Archive for the ‘Darlinghurst’ Category
V Rating: Super V Iku is a successful chain of healthy vegetarian takeaway restaurants. It’s like the Sydney vegetarian equivalent of McDonald’s. Only better.
I recently hopped in the buzzing queue in the food court in the MLC Centre at Martin Place. Laid out in front of me in all of its macrobiotic, organic, gluten-free options glory, were salads, rice balls, wraps, soup, hot casseroles, pasta dishes, and dessert. I felt healthy and virtuous just looking at the food. Despite the myriad temptations, I couldn’t go past the takeaway mixed salad for $8.50. There were ginger noodles, steamed vegetables, white beans with mixed seeds, beetroot and cabbage in a vinegar dressing, and sesame brown rice, topped off with the house specialty creamy tahini dressing. The salad looked and tasted spectacular, and although it was a filling meal it didn’t leave me with a sleepy carbohydrate low come 3pm. The Iku menu changes weekly, though you’re always guaranteed of finding favourites like black rice pudding. Most stores open from lunch until dinner, but the central city outlets servicing the white collar crowd shut by 4pm. The size of the resturants (and opportuniy for eating in) varies. The Darlinghurst store is very big, Glebe has a peaceful courtyard, while the MLC Centre is just a counter operation within a busy food court. Iku also has a catering business, and distributes a range of food (including the aforementioned creamy tahini dressing) throughout health food shops. Iku doesn’t flaunt its vegetarian credentials, selling itself on the health benefits of its food, rather than its meatless menu. It’s a godsend for vegos and vegans who want a quick, tasty and stress-free lunch, and proves once and for all that vegetarian food can be sexy.
V Rating: VVV My friend, J, the, and I went to see the beautiful, moving and original Pan’s Labyrinth on Thursday night at the Palace Academy cinema on Oxford Street. The movie started at 7pm, and I was determined to squeeze in dinner beforehand. However, I often find myself at a loss for a good restaurant at the top end of Oxford Street. We wandered past the small cluster of restaurants between the cinema and Taylor Square, ruling out food we’d eaten the previous night (Thai, Japanese) and somehow ended up in front of Cantina. As I’ve written about before, for many years I avoided tapas bars because I assumed that they wouldn’t be vegetarian friendly. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by both Kika and Mojos, but after Cantina I’m a convert. Their delicious food proved to me beyond a doubt that tapas is a vegetarian friendly affair.
Cantina offers some classic Spanish tapas dishes, but the menu also draws on Spain’s Mediterranean neighbours, Portugal, Greece and Morocco. We ordered the patas bravas, sauteed baby spinach with toasted slivered almonds and raisins, sauteed field mushrooms with garlic and parsley, and roasted beet salad with goats cheese dressing and walnuts.
Cantina’s food was simple, but beautifully prepared. The roast beet salad was a highlight. Using the goats cheese as a dressing and drizzling it over the beets was a great improvement on crumbling it into the salad, which is the way I’ve eaten this salad before.
The spinach sauteed in a slightly creamy broth was just beautiful with the sweet raisins and almonds, and had both of us reaching for more. I am a sucker for a potato dish, and judge tapas bars on the quality of their patas bravas (cubed, fried potatoes in a chili, onion and tomato sauce). Cantina gets full marks. The perfectly cubed, bite-sized potato was golden and crispy on the outside, and the tomato sauce was spicy without being too hot. In fact, these were so good I found myself (accidentally) eating straight from the tapas dish. Ahh, the social challenges of eating food off small plates. Fortunately J, the was too polite to comment.
We didn’t have time to try Cantina’s desserts, but with classic choices like creme catalana, churros and saffron poached pears it’s on my to do list for next time. I’ve wavered before Cantina on other occasions when I’ve been to the Verona or Academy, but always averred in favour of one of its neighbours. Perhaps it is the beautiful, but slightly sombre decor, quite different from the exuberance of some of Sydney’s other tapas bars. What a fool! The food is a cut above, and the service is friendly, professional and fast. It’s the perfect place for dinner before or after a movie at the Palace, but would also make a lovely choice for a lingering night with friends. Definitely a new favourite.
V Rating: VVVVV Last Thursday was my birthday. The big 29. I didn’t want to plan something special, but also didn’t want to let the final year of my twenties slip through my fingers unmarked. Casting around for something to do I thought I’d check the movie schedule at vegetarian restaurant / cinema, Govinda’s. I knew immediately that I was fated to go there because they were playing Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biography that I was disappointed to miss at the movies. I love the fact that Govinda’s combines an intimate cinema with a hare krishna vegetarian restaurant. There’s no need for the two to go together, yet it’s so handy that they do.
The buffet options are reassuringly familiar. There’s lentil and vegetable soup, home made bread, brown and white rice, a korma curry, dahl, potatoe and cauliflower pakoras, pasta in tomato sauce and a few cold salads. While Govinda’s food is plentiful, it’s more comfort food than gourmet. I think it tends toward bland, perhaps because as a hare krishna restaurant it doesn’t use onions, mushrooms, or garlic in its dishes. I enjoyed the drinks better than the food - my mango lassi was thick, sweet and cool, and my soy chai was one of the best that I’ve had in Sydney. For me, the real attraction of Govinda’s is the upstairs movie theatre. This is a cosy room filled with low beds, pillows and couches. It’s kind of like being at a sleepover, only with a decent selection of movies. There are usually two - three movie sessions a day. It’s worth getting in line early so you can bag one of the long beds, rather than the slightly less comfortable couch option. The movie choices are always interesting - a combination of art house and popular mainstream releases that are no longer playing at the major cinema chains. Govinda’s is a great concept and a lot of fun. If vegetarian food is your priority there are tastier and better value choices in Sydney. I also wouldn’t take a non-vegetarian here if your intention is to convert them to the pleasures of vegetarian eating - although the range of food means that there should be something here for everyone. However, I love Govinda’s because it feels like going to your best friend’s house for an easy night in - somewhere you know that you can indulge in hearty food, a relaxed movie and great company to your heart’s content. KP. 25/05/06.
V Rating: VVV I love going to motley invitee dinners where everyone at the table does something that they’re passionate about. It reminds me that being a grown-up can be fun. Last Tuesday, Andy and I joined three friends at Saigon Bay on upper Oxford Street. A friend was visiting from Alice Springs, and she’d invited along a friend back briefly from Cambodia and another friend who works in an education-can-be-fun type job. We had a lot to talk about, and Saigon Bay proved to be a great place for good food and catching up.
For entree we had huge rice paper rolls and crispy pancakes wrapped in lettuce leaves. These were helpfully put together at the table by our accomplished waitress. For mains we had the genuinely chilli lemon grass tofu and soft combination noodles. Saigon Bay gets bonus points because all dishes are cooked in pure polyunsaturated vegetable oil, and use no animal fats, artificial preservatives or MSG. How good is that? KP. 16/5/06.
V-Rating: VVV Friday night I ended up in Kings Cross with a couple of my favourite friends. We’d spent a pleasant few hours at the Darlo Bar and were looking for dinner on our way to seeing The Vasco Era at Spectrum. It was one of those nights where everyone was at a crossroad. One friend was on her way to Brisbane to start a new job. A second friend was spending her last weekend in Australia before returning to her home in Cambodia and had invited along a friend who had just returned to Australia after a year overseas. Perhaps reflecting our transient state, we were at a loss to find a restaurant on Victoria Street. (There are a lot of restaurants on Victoria Street. This is no mean feat). We’d ruled out Italian, Thai, anything expensive, or anything with limited vegetarian options. That doesn’t leave much in King’s Cross. Fortunately, our bingo like approach to eating led us to Kika Tapas Bar. For a Spanish restaurant, Kika had a great range of veggie dishes. There were about ten vegetarian tapas options (with their own menu page, no less). We tried the eggplant in parsley butter, the patas bravas, the green beans in butter, garlic mushrooms, and the veggie tortilla. I liked every dish, but made sure to take a second serve of the patas bravas and eggplant. We washed it down with a jug of not-too-sweet sangria, which added a festive touch to the night. We had one heart-stopping moment just after we sat down. One my eagle-eyed friends noticed a small caveat on the back page of the menu: on Fridays and Saturdays each person had to spend $25 on food alone. We queried the waitress and were assured that ’so long as didn’t just order coffee’ we were fine. This kind of begged the question of why they put the rule on the menu in the first place, but sure enough there were no recriminations when the bill came and we were well under budget. Kika is handily situated just across the road from the Green Park Hotel. The decor is bright and cheery, and there are some large tables on footpath that are perfect for dinner on a warm night. Even with a full restaurant, the food came quickly and let us with plenty of time to amble off to see the band.
V Rating: VVV I’m a huge fan of Indian food, not least because it usually has a great array of vegetarian choices. A Spicy Affair is no exception and scores itself a VVV rating on the back of its nine veggie mains and four veggie entrees. These include the very tasty aalo baingan (sautéed eggplant, potatoes and tomato with five spices and coriander), my favourite ever dish palak paneer (spinach and paneer cheese), daal, a korma curry and malai kofta (veggie meatballs). The main dishes are reasonably priced at $12.90. While not big, they are filling and as rice is served by the mound you won’t go hungry. All up A Spicy Affair is a good vegetarian choice. The decor is modern, the food is affordable, and the staff are friendly, if a little ad hoc (i.e. they mixed up one dish in our order and didn’t bring out rice). The aalo baingan was the hands down favourite amongst my group. The rest of the dishes were pleasant, if not outstanding.
V Rating: V-Ware I feel kind of bad giving the Pink Peppercorn a V-ware rating. The service was friendly, the decor was fun and welcoming and the two vegetarian dishes they offered were fresh and tasty. But there’s the rub. For a relatively expensive restaurant with a long list of dishes, it was particularly depressing to discover that there was little choice of vegetarian food. None of the entrees on the menu were vegetarian, although a vegetarian version of the ‘golden rolls’ is available on request. Of the 18 main dishes, only two are vegetarian (and vegan). A green papaya salad is offered as a main, but comes with meat. To be fair, there were two vegetarian side salads so you won’t go hungry. But this is cold comfort wen you’re watching the other patrons salivating over their extensive options. Despite the lack of veggie options, I enjoyed the Pink Peppercorn. For a start, you don’t see Laotian restaurants every day in Sydney. Added to this, the restaurant has a bright, modern appeal with lonely planetesque canvas photographs adorning the wall, bright pink serviettes and a mirrored bar to give the restaurant some Oxford street glam. My friend and I ordered both vegetarian mains (one is a mild vegetarian curry and the other is a stir fry). I was pleasantly surprised by the fresh flavours. The stir fry was quickly cooked, releasing the taste of the vegetables and complementing them with a light sauce. The dishes were a good size, and went well with the long grain rice with jasmine. But then, at $18 a pop you expect an above average meal. |
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