Archive for the ‘Pyrmont’ Category
V Rating: VV PEN is surreptitiously located at the corner of two biggish roads in Pyrmont in a converted wool shed. The exterior looks like your run of the mill, humble local cafe serving the office crowd. It’s always intrigued me because the name reminds me of a writer’s activist group - but until recently I’d never ventured in.
Once inside, you realise that it has a tardis like design. The narrow frontage belies the large, single room that makes up the cafe. The interior is very striking, with vivacious red walls, exposed dark wood roof beams, and a large, polished wooden table running down the centre of the room, adding an inner West cum country kitchen feel. The menu, while full of fresh market ingredients, is not abundant with vegetarian options. There are two vegetarian salads, including a salad stack, a vegetarian sandwich, and a vegetarian pasta sauce than comes with a choice of four pastas. There were no vegetarian specials the day I visited, and my first choice of salad was out of stock, even though it was slightly before 12.30 when I ordered. So, while I usually avoid ordering dishes that sound tokenistic, I went the salad stack. My first impression wasn’t great. The stack didn’t come with all the ingredients listed on the menu. Also, when I asked for the optional cheddar cheese I assumed it would be delicately scattered around the plate, not stuck in a chunk at the top of the stack. These things aside, this was one of the better stacks I’ve tried. The nicest part was that it utilised a lot of fresh ingredients, like grated carrot, avocado, alfalfa beetroot and lettuce, rather than being made up of oily grilled vegetables. The dressing was a light, lemon vinegarette, which brought the fresh ingredients to life by adding some zing. I wouldn’t rate PEN as my favourite lunchspot in Pyrmont. However, it stacks up (boom tish) well against its other cafe counterparts.
V Rating: V-ware Sugaroom is one of Pyrmont’s top restaurants and is located at the harbour end of Harris Street. Although Sugaroom is a fine dining restaurant, it is surrounded by undeveloped lots and occasional water traffic. This creates the slightly surreal situation where you munch on your $30 main while overlooking the last remnants of Sydney’s working harbour. Like Ravesi’s, Sugaroom gets a V-ware rating because despite serving good quality vegetarian food, there is only one vegetarian entrée and main.
It makes a great winter choice. The pie gave off the warm, homely smell of a country bakery. The pastry crust was soft without being too oily. The filling was creamy and delicious. The zucchini flower on the side was stuffed and came on a bed of lettuce with the rich, cherry-sized truss tomatoes. A tartare mayonnaise sauce came with it, and went well with the salad by adding a savoury bite. We also ordered some hearty, home-made wedges and a salad, which were more than we could manage. Overall, the meal was a metaphor for Pyrmont’s metamorphosis from a working class industrial area to an expensive yuppie hub. While my mushroom pie and chips had become expensive pithivier and wedges, in the end it was still a delicious, filling, and unpretentious meal.
V-Rating: VV Concrete is discreetly set on the busy junction of Harris St and Pyrmont Bridge Road. The design is modern and welcoming, with a warm charcoal exterior, open and light eating space, and a shaded outdoor area. The menu isn’t extensive, but the dishes are interesting. The lunch menu is divided into sandwiches, salads and mains. One dish in each section is vegetarian, as was one of the specials, although vegan options are limited. I tried the grilled haloumi salad with asparagus, rocket, green beans, avocado and macadamia nuts with a summer lemon and oil dressing - so did 80% of the other female customers. The flavours were fresh and well set off by the lemon, although there was a touch too much oil for my liking. One of the nicest parts of the experience was the friendly, attentive and speedy service. All up, Concrete is a lovely spot for a casual lunch or whiling away the hours. Reviewed 27 March 2006.
V Rating: VV With its unobtrusive glass shopfront, Made in Italy could almost be mistaken for a real estate agency or generic inner city retail shop. However, any confusion about the nature of the business is soon dispelled by the seductive pizza aromas that fill the restaurant and float out onto the street. Made in Italy is the real deal. The pizzas are thin crust and the toppings are fresh, original and flavourful. The spinaci (fresh spinach and tomato, cheese and garlic) and funghi francesci (champignons, parsley, cheese and garlic) are standouts, but vegetarians can take heart that there are eight veggie pizza options. Vegans are ignored entirely on the pizza front, although you can probably ask for the pizzas to come without cheese. There are a couple of veggie and vegan friendly pastas, and usually one veggie special. The catch with Made in Italy is the service. Generally it’s friendly, if not always efficient. Sometimes it’s neither. For example, recently some work pals and I dutifully booked a table for a Friday lunch. We were seated in the corner and had trouble attracting the attention of the staff when we were ready to order. Once we’d finished ordering we were treated to a Kremlin style lecture on the rules for eating at the restaurant. The cardinal rule, apparently, was that if we booked a table there was a minimum spend of $15 per person. Our order was below this mark. We listened to the lecture and then politely suggested that a good time to tell customers about this ‘rule’ might be when they made the booking, not after they’d been seated and ordered. This was not viewed favourably by the waitress, who gave us a severe look and reminded us that we were already bad customers because ‘you booked for five but only four came.’ Apparently this was also against the rules. Fortunately for us our bad behaviour was overlooked on this occasion and our steaming pizzas and huge salad soon arrived. They were worth the wait, and the rules.
V Rating: VVV There is a well known man at the Fyshwick fruit and vegetable markets in Canberra who sells his wares with the slogan ‘yummy, yummy in my tummy.’ This pretty much sums up my attitude towards Nitan Work Station.
There are around 70 dishes on the Nitan Wok Station menu. I’m in the process of conducting an extensive quality assurance review of most of them and am yet to be disappointed. I can particularly recommend the Beautiful Chiang Mai (pumpkin, snow peas, egg and coriander). Like many Thai restaurants, Nitan Wok Station offers a lot of different sauces which you can combine with vegetables and tofu (or your choice of meat - but let’s not go there). This means that at face value vegans and vegetarians have a huge range of choice. Because I wanted to give Nitan Wok Station at least a VVV rating, last time I ate there I checked whether the dishes included oyster or fish sauce. The person serving me confirmed that some did, but happily explained to the kitchen that I was vegetarian and these needed to be left out. They also checked unprompted whether I ate egg. This gave me some confidence that they had a good awareness of vegetarian and vegan diets and could accommodate our needs. All in all, the multitude of inventive, modern Thai dishes that can easily be made veggie friendly and the $7.50 lunch special, make Nitan Wok Station my favourite eatery in the Pyrmont / Darling Harbour area.
V Rating: V-ware Furusato is a vegetarian conundrum. You ask for a vegetarian udon, you’re told you’ve got vegetarian udon and yet something about the dish just doesn’t feel right. Say, the white seafood cake garnish? I went to Furusato with some friends for the special lunch menu (certain dishes for about $8). While undeniably good value, nothing on the menu was ostensibly vegetarian. Also, the waitress didn’t understand the word vegetarian. This caused me some anxiety which wasn’t allayed by the arrival of the fish cake. Despite this very V-ware lunch experience,a check of the Furusato menu suggests that it does cater for vegetarians. There are two veggie entrees, and a few vegetarian mains (tempura, teriyaki and sushi). Combined with the pleasant outdoor courtyard and authentic Japanese food, I initially decided to give Furusato the benefit of doubt and allocate them a VV rating (just). However, I recently went back to Furusato and tried to order the vegetarian teriyaki for the lunch special. There are four teriyaki dishes on the main menu (three meat and one veggie). While you can get the three main meat dishes for the much cheaper lunch special, you can only get the vegetarian as a main. Even when you explain that you are vegetarian and don’t eat meat. So, for price disrimination against vegetarians, Furusato gets a V-ware.
V Rating: V-Ware I’ve learnt not to expect vegetarian miracles when eating at French restaurants. In between the snails, beef, lamb, trout, pheasant, deer and cock there is rarely anything for vegetarians to be cheery about. So it was with the Little Snail. The set $25 three course lunch menu offered some choice. There were three choices of vegetarian entrees and no choice of vegetarian mains. I ordered a crepe with mushroom sauce for the entree. For my main, I ordered the entree pasta – as a main. The penne came with a tomato sauce which I am happy to say was edible, if unmemorable. The only other vegetarian entree that was available was a salad of cold pickled vegetables. Next time I go, if I don’t want to eat the same meal, I’ll have to try that. Alternatively, I guess I could reverse the order of the menu and have entree pasta with a crepe main. You get the picture. The good news was that none of the desserts appeared to contain any meat. I had a crème brulee, which was pretty good. Not a great spot for vegetarians though: V-ware. - Garry R. |
.thumbnail.jpg "Mushroom pithivier (pie)")
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