white ceramic bowls, eating with disposable wooden chopsticks, we sampled many delights. There were some dishes that were shared rather than single portions on a plate, including stir fried noodles with seasonal vegetables- a delicate, sticky rice noodle and vegetable mix, more noodle than vegetable with a sweet, delicate soy-based sauce. Many dishes were variations on a theme- so, for instance, there were steamed lotus seed buns and steamed mung bean buns and steamed peanut buns. There were fried wantons with all sorts of fillings. There was gow (a tightly wrapped, rice paper/noodle parcel presented in a bamboo steaming dish) of many varieties including an enoki & field mushroom gow that offered a burst of the pungent smell and flavour of rich mushroom. The fresh rice noodle folds with mixed vegetables were a hit- while the rice was the usual slippery test for the chop-stick-challenged it was a rewarding mouthful of vegetables and what seemed to be egg wrapped into the long rectangular parcels, with a burst of fresh coriander to make it a much cleaner taste sensation. One of our diners was limited to foods that met her current health-related diet restrictions (not particularly yum cha friendly) but bent the rules just a little to sample the satay salad of fresh spouts, thai mint and basil in a (fried) tofu pocket, with the satay dribbled across the top. These were a fresh and crispy mouthful- and worth bending the rules for! The blanched fresh Chinese green kale was also a hit- the simplicity of steamed greens is always cleansing when eating Chines foods that include lots of glutinous rice dishes accompanied by rich sauces (although, of course, a special sauce did accompany the kale for those who wanted to drizzle it across their serving). A big hit was the early arrival of bowls of fresh fruits- mainly melon fruit (watermelon, honey dew and cantaloupe) with some green grapes- that also allowed for some fresh, clean flavours. After a brief Sydney downpour the day become decidedly more humid and fresh fruit was more than welcome and continued to be available throughout the meal. While the entrée and main course dishes are barely distinguishable when dining yum cha-style, the gear shift when desserts begin to arrive is noticeable. This is partly due to dessert-lovers beginning to groan and wish aloud that they had saved more room for dessert and also because Chinese-style desserts are so eye-catching, they look so interesting- the agar jellies, the chilled fruit (mango, lychee) puddings, the crispy coconut balls. A good friend recommended some special white coconut balls covered in desiccated coconut filled with crushed peanuts, palm sugar, salt and a few other specialities. She had been addicted to something very similar during her time in Cambodia and despite being a long way from Phnom Penh was very pleased with the Bodhi’s version. The groom himself sampled the coconut milk agar jelly- looking stunning, with the clear agar agar jelly on the bottom and a thick white jelly on top- his pleasure was evident in the way it quickly disappeared from the plate. Like all good things, however, the yum cha and the wedding celebrations had to come to an end. Once our dearest friends and the wedding couple had left, our appetites also disappeared. Bodhi’s served quite a feast that was clearly enjoyed by all present. There were a few hiccups along the way- there was difficulty in accessing water to drink and eventually it came out in plastic water bottles where large jugs of iced tap water would have sufficed. In fact drinks, on the whole, were a little slow to arrive. It seemed the well-oiled yum cha machine can accommodate special requests but not always expediently. However, such issues are not major criticisms. The food itself was fresh and delicious and enjoyed greatly by all- not only because we were all so happy to be there. A veritable vegetarian feast. *There were no tables to be seen inside, and the space inside seemed much smaller than the front courtyard, however I assume that during winter the focus no doubt shifts to indoor dining. Andy and got back from our honeymoon in New York and Jamaica this week. We had an amazing time - it’s worth getting married just for the holiday - and sampled some great vegetarian food which I’ll post about shortly. One of the nice parts about returning was that I had a lovely Valentine’s Card waiting for me from Padmaja in the UK, who writes the Spicy Andhra blog. The card was part of the Blogging Postcards Around the World event, which was organised by Meeta from What’s For Lunch Honey?
I was excited to get the card, and not just because it was the only one I received. You see, I love Indian food and I’ve been hoping to discover some of the great Indian food bloggers this year. Padmaja’s blog is called Spicy Andhra because some of the food she writes about comes from the state of Andhra Pradesh (reputedly the home of the spiciest food in India!) Even though Spicy Andhra is not a vegetarian blog, there are plenty of great vegetarian recipes and ike me, Padmaja is a big potato and eggplant fan. Thanks Padmaja for the Valentine’s Card, and thanks to Meeta for organising the event. |
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