Victoria St - demystified

Great article at the Age today picking the top 5 out of 22 Viet restaurants they went to on Victoria st. I still love Phos however.

Monday Melbourne Roundup

This week: POOR!

Shinjuku

Fab. Cheap and cheerful Japanese on Sydney Rd. Iku (which is right across the road) is too expensive for what it is (which is decent Jap), Shinjuku isn't anything totally amazing but it’s a great space, the staff are just gorgeous and you can have a big feed and a beer for $20.

Syracuse

Gorgeous wine bar, would be an absolute BROTHEL on the weekend, well any time outside of when I was there which was 4pm on Thursday. So would be lovely for an afternoon drink, but would be crawling with suits most other times. If you can get in there with no suits totally do it its just beautiful with a great wine list.

Bar Etiquette

How disappointing. The interior is just SO BAD I cant believe it. First of all that sign is just terrible, the sign takes up what seems like half of the frontage. The front bar is ok, its not too bad, the back smoking area feels like I'm sitting in suburban car port at the age of 15 drinking passion pop and the upstairs rooms clearly decorated from a trip to hot potato just made me feel uncomfortable and weird like I was the last one being picked at some suburban swingers party. Too many bad memories from a childhood growing up in southwest Sydney clearly. And clearly its not working because the front bar was empty, upstairs was completely empty (eerie) and outback was packed in with mainly 30 something suburban gal pals slumming it in big bad 'cool' Brunswick. That and its unreasonably overpriced.

The Brunswick Green

We headed to the Brunswick Green to get the bad taste out of our mouths. Seriously, this is the ONLY good bar on Sydney road. How fucking shit is that?! The green was packed to the rafters of nice young things and we drank the night away. It’s a fab fab bar.

accidentally vegan

Copied over from (the now defunct) K Blog and added to a wee bit from me (I've gone cross eyed from reading the Bakers Delight ingredients list), a list of all things gloriously accidentally Vegan, available in Australia. The Facebook page "vegan products you can buy in Australia" is also an excellent resource!

Biscuits
* Oreos
* Arnotts Lemon Crisps
* Arnotts raspberry shortcake biscuits
* Arnotts Nice biscuits
* Hob Nobs biscuits
* Home Brand ginger nuts
* Eskal scottish shortbread
* Aldi spekulatius biscuits
* Digestives (Plain)

Chocolates/Toppings
* Guylian Solitaire
* Lindt 70% Dark
* Whittakers 50% cocoa dark chocolate
* Whittakers 50% cocoa rum and raisin dark chocolate
* Whittakers 62% cocoa almond dark chocolate
* Cottees thick and rich chocolate topping
* Coles strawberry topping
* Coles choc mint crunch lollies

Desserts/Lollies
* Quick set Aeroplane Jelly
* Skittles
* Starburst Jellybeans
* Sherbies (lollies)
* Nannas Lite Apple Pies
* Pez bonbons
* Woolworths brand Jelly Babies (!!)

Frozen Food
* Birds Eye Corn Fritters
* Coles and Audi brand onion rings
* Safeway brand garlic bread
* Pampas filo pastry and spring roll pastry (cholesterol free version)
(a lot of the potato products are, and there's these rad curry puffs but I need to get the name and brand)

Condiments
* Praise fatfree mayo
* Masterfoods traditional tatare sauce
* Masterfoods Bacon flavoured chips
* Coles brand 97% fat free mayo
* Coles brand 97% fat free dijionaise

Junk Food
* Coles salt and vinegar chips
* Shapes BBQ flavour

Bakers Delight
* Potato and sunflower mini cob
* Pumpkin and sunflower seed roll
* All white and spelt plain loaves
* All white rolls
* Foccacia - herb and garlic large & small
* Rodini - Sweet Chilli Mustard and Sesame
* All bread with 'continental' in the title (minus the one with parmesan in it)
* Cialini, Turkish and Ciabatta are ok
* All Pani di Casa

If you have anymore please let me know!

Last updated 10th August 2011

Bowl of Soul - Port Melbourne

I work near Port Melbourne and about once a week I go to Bowl of Soul. They are awesome. Its up there with the Vegie Bar as my most faved, consistently good vegie cafe in Melbourne. I usually get the "steak out" sandwich or the "cajun chicken" burger, but the other day I decided to branch out a little and get the "soul on a roll".

Its a faux fish sandwich (wheat gluten, wrapped in nori and pan fried) with a tonne of salad and vegan tartare sauce. Yummo. They make everything themselves, all their desserts, takeaway items like soups and lasagnes. I think the few things they buy is of course the mock meat and the bread rolls. Definitely check them out.



They dont have a website but heres a link to their information and some pretty gushing reviews

Soyatoo and vegan cream alternatives

I had the pleasure of many things on the weekend, one, visiting the vegan grocery store that's been open on Sydney road for sometime (Radical Grocery Store) and two, trying some of its wares! I was particularly interested in Soyatoo, soy cream!

So I baked a chocolate cake and cracked it open. According to the box its whippable and you can put it in a bulberator, so I whipped it and it came apart. Coming out of the box its like this velvety, thickened cream, but when I started whipping it, it turned to liquid, sad face. We ate it anyway. It is DELICIOUS. It reminded me of that crap whipped cream in a can I used to eat straight out of the fridge when I was little (and if I remember correctly some of them had no dairy in them at all so I'll be reading the back of those cans soon).

The cream is sweet, but not too sweet. The stuff we put back in the fridge firmed up ALOT, like alot thicker than what came out of the box, so apparently patience (which is not my strong suit) is what is needed with the whipping. I did do some experimenting with some other non dairy cream, an idea I got from the vegandad website. Coconut cream! You know when you open the can of coconut milk and there is that solid layer of cream on the top like butter? Bam there is your cream alternative. I scooped it all out, added some of the milk from the can, added a splash of maple syrup, whipped it and put it in the fridge. It was AMAZING.

The Radical Grocery store will be getting in the Soyatoo in a can soon as well.

Monday Melbourne Roundup

Crippled and poor this week I didn’t really do anything. I had a big night on Thursday night which meant Friday night I was tucked into bed at 9pm. Saturday and Sunday nights were both taken up with Eurovision.


Out

Royal Nut Company: This place is awesome. I'm basically sick to fucking death of pasta so decided to max out my credit card this week restocking my cupboard. I got an insane amount of stuff for $50 at this place, massive bags of lentils, raw cashews, pecans, sumac, spices, flours, dried cranberries, the shop has over 300 items for sale, get thee to it.

Eats/drinks

Hellenic Republic

Sure its probably a meat/cheese thing (especially with Greek), I seem to have bumped into this a lot but surely side dishes can be just as good as what they specialise in? Extremely disappointed in Hellenic. We had the marinated peppers (really bland), the potatos (which were basically like fancy seasoned hand cut hot chips, nice but… you know..), the olives (were ok nothing special) and the spinach and rice (which was LOVELY so so so nice!) and Daniel had the fish which he wasn’t too impressed with. Couple all that with some extremely bad coffee and Hellenic was an expensive, bland, boring experience. Our waitress was gorgeous however and the best part of our meal there. I think now I'm re-vegan I'm going to have to stick to Asian inspired. Poo.

Mr Wilkinson

I actually love this place now its becoming more 'lived in', it was just so stark and kind of weirdly sterile when it first opened. Really reasonably priced drinks and they didn’t kick us out till well after 1am Friday morning so troupers for that.

Atticus Finch

The interior to this place just kills me every time. The hipsturds that work there are bearable and even dare I say it, gorgeous on a week night. Such a lovely place to go in winter mid week. So snuggly. So country housey.

Bimbos, Lord of the Fries and of course Bowl of Soul took a beating again this week cant get enough and I also did alot of baking.

Koko Black and Haighs

an email I got from Koko Black (for those of you who dont know, amazing amazing Melburnian chocolatiers):

"Dear Carla,
Thank you for your enquiry regarding Vegan Chocolate. We have available our 74% and 60% bar in 100 gram and 45 gram. In the blocks we have our Arabica Bean, Cocoa Nibs, Hazelnut, Almond and orange as well as ginger and walnut. Our caramelised nuts are also vegan and Our hot chocolate shavings. IN the handmade individual range there is the mint and the orange segment. In our sandpiper range we have our chocolate coated nuts, orange and lemon bows and liquorice.
Carla, I hope this information is helpful."

also, Haighs informs me that their milk and dark products are produced on the same machine so the dark products can have traces of milk but no milk products are added to their dark chocolates. To that end all fruit and nut filled dark chocolates as well as dark chocolate bars are vegan. It pays to ask.

Monday Melbourne Roundup

Out

Book Club

We discussed the Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, next months book is "The Reader" - if you're interested in attending please let me know!

The Magic Flute - Opera Australia



Be still my beating heart. I took Clare to the opera for her birthday (very very late birthday present - I wanted to wait for the right opera to come along) and it was just as magical and enchanting as I thought it would be. I'm in love. Like I need another eye wateringly expensive habit but I think opera is the one for me. It combines everything I love about going to the theatre, the staging, the high drama, the people watching. It was magical. I cant wait to go again.

Eats/drinks

Gingerboy
Life has been a different navigational experience since going vegan (again). I forgot the hostility that some people have for others who choose to solely eat vegetables. Asian/ "inspired", indian and middle eastern are usually a safe bet to go in un-annouced vegan wise so for my lady wifes belated birthday trips I took her to her restaurant crush, Gingerboy. Boy oh boy was it just exquisite. The waitress, obviously a combination of either new to waitressing or new to Gingerboy, was extremely flummoxed by the word Vegan and didn’t know what it was but we got around it anyway. Salt and pepper tofu, the dreamiest dreamiest green vegie curry I've ever eaten served with coconut rice and the piece de resistance was dessert. Banana slices rolled in sherbet (YES SHERBERT), frittered, served with coconut sorbet that was dreamiest dreamiest creamiest creamiest. The meal was outstanding. The space is *weird*, kinda goes for opium den of the future and doesn’t quite succeed. The tables are *crammed* in there so it is difficult to navigate, the only complaint, $10 for a bottle of sparkling water, yeouch. I went into the kitchen to thank the chefs afterwards and they seemed quite chuffed to be acknowledged. It always pays to be polite but being a heavily tattooed vegan wanker I feel like I need to at least fly the flag for my kind slightly pronounced because some of them can be persnickety arseholes. Gingerboy, I'm sure as a omni you will enjoy it just as much as me.


Von Haus
This was my den of safety last year. Whenever I was feeling frayed at the seams I would perch myself in their window, eat bread with butter and honey and drink little coffees and let the neon Pellegrinis sign melt away my exposed nerve endings. Sadly I cant eat anything there anymore (I guess I could ask for olive oil instead of the butter for the 'afternoon tea'), however, its proximity to Gingerboy and my proclivity for loving it so, the lady wife and I took after dinner vino and conversation in its warm bosom. It gets more enchanting each time.

Degraves
Seriously, what the FUCK is with the staff there. I realise 'not giving a shit' is 'cool' but I just want something to eat and some wine. Fer reals. When I asked the waitress what was vegan on the menu, she said "all I can say for certain is the vegan antipasto", so I inquired if she could ask about the dips and anything else, she went away and after what seemed like an eon told me that only the vegan antipasto was, I was like "what about the olives?" "I'll ask", "yes they are" "great can I have the olives and some bread on the side please" comes back about 5 minutes later (mind you during this whole time she is smoking and drinking with her friend that is sitting next to the waitress section), 'the chef says that the bread isn't vegan" "well what bread do you serve with the vegan antipasto because you advertise warm bread served with that", she does away and comes back and says "the chef says all bread is not vegan", by then I'm doing my breathing, but essentially just annoyed. I figure just to forget it. The olives were nice. The whole ordering process, no shit, took about 15 minutes with her going back and forth and socialising in between.

The usual suspects all took a hit this week as well, the Walkers Doughnuts hot dog man, Lord of the Fries and a glass of vino at Hells Kitchen.

The Vegie Bar - Breakfast

Amazing french toast! They make their own bread, soak it in soy milk, fry it up and slather it in reduced berries with syrup. This was so so so GOOD.

Monday Melbourne Roundup

Yes it’s a day late. I had a day off, the second in the 14 months I've been at my job. I needed it. Stricken with a nagging cold that just wont budge for the past couple of weeks I havent really been able to manage doing anything, but here it goes.

Out

Realism - MTC - ok so I was drunk, obnoxious, bored and figety (usually I'm all of those things except drunk). We left at interval. My subscription to MTC has been rewarding though. The Sumner theater is cursed because the two times Clare and I have been there we have walked out at interval. Comments: Miriam Margoyles, wow just wow. Amazing comic timing but seriously it is a wonder of gravity that that woman can stand up right. She is an inverted triangle. I squealed when I realised that one of the actors in it was the guy who voiced Max in the Mad Max remix.

Corky St Clair - shop reopening - Corkys stuff is great and its greater that his shop has been re-opened. The majority of the shop was destroyed by the roof caving in. The construction of the tram super stop on Flinders st fell in on the store. Poor Corky. Go and buy something. The court case continues.

Eats/drinks

The Retreat - can I go on on record and say I fucking hate the retreat. The locals who monopolise the front bar are complete wankers and the food has gone on a steady decline in the year or so since I first went there. I guess Im always terrified of seeing people I don’t want to see there which adds to my discomfort. A friends birthday. I had the eggplant parma which wasn’t too bad. For $17 its insultingly overpriced. It’s a big bit of eggplant slathered in pasta sauce with some chips and a bit of lettuce with spanish onion.

The Vegie Bar - I'll do a proper post later as I'm going to try to record easily obtainable nice vegan food in Melbs. Clare and I had breakfast there (in all the years I've been there Ive never made it for breakky) I had the vegan french toast which was amazing. Clare had the baked eggs, not so amazing.

Lord of the Fries - dude I have been HOEING into their fake chicken nuggets lately with their satay sauce (yeah yeah I'll end up the side of a house), I've been sick and sooky and deep fried comfort foods, well comforts me. That, its on my way home and the whole perfect boozer food.

Walkers Hot Dogs (outside the doughnut shop cnr Flinders and Elizabeth) they make a mean vegan dog! This was my favourite FAVOURITE part of living in San Francisco was vegie hot dog stands EVERYWHERE. The mustard isnt vegan but most of the other condiments are. Such good late night boozer food! Way better than just getting some hot chips. Its also right next door to Lord of the Fries. Decisions decisions.

Vegan - Breakfast

Probably the easiest meal of the day to go vegan. I am so crap at eating fruit I have to do it at breakky otherwise I will not eat it during the rest of the day (unless it’s a fruit crumble yum, or sometimes I'm good and pack a fruit snack for work). I cant function without eating breakfast, seriously, its hard enough for me to have a shower before I eat, I also ride 12kms to work so I need a shitload of calories before I leave the house (especially in this cold weather), cooking yourself breakfast is the nicest thing you can do for yourself and your body. It should be the largest meal you eat in your day. Each meal should get smaller as the day goes by.

*Porridge - BEST. I chop up apples, dates, almonds, berries and toss it in a handful of oats cooked in rice milk with a dash of honey. YUM. (yes I eat honey - I'm not sure how I feel on the whole insect thing, what are your views? The vegans I know are about half and half on the honey issue) OR I usually have a pot of brown rice on the go, throw a handful of brown rice in with some rice milk, a cinnamon stick, sultanas and toasted flaked almonds. So good.

* Toast! So good, I heart heart peanut butter and honey (peanuts are an awesome source of protein), avocado and tomato with a squeeze of lemon juice and salt and pepper, baked beans, mushrooms and spinach drizzled with a little tahini, sesame seeds and olive oil, its endless!

* Cereal - seriously yo, rice milk is the shit. Stop chugging that god awful soy milk. Its gross.

* Scrambled tofu. Grab some medium firm tofu and cook it up just like you used to scramble eggs. My favs, fry up some onion and pine nuts, chuck in the tofu and 'scramble' a pinch of salt, some flavouring of some kind (I love harissa paste or sumac or a bit of curry powder to take the tofuness out of the tofu), some fresh spinach and chopped up sun dried tomatoes. Serve on toast. TOO GOOD.

*Soyghurt - I usually use whatever fruits lying around (much the same as my combo for porridge), chuck in some raw porridge oats. This is so low GI and filling I'm nowhere near hungry till well after midday eating this for breakfast. Add a dash of vanilla if you find the taste of the soyghurt a bit too much in the beginning.

*Juice it up bitches - you're poor? So what. Get a hand juicer, you can pick one up for about 10 bucks. Grab a bag of oranges. Hand juice a couple of oranges each day. Does wonders WONDERS for your immune system and already that’s one of your two daily serves DONE. If you can afford a juicer (check on ebay for one in your area - this is Australia everyones always moving overseas - I got most of my appliances for under $50 on ebay) doing a vegie or fruit juice everyday will help with your lymphatic and immune system and give you sexy healthy glowing skin.

*Pancakes - shit.yeah. A tablespoon of sugar, half a cup of flour, enough rice milk until you have a thick batter, go nuts! Grilled banana on top? Chuck some berries/shredded coconut in the mixture before putting in the pan, toast up some walnuts, sprinkle some icing sugar, slather in maple syrup (get the 100% pure canadian, go on don’t do things half arsed - so few things are NATURALLY TOTALLY VEGAN and SO AMAZING), slice some apples or grab some berries, cook them in some sugar an water until soft and put on top, you can make so many different toppings! (this applies for waffles too if you're fancy and have a waffle maker.. And CREPES! YUM!)

Replacements: Milk: Coconut milk or rice milk (or begrudginly soy milk), eggs: tofu, bacon: facon, yoghurt: soyghurt, butter: I use the olive oil based nuttelex though there are some margarines that are totally vegan (you have to read the labels real hard though) best to stick with nuttelex or olive oil (I use olive oil on toast all the time)

Any other suggestions?