Archive for the ‘VV’ Category
V Rating: VV On Mulgoa road in Penrith everything comes in mega sizes. There’s the mega piano shop, the mega Freedom store and the mega Toys ‘R’ Us. But amongst this field of oversized dreams, nothing compares to the megaopolis that is Panthers World.
Panthers World is one of 14 Penrith Panther rugby league clubs. It is not a building - it is a city. Panthers World houses multiple restaurants and bars, a theatre, shops and a dedicated gaming area. There are staff stationed all around as tour guides. Befriend them. You will need their help to get around. Panthers even has a currency, ‘Panther points’, which you can use to pay for meals. I wasn’t confident that Panthers would cater for vegetarians. Actually, I was sure they wouldn’t. However, Flavours Cafe and Bar proved me wrong. There was a separate vegetarian section to the menu with four or five options, and a vegetarian special advertised everyday on a mega-sized dedicated blackboard. While we’re not talking gourmet fare, my pasta with sun dried tomatoes, zucchini and feta was fine, albeit 15 sizes too big for my generally greedy tummy. Andy went with the veggie lasagne with salad and chips, which was also bigger than he could manage. Interestingly, the trays that you use to collect your food, and the serving plates, are all over-sized. This made me feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland. The only veggie downsides are that there are no real vegan main options, the kids menu is only for carnivores and you can’t escape the pervasive razzle dazzle of the pokies. Otherwise, it’s commendable that Flavours makes a real effort to cater for veggies. Reviewed 24 March 2006.
V Rating: VV Come 7pm the business district in Sydney’s city becomes a dining wasteland. You can wander down to the beautiful Circular Quay, however the view adds a significant premium to restaurant prices. Alternatively, you can eat at Wagamama on Bridge Street. Wagamama is a fine place for veggies and vegans to eat. The Wagamama menu is divided into sections (ramen, katsu, teriyaki etc.). Each section has at least one vegetarian option, helpfully marked by a V. I went for the moyashi soba, a vegetable soup with noodles and tofu.
The ingredients were all fresh. I’m sure that it was genuinely vegetarian because the soup base was relatively tasteless, suggesting that it hadn’t be seasoned (where’s the msg when you need it?) Unfortunately, some of the vegetables were chopped in large chunks that weren’t quite cooked. I ended up drowning my dish in soy sauce, which helped. Wagamama is certainly better than your average chain restaurant. There are some things I really like about Wagamama, such as their communal tables and well-presented food in large clay bowls with helpful Asian style soup spoons. However, I think the concept behind Wagamama is outdated. For example, as soon as you’re seated the waiting staff come over and ask if you’ve eaten there before. If you say you haven’t, they proceed to explain how the menu works. It’s not rocket science. Wagamama don’t have entrees. They have sides, which you can share. The mains and sides will come out at different times because they are cooked fresh. Just in case you miss the initial explanation, it’s written on the placement. Maybe the didactic approach makes sense for people who’ve never eaten at a Japanese, or other Asian, restaurant. However, this is Sydney. We have an abundance of Japanese and Asian restaurants. I’d venture a guess that most Wagamama customers have eaten at one these and they get how the menu works. I don’t mean to be overly critical - it’s just this is approach is a bit patronising because it assumes Japanese food is exotic and needs to be interpreted for the average customer. Approach aside, Wagamama represents reasonable value for money, and is probably the most reliable option if you find yourself stranded in the business district of an evening. Reviewed 20 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: VV Li Zai is a self-described ‘Asian tapas’ restaurant. This is either an excuse to serve smaller dishes for the same price as a regular meal, or a great way for groups of people to try lots of different items on the menu. I’m undecided. While the menu is weighted towards meat and seafood, there are some vegetarian and vegan options. At first glance these appear to be helpfully marked on the menu by a vegetarian symbol. Unfortunately, Li Zai’s definition of vegetarian includes seafood – our seaweed and tofu salad came garnished with roe and two so-called vegetarian dishes on the menu include prawn crackers and oyster sauce. This almost earned Li Zai a V-ware rating. As our vegetarian san choi bow and Asian vegetarian BBQ appeared to be meat and seafood free I’ve given them the benefit of the doubt; however, I’d recommend checking with the waiting staff before ordering the vegetarian dishes just to make sure you are not in for a nasty surprise. Doubts about the contents of our meal aside, the food was OK if not particularly flavourful. The Asian BBQ is actually two veggie kebabs. The cold tofu and seaweed salad was refreshing, but lacking in flavour. The vegetarian san choi bow was a fun dish to share, although the filling was perhaps a little over-spiced. The real appeal of Li Zai’s is its funky apartment style layout. There’s a smaller room with a single large table, ideally suited for groups wanting a dinner party away from home and a larger room with a series of intimate tables. Li Zai’s best feature is a great outdoor deck with a stunning view of Bondi Beach. The deck is ringed with fairylights and a comfortable couch seating. This is a great spot for a romantic dinner, sunset cocktails or even a party (provided that it’s not blowing a gale as it was the night we visited). Li Zai is a fun option for a summery Bondi dinner - just v-ware the liberal bestowing of a vegetarian friendly label!
V Rating: VV Don’t make the mistake of taking a bottle of wine to Mecca Bah, the Moroccan and middle eastern restaurant that has added a new Canberra outlet to its Melbourne and Brisbane branches – it is fully licensed but not BYO. After overcoming that minor embarrassment, I join my friends in the large, covered outdoor area which is on the deck of Manuka Terrace. The outdoor seating area is expansive and has a nice vibe. It is a warm enough evening, and the accordion-style glass windows are open, so it all feels pleasingly summery. After the incident with the wine bottle, we examine the wine menu and discover that the house white and red are $24 each – surely a bit steep for a house wine? One of my friends informs me that the waitress had said she would come and “explain” the menu to us once we had all arrived. I am inherently suspicious of any place that has a menu that needs to be “explained”. I am also inherently suspicious of any place that refuses to take bookings. What is with that? The waitress kindly informs us that the first page of the menu was mezze – “that’s kind of like tapas”, she says, in case we didn’t know. (Perhaps I am just being facetious, but if someone doesn’t know the meaning of mezze, are they likely to be aware of what tapas is?) The waitress encourages us to order several and share them. The vegetarian options on the mezze menu sound tasty: fattoush (a salad of Lebanese bread in wine), vegetarian chick pea and lentil soup, beetroot and yoghurt salad, Tunisian carrot salad, tabouleh, sweet potato felafels, olives, and bread with dips. My friend chooses the vegetarian soup ($8.50), and the rest of us decide to share the Turkish bread with dips ($11) and the carrot salad ($7.50). For mains ($16-$17), the vegetarian options are a roast vegetable tagine (“that’s like a stew served on cous cous”, explains the waitress again), and two types of Turkish pizza (“these are on a thin bread shaped like a boat and with the edges curled up”) – zucchini with cheeses, mint and lemon, and roast pumpkin, chilli, pomegranate jam and feta. On the waitress’s advice I order the zucchini pizza. When the Turkish bread and dips arrives, it involves sizable dollops of labna, hommous and baba ghanoush, and three rather large pieces of Turkish bread. The soup comes in a very large bowl and is a generous serve. The carrot salad likewise comes in a very large bowl, but it could not be called a generous serve. In fact, the serving is hardly even the size of a side dish for one person, let alone an amount to share. It looks even more minuscule given the massive plate it comes on. $7.50 for this? The three of us who are sharing it each allocate ourselves four small pieces of carrot from the twelve on the plate. They are delectable, and so it is even more disappointing that the serve was so small. So we order ourselves another plate of bread ($4) to go with the dips, which are very flavoursome, and stuff ourselves with this. Alas, by the time the mains come I think we have all eaten too much bread. My zucchini pizza is pleasing enough, and the lemon juice provides a nice zest to the taste of the zucchini, but I am unable to finish it. My friend who chose the vegetarian tagine says it is good, and spicy. Mecca Bah has an interesting array of other vegetarian selections on the mezze menu, but if these were all of the same small portion as the carrot salad, then I frankly don’t think they’re worth it. The vegetarian selection in mains is OK – three dishes – but not great. I’m giving this place a VV. The food was tasty, but unduly expensive. Add to that the pricey wine and no BYO, and it made for an expensive night. Vegetarians would get more choice and better value elsewhere. AC
V Rating: VV Dolcissimo is part of Haberfield’s ‘Little Italy’ quarter based around the intersection of Ramsay and Dalhousie streets. After a quick stroll to take in the local menus I began to fear that I’d entered a V-Ware zone - there were long lists of ‘carne’ and ‘pesce’ dishes but not a ‘verdura’ friendly one in sight. Fortunately Dolcissimo offers some choice for vegetarians, which pushed it into the VV category. There are six vegetarian pizzas to choose from (though none are vegan) and four vegetarian pastas (three of which are vegan.) Despite the choice, Andy I went for the same option - penne alla norma (eggplant, tomato and ricotta sauce). I was tempted by the penne arrabiata, but the waiter instructed me not to have it because the chilli would be too hot! He did offer to serve it to me as napoli sauce ‘with a bit of chilli’ but by this point, slightly affronted and afraid, I decided to go with an old favourite. In traditional Italian style, the alla norma comes with the ricotta served on top of the pasta and you swirl it in with your fork. This gives the sauce a soft and creamy texture. Combined with very soft squares of eggplant, the sauce virtually melts into your mouth. Tasty as the dish was, by the end of the meal it had become a little oily. The bruschetta we shared for entree was similarly a little oily, although the tomato was fresh and the flavour was strong. Dolcissimo is situated in old terrace shop front with its three rooms squashed around and above a steep staircase. The floor is unpolished dark wood and the two main restaurants have a tasteful yet subdued decor. I first went to Dolcissimo on a Saturday evening when it was absolutely packed. Even on a Wednesday evening it was doing a good trade, giving it a bustling, warm feel. A common criticism of Dolcissimo on Eatability seems to be that the service is poor or inattentive. I didn’t find that to be the case - within the first ten minutes we’d been visited four times by waiting staff and both the entree and mains came quickly. Perhaps this is different on Saturday nights whent the restaurant is very busy. Dolcissimo also serves breakfast, lunch and what looked like a tasty range of gelato and cakes. While there isn’t an abundance of vegetarian options, there is some choice and it seems to be one of more vegetarian friendly options in the Little Italy area.
V Rating: VV I didn’t mean to eat at Jarrah’s Brasserie. Oh no, Andy and I were going to eat at a great vegetarian restaurant on King Street, then wander leisurely towards @Newtown to catch Bonnie Prince Billy. However, after running late, spending half an hour in the queue, and being told that Bonnie Prince Billy would be on a good hour and half before he finally showed, Andy and I decided to risk Jarrah’s Brasserie rather than miss out on part of the show. It turned out to be a reasonable experience. At first sight the menu looked like a vegetarian wasteland. The only options were chilli bean nachos and a wild mushroom and rocket risotto. Fortunately, three of the four specials were vegetarian. Andy chose the pumpkin, sage and goat’s cheese risotto and I had grilled veggie and haloumi skewers with a mint yoghurt dressing and lentil salad. My meal was lovely. The capsicum and red onion were bursting with sweetness and were complemented nicely by the saltiness of the haloumi. The fresh taste of the lentils and mint sauce also went well with the overall meal. Andy’s risotto was quite creamy but pleasant, with large pieces of pumpkin offsetting the base. It struck me as unusual that so many specials would be vegetarian when so few of the main items were. The (vegetarian) waitress helpfully explained that 2 - 3 of the 4 specials are always vegetarian to correct the balance. While the menu is initially daunting, the fact that Jarrah’s provides some interesting vegetarian alternatives through the specials menu lifts it to a VV rating. Jarrah’s will never be a first choice restaurant given the plethora of great Newtown eateries. However, it is a good option if you’re going to one of the great @Newtown gigs and want to be sure to score a good seat. |
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