the brunswick mess hall, brunswick

March is a swathe of birthdays for me, across the city, the country and the world, I feel like every day I am crying out "Happy Birthday!" or "生日快乐" or "I'm sorry I forgotttttttttt." So I can never make it to all birthday celebrations, but this year one celebration I made it to was Ash's 30th birthday dinner, at the Brunswick Mess Hall.

Arriving quite late, as this dinner was one of three events I needed to make it to this chilly Thursday evening, my ordering was a bit of a mess but I did seize quite shortly upon the Bramble Fairy cocktail, because a) it's a bramble fairy! and b) it contains jam. This was excellent, and the Mess Hall has a large array of very excellent cocktails for ordering and some lovely, helpful bar staff. Look at that adorable little pink thing! So pink. And a spotty paper straw.

Sadly, the enthusiasm I felt for the cocktails could not be continued over to the food menu. In the end I settled on the pad thai, which they cheerfully made vegan for me; and it was perfectly servicable, and when it took a million years to appear and only came out after Ash yelled at someone, they also refunded me so that was some excellent service.

The atmosphere is lovely, and I did enjoy my cocktail, so it's a shame that there's a second sadly. Let me recite some of the cocktail names for you: The Saigon Colonies Cocktail; The Ping Pong Special; Samurai's Mist. Good work, everybody! Good, racist work. With their food coming from the "Lucky Panda" kitchen and this frustrating, pan-asian and also appropriative (there's a pinata there somewhere) menu and packages, I'm probably not a return. How many appropriative and upsetting restaurants can Melbourne really support? Apparently like a poo-million (a word I stole from Hayley yesterday and do not plan to return).

The Brunswick Mess Hall
400 Sydney Road
Brunswick

Ordering at tables, eft/cc available, didn't check the toilets. Forgot about the entry. GF available.

Other Melbunnies: Cindy + Michael (ps there were DEFINITELY no 油条 on the menu; Melbourne Mademoiselle.

chatters cafe, midland

I've been to Chatters once before, in Morley. It was a perfectly serviceable visit, though nothing special: Australianised vegetables, a reasonable char kuay teow, terrible spring rolls.

So as it turns out, on weekends you can get a moderately sized yumcha menu at Chatters.



Having just had a fabulous and gigantic brunch, I was not especially hungry, so as I joined my mum and my sister for a late lunch I slowly perused the menu. And broke a glass.

I managed to get four dishes, three on the menu and one off, and this was more than enough food for me, even with my mum sampling everything. In fact, I had to take some home, for breakfast the next morning! It's okay, this was no great hardship.



From the menu, I ordered the vegetable bao and the mushroom dumpling. My mum decided to order the lotus paste bao, because she loves lotus paste. These required no mods, being already vegan.

My sister was eyeing off a meaty chee cheong fun, so I convinced the staff to do one for me, animal free. The staff were very helpful, but they did advise they'd never done one animal free before, so it was going to be very experimental.

The best of these four dishes was the vegetable bao. The bao itself was light and fluffy, and the filling was warm, fresh and tasty. I accidentally ate the paper on one of them (yucckkk). A rookie mistake. The mushrooms were also pretty good, and crunchy with water chestnuts. The lotus paste was ok.

The chee cheong fun was heavy. My mum did a comparison taste test, and the noodles of the meaty cheong fun were definitely lighter, which was odd. The vegetables were cut too thick, so didn't cook all the way, and you don't want crispiness in the middle of the chee cheong fun! Still, points for effort. Maybe they could work on it, or something.

Anyway, not the greatest yum cha ever, but nice to have something to eat.


Chatters Cafe and Restaurant
ShpT58
Midland Gate (cnr The Crescent and Cale Street)
Midland

Single Penguin Food – Days Five to Seven

On Thursday I had to brave the hordes going late night shopping, as I tried to find new clothes for Chinese New Year. My parents have been known to be some of those hordes, so I met up with them and my sister for dinner at Chatters restaurant, just outside Morley Galleria. It was standard pan-Asian food, leaning slightly towards Thai but still with that Malaysian-Chinese bent that is so common in Perth’s Asian restaurants.





We ordered a char kuay teow, slightly oily and not quite enough vegies for my preference, but still pretty tasty. The waitress assured us that the sauce for the satay vegetables was shrimp and fish oil free, so we ordered that. There was a wide array of delicious vegetables involved, baby corn and bok choy and bamboo and carrot and lots of my favourite things, and that was pretty tasty. We also ordered a claypot vegetables (a little cornstarchy but overall okay) and some spring rolls. The spring rolls were not my thing, very OTT with the pepper filling, but my sister seemed to quite like them.



On Friday I tried this mushroom masala recipe, and added some gailan in soy sauce as a side. I was so intrigued, it sounded like a great combination, but ultimately the flavour was too rich for me, and I had to cover it with my gailan in order to disguise the strong flavour. I’m not sure what created this, perhaps the addition of tahini. At least my roti was very delicious, as always.



On Saturday I ventured Very North to A Curry Affair, an Indian restaurant in Malaga. All the vegetarian curries they had on for the evening were vegan, so we tried the dhal, a potato curry and, at their insistence, the vegetable sambal. The dhal was okay, the potato was pretty good and sambal was awesome. Price was okay, but it was in Malaga.

utopia/formosa, northbridge

Utopia has been an old vego standard here in Perth town, with its delicious all-vegetarian foods and its great karaoke screens and its bubble tea, fuelling the sago obsession in this town.

Being long settled in Northbridge, it's a constant late-night haunt and, rarely being closed, it is ideal for those conventions that take you in to Northbridge for four days over long weekends, when no other restaurant is open. It is not fantastic, and it is not high cuisine, and it can be a little on the pricey side, but it is old faithful, and its mushrooms are delicious.



You grab yourself some tea and/or some water, some bowls and chopsticks, and a couple of menus. There are little forms and pens to use, and you write your the menu items down by number, before paying and ordering up at the counter. This makes dividing the bill pretty easy, but it also means you need to pay attention that you don't write down the wrong letter and end up with a steak and chips or something.



Vego restaurants are so thin on the ground in Perth, it's nice to go with a whole bunch of vego (or vego-friendly) friends and share a range of dishes, some new and some incredibly familiar.



The Hou Tou Mushrooms are one such old standard, deep fried spice mushrooms, and the attending cashews are delicious. Liz introduced us to this dish, and we order it quite often.



About a year ago there were rumblings that the fake-meats at Utopia (and also at Lotus) were not vegan, as they contained whey. Some research has given me confidence that so long as we stick to the "white meat" products, avoiding beef and pork, and also things like prawns, then we are okay. For vegan-safety, I'll probably check again when we hit twelve months, and keep doing so for so long as they keep stocking vegan-unfriendly mock meats amongst the stuff suitable for vegans.

I do, however, prefer the less mock-meaty dishes. Mock meat serves its purpose, but I continue to believe the best stuff is mock-meat free, just delicious fresh vegetables and tasty broths and wonderful spices.



On this particular visit, we had the tofu and vegetable curry, the char kuay teow, the hou tou mushrooms, the crispy fried mushrooms, the salty fried chicken and a chicken claypot. The tofu and vegetable curry suffers from the same problem as all of Utopia's curries, that is that it is exactly the same as all the other ones. The flavour of the gravy is just fine, but there is no change and that makes it a bit boring. The claypot was not great, clearly very thick with cornstarch and possibly a little msg. Utopia's kuay teow is servicable, the salty fried chicken was just fine, and the hou tou mushrooms and the crispy fried mushrooms are the reason why we go there so often, and they were exactly as we expect them to be.



utopia/formosa
utopia square
shop 14 (upstairs)
109 james street
northbridge

asian food fair, fremantle

On Sunday we ventured down to the Asian Food Fair held on the Fremantle Esplanade. The fair was to raise funds for people aiding in Burma, organised by the Buddhist Society of WA.



One of the things I love about a lot of Asian food is the way we categorise it. The fair advertised that vegetarian and non-vegetarian food would be available. 'Non-vegetarian' is not a term you see so much in Western restaurants, but you see it a fair bit especially in Indian restaurants. I love it because 'vegetarian and non-vegetarian' usually indicates there's some thought that's gone into the vegetarian food, and I have made this choice to not eat animal products but it's nice to have some choice in my food, too, which often people don't understand. I was at a workshop yesterday and seeing if there was anything I could eat (yes, I had told them in advance) and there was one thing on the menu that was probably vegan. I commented "at least there's one thing" and the guy I was with said, well, that's your choice. Which fills me with rage, like because I make this choice I should have to not eat delicious food?

Anyway, there was lots of vegetarian and vegan food at the food fair. The line for the dosai was sadly very long, so although I could smell it as we wandered past we walked on by, I will make it up to myself by going for dosai sometime soon. D and I shared a fairly average miscellaneous Indian curries and rice (it was a bit cold), and some mee goreng when the Buddhists ran out of char kuay teow.

When I have been away too long, I forget things, and the look the guy gave me when I asked if there were eggs in it and he said, no, it's strict vegetarian was a moment of oh, of course, how embarrassing for me.



We took home some mock chicken rice, which D and I fought over for breakfast (we both ate it), and some bacheng, which we have yet to eat but which will hopefully be delicious. The chicken rice was a great way to start the day, and also had some char siu which was a surprise delight, and I wish I could buy it more regularly.

The great thing about Chinese cakes is that they are often vegan by default, made only of flours and nuts and things, but I wasn't in the mood and D doesn't like them, so sadly we passed those by.