Archive for the ‘Vegetarian’ Category
V Rating: VVVVV At a time when vegetarian restaurants like Vegal Kitchen and Celestial Palace are closing down, it’s great to discover a new kid on the block. Thien is a Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant just down the road from @newtown RSL and the Enmore Theatre. Tres convenient! I think its origins are Buddhist, but it allows BYO. I ate there a couple of weeks ago when Andy took part in the 20th anniversary performance of his old gospel choir, Cafe of the Gate of Salvation (COTGOS). Unfortunately we were running late for the performance, so didn’t have time to relax and appreciate Thien. However, I liked what I saw (and ate) and will definitely head back there next time go to see a performance on Enmore Road.
Thien’s menu offers a good choice of food, much of which uses fake meat and (quite imaginative) seafood. There are 12 entrees and 48 mains. We tried the soy prawn rice paper rolls, the tofu lemongrass and a stir-fry. The huge spring rolls were lovely and fresh. The rice paper skin was cool, setting off the fresh herbs in the filling. I haven’t tried fake prawns before, but they added slightly firmer texture to the filling without overpowering the other ingredients.
The tofu lemongrass was spicy and juicy, and gave off a beautiful lemongrass aroma. We chose the stiry-fry to get a dose of green vegetables, and to compensate for the oiliness of the tofu lemongrass dish. As you can see in the photo, the vegetables in the stir-fry were cooked just right, so that they didn’t lose their colour or flavour. We ended up over-ordering (especially seeing as we were in rush) and had to take a couple of rice paper rolls away in a doggie bag. Fortunately, they survived the trip and still tasted good the next day! While we didn’t have time to try them, Thien also seemed to have a delicious range of desserts with some cakes supplied by a local bakery. I gather Thien is only a few months old. The staff were lovely and very eager to assist, despite the small restaurants quickly filling up with walk-ins. While occasionally the staff were a little flustered, I have my fingers crossed that in a couple of months they’ll be accustomed to success and Thien will have a long future. (Just for the record, COTGOS were amazing. I was blown away by the power of the voices, the beautiful arrangements, and the strong sense of love and community emanating from the choir. Happy 20th anniversary!)
V Rating: VVVVV Bamboo cafe in North Bondi makes me think of San Fransciso. It’s something to do with the friendly organic vegetarian cafe, wih yoga retreat sidline, perched on a sharply sloping street vibe.* The range was better than your average cafe - there were some exclusively vegan dishes, and they made an effort to use soy milk. However, I think yum cha makes a better vegan brunch in Sydney.
Yes, that is more than he can manage. The baby spinach leaves came in a walnut oil dressing. So my new favourite ingredient. Overall, the standard of food was good (the olive tapenade was my other highlight) but the organic food made breakfast an expensive affair. I won’t be making the trek to Bamboo every weekend, but a lovely place for a slow, quiet start to your day. *I’ve never been to San Franciso so the comparison could be bollocks.
V Rating: Super V Cabramatta was the location for our excursion today to celebrate my 35th birthday. As the centre of Sydney’s Vietnamese community, Cabramatta offers food and shopping possibilities which are unmatched. The prevailing ethic is one of vibrant entrepeneurship – best summed up by the epithet on the gates to the city as you enter the pedestrian precinct: To be renovative and integrate.
Once regarded as a honeypot for drug addicts, polite Sydneysiders tend to still avoid Cabramatta – but to do so is really to miss out on one of Sydney’s best kept secrets. It is likewise with the restaurant An Lac on John Street, Cabramatta’s main shopping strip. One of at least three nearby Vietnamese vegetarian restaurants, I think we’ve eaten there every time we’ve taken the trip to Cabramatta over the last few years. An Lac is a simple family restaurant of the wholly authentic Vietnamese kind. The first thing to notice is that each table is set with condiments and cutlery, kitchen-style. While most of the clients are local Vietnamese folk, the menu makes concessions to the occasional English-speaking guest with the inclusion of English names for the dishes and short descriptions of each of the ingredients. Jasmine tea is provided as a courtesy to guests in thermoses which sit on each table.
We chose the stuffed tofu with chinese white cabbage in a brown savoury sauce, the imitation roast chicken with dried lily flower black fungus and our favourite for the afternoon, vermicelli with chopped-up spring rolls, cucumber, bean sprouts, mint and a traditional sweet vinegarette. Each dish was beautifully done – but the vermicelli was truly exceptional.
Halfway through the meal I pondered aloud whether this was the best vegetarian restaurant in Sydney. There is no doubt that it is a strong Super V. The whole meal came to $21.70, which left plenty of money for the shopping trip – among Cabramatta’s dynamic blend of fruit, flower, clothing and bric-a-brac shops jammed closely together in the tight arcades that come off John Street.
V Rating: Super V Last weekend Andy and I belatedly celebrated our four year anniversary. Ahh yes, who would have thought that a humble invitation to see Spiderman could lead to a lifetime of wedded bliss (OK, the wedded part is still in train… but we have the bliss down pat).
While other vegetarian restaurants in Sydney are mostly Asian Buddhist, Harvest has a secular, European feel. There’s nothing like it in Sydney, although it reminds me of Bernadette’s in Canberra, Sprouts in Adelaide or the now defunct Squirrels in Brisbane. The street frontage is bedecked with fairy lights and the intimate view of the city skyline isn’t too bad either. Inside, the walls are painted vivd blue, the tables have crisp white linen tablecloths and the furniture feels like something out of a country kitchen. The comparatively expensive menu borrows vegetarian dishes from around the world, including pastas, stir-frys, fried and fresh spring rolls and pakhoras.
I went with a tapas plate combining guacomole, eggplant roulade, hummus, and goats cheese dip. It was served with long, thin wafers of bread. The dips were delicious - particularly the spicy eggplant and soft, rich goats cheese, but the hummus was too plain for my liking.
I chose what I thought was an Indian curry (which I love). Unfortunately, I didn’t read the numerous ingredients on the menu closely and it turned out to be more of a peanut satay (which I don’t love). The chutneys and pappadams that gave with it were great, but the dish was too heavy and rich for me to finish. Seeing as it was our anniversary we decided to splurge and get dessert - white and dark chocloate truffles filled with ice cream. These were luxorious, sweet and creamy - and definitely a job for two. I enjoyed them but should probably had chosen a less decadent option. While Harvest isn’t vegan, they ensure that there are a decent number of vegan dishes on both the entree and mains menu. All cheese is rennet free, and they only use free range eggs. Where possible they use organic food. From memory, there are other foods, such as honey, which they either leave out or can omit. Harvest is not a restaurant that I’d eat at everyday. However, it makes a wonderful and romantic choice for special occasions. Love you honey!
V Rating: VVVV Last week Andy and I were back in Brisbane. We were wandering hungrily around the city when Andy (an ex-citizen of Brisvegas) had a moment of inspiration and realised that a vegetarian friendly place was just around the corner from us on Elizabeth Street.
There is a choice between some ready made meals, which you can take-away or eat-in, and an extensive menu. Helpfully, the menu is laid out on an A4 sheet, with one side listing meat options and the other vegetarian. Sweet! There were 19 vegetarian mains and 7 vegetarian options. Options range from soups, curries, stiry-frys and noodle dishes from across South-East Asia. Andy wisely chose a dumpling soup, which was delicious, while I went with the Malaysian stir-fry noodles. Adding a nice touch, when we ordered our vegetarian meals, the friendly waitress checked whether we ate egg, garlic and onion. Both meals were freshly and quickly cooked, and good value for money. We washed them down with a refreshing sweet milk and a fizzy lemon drink. With its close proximity to the Brisbane CBD and QUT, City Wok makes a great lunch spot for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike.
V rating: VVVV Where: 12 Salamanca Square, Battery Point For those of you with a bit of time on your hands looking for a place to eat in Hobart’s trendy Salamanca area, you can’t go wrong with Machine Laundry cafe. I looked at four other cafe menus before reaching Hobart’s version of vegetarian breakfast bliss - a cafe where only three of the many options were not vegetarian, and where the breakfast items were combinable according to your whim. I went for the tofu scramble roti at first, until the waiter warned me kindly that it was a cold dish (maybe my scarf, five layers and gloves gave me away as a non-local). So I opted for a couple of poached eggs, mushrooms, homemade baked beans and spinach. That and a couple of decaf soy lattes later and I was a very content little vegemite. The prices are reasonable, the menu varied and the vegeterian options innovative. Plus, you can do your laundry next door while you eat and drink in the Hobart sun (truly - there is sun to take the edge off!) in a laundromat straight from the set of Happy Days.
V Rating: VVVVV 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.
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).
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 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.
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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