Grigons + Orr, North Melbourne

Yesterday was D's birthday, so we celebrated by going out for breakfast at Grigons & Orr Corner Store, in North Melbourne. This was delightful little cafe was recommended to us by Meveg in my request for recommendations, and seconded by Lidia.

It was amazing! I will absolutely be going back there again, it was so good.



Grigons & Orr is this tiny little corner store. There are only three very small tables inside, but several more outside, and there were blankets out for use. We managed to snag a table inside, next to the fridges stocked with the usual soft drinks as well as things like Cherry Coke. Behind the bar, the shelves were stocked to the ceiling (literally - they required a ladder to get things down) with corner store items, like matches, soap, and coconut milk.



We were promptly seated and served a jar of strawberry water. After much deliberation, we were able to order, and our waiter was very helpful.



Greg's pot of tea came with a matching tea cup, which I liked! I love these types of pots. Kind of old-school ugly, but also kind of cool. D had a soy flat white (they have bonsoy), and I went for a hot chocolate.



After a very short wait, our food arrived. D ordered the crispy pan-fried tofu with spinach, mushrooms, and spice infused soy sauce dressing (the menu online says honey, but this is no longer in the sauce, so it is all good for vegans!). The tofu is also coated in sesame seeds. This dish was so delicious, I am definitely going to order this next. D found its quantity very slightly lacking, which was fine, because I found my dish way too much, so there was plenty left over.



I ordered the cous cous porridge with coconut cream, goji berries, toasted almonds and shaved coconut. This was enormous and amazing. So good! It comes with honey, but you can get agave honey, which I chose not to get but I think the addition would have made this dish stupendous. I am not a big fan of cous cous but it wasn't really cous cous-y at all, it was just delicious. The coconut flavour wasn't overwhelming, it was just rich and slightly sweet, and the addition of the almonds and shaved coconut added a crunch to the porridge and it was brilliant. I must eat this again.

For those who are not vegan, G ordered the apple fritters with marscapone, which he really enjoyed, and the wider menu includes other fun-looking options and sides (including a snickers milk shake). Gluten Free options are available.

Brilliant! Highly recommended.

Grigons & Orr
Corner of Queensberry St and Chetwynd St
North Melbourne
Open every day

vegan chicken kiev at the east brunswick club, east brunswick

Tonight at the East Brunswick Club, I ate a vegan chicken parma (featured below).



This is because the vegan chicken kiev is so popular, with its parsley and buttery filling oozing out, that the non-vegans have been ordering it, too. So although it was on the specials board tonight, they had SOLD OUT.

It's on the specials board, no idea for how long or how often. I had it about three weeks ago, and it was AMAZING. Really really tasty. Try it, and then give them great feedback, in the hopes that it will appear all the time. It's expensive ($20) but giant, and absolutely worth it.

shakahari 二, carlton

On Wednesday evening, we ventured out to Shakahari with Sheebaface and Zanchey. This was my second visit of recent months (you can read about my previous visit here).

I was interested to discover the menu had changed since my October visit (this change felt very seasonal), especially in light of Cindy's comment on my previous post, indicating that they had kept the same menu for some time.

I commenced the evening with a delightfully pink cocktail, the name of which I sadly cannot recall. A zen something? It was bright pink and delicious, and a great opening gambit on my part. D was very excited to drink a strawberry daiquiri, delicious and strong (but not a pinch on the B.Adam school of strawberry daiquiris).



We shared a serve of the lentil parcels, and a serve of the avocado rolls, for starters. Between the four of us, we had two votes for the superiority of the lentil parcels, and two for the avocado rolls. Sadly for me, the highlight of the lentil parcels was the thin slice of nori wrapped around the middle.



D ordered the laksa. This was rich and quite different from the laksa we're used to (assam), I would perhaps consider it a curry noodles filled with mushroom, tempe and udon noodles. It was a bit too much for D so I finished it up, and it was delicious.



Zanchey selected the satay. The sauce on this dish was amazing, but the other elements were less so. He was particularly unenthused by the side salad with which it came, featuring a cold floret of broccoli. It was also the first encounter of all of us with seitan, and none of us were particularly impressed. It was very chewy.



Sheeba ordered a Moroccan something, which she said was very enjoyable. It came with some flavoured cous cous, which I sampled (and was delicious). Sheeba reported that the eggplant of the curry itself was excellent, which, given she is not usually a fan of eggplant, is high praise indeed.



Finally, after much deliberation, I picked the pot pie. This dish was rich, and I enjoyed the gravy and the slices of potato and sweet potato thinly spread across the top, but the very centre of the pie was slightly chilled, and over all I wasn't blown away. This was a slight downer, just because I enjoy being blown away by dishes at shakahari.

As an aside, usually I don't require a lot of time for deliberation of dishes, so that it took me so long highlights the issue I had with this iteration of the mains menu - nothing on it really stood out for me. The dessert menu, now, it has a pandan panacotta, sadly not vegan, but some people I know will probably take to it eagerly. And the entree menu was awesome also.

Over all though, a good evening out, and nice service.


Shakahari
201 Faraday St
Carlton

tom phat, brunswick

This morning we attempted to find this cafe on Victoria Street that Toby recommended, and failed, so we meandered down Sydney Road to try out the scrambled tofu at Tom Phat.



It was awesome! It had a really great flavour, and was definitely worth the visit. Seen here with a side of hash browns eta not vegan! :o(, though I think some added avocado would have been appropriate, as the bread was served with no spreads or oil. The tofu has to be requested without feta.



I also tried a 'sunrise,' cranberry, apple, and orange juice. This was tart but delicious, and a great morning drink.

All up, great brunch!

Tom Phat
184 Sydney Rd
Brunswick

Open Wednesday to Sunday
GF options

quick and easy tacos

We've been eating a lot of beans lately, and decided to try making some tacos with kidney beans.



The great thing about tacos are how easy they are to make. Grated carrot, diced tomato, guacamole, shredded lettuce, and in this instance a tomato-spicey-kidney bean mixture (cooked for a bit), scooped into hard taco shells. Hardly the most authentic meal ever, but certainly delicious (and very Australian-Mexicana, thanks, Ol Elpaso!)

char kueh teow + char siu

One of the reasons why I haven't been blogging a lot of food cooked at home is because I've been cooking a lot of high rotation stuff, most of which I've blogged about previously.



If I blogged about char kueh teow every time I cooked it (or even every time I ate it), it would feature on this blog about once a fortnight. I cooked it again tonight - we were supposed to go out for dinner but everyone (bar me) fell asleep and couldn't be bothered leaving the house, so I nipped out to the shops and picked up some kueh teow noodles and whipped this up.

Thanks to a post by Tahn I found some mock cha siu at a shop in Preston (Big 8 亚洲食品). The cha siu is average (not terrible but not as awesome as the stuff I used to buy from Lotus), and the shop had a good range of other staples, so it's a good reason to head to Preston more often (as it's right near La Panella)!.

Anyway. Char kueh teow. It's awesome. You can find a previously blogged recipe for char kueh teow here.

a minor place, brunswick

So many people rave about the white beans at A Minor Place, but I have never enjoyed them very much! So I'm not sure what prompted me to order them yesterday morning when we dropped in for a quick brunch (en route to the state library of victoria).



They were really good! I think it was the dukkah, though, that really made me like the beans. Also excellent were the vegan muffins and my orange juice.

I'll stop with the restaurant visits soon, really. I have been cooking things!

A Minor Place
103 Albion St
Brunswick

friends of the earth, collingwood

Every Saturday afternoon (1300 - 1600) I volunteer at the Friends of the Earth bookshop in Collingwood. I ♥ foe. During my shift I usually try to find time to eat lunch, which is always a great mixed plate of deliciousness. On Saturdays the Co-Op manager is vegan, which means that on most Saturdays the whole selection is vegan, including many of the cakes.



I really look forward to the lunch portion of my foe shift, as well as the other portions which include chatting with customers and looking at posters for great upcoming social justice events.



Recent delicious dishes have included tempeh curry (it was AMAZING), fresh made felafal (and tips to make great felafal), fresh made hummous, and the first couscousequinoa I've ever enjoyed eating.



Come visit me! And eat mystery deliciousness.

Friends of the Earth
312 Smith St
Collingwood

Open for lunch every day of the week, on Sundays there are no mixed plates, it's Funky Pies with salad.

trippy taco, collingwood

I've heard so much about Trippy Taco, and now that I've been I love it.

I've visited a few times now, so sadly I can't remember what this is, but I had a burrito and it was totally delicious. And the fries were great. And I really loved the black beans in my taco one time. Oh yeah.






Trippy Taco
48a Smith St
Collingwood

mr natural vegetarian pizza [north fitzroy]

With the assistance of Google Maps, we worked out that we are just within the 4km delivery radius specified by Mr Natural Vegetarian Pizza. So one lazy evening we decided to take advantage of this excellent and fortuitous piece of geography, and order in some pizza.



The eggplant pizza was delicious, but not super exciting.



The pumpkin on the other hand was very delicious! I ate that one right up.

Mr Natural's prices are a bit on the expensive side ($16.40 for some of the large pizzas) but very delicious. They also do gluten free bases, for a small extra fee. They also have vegan cheese of the melty good kind.

Mr Natural Vegetarian Pizza
469 Brunswick Street
North Fitzroy
Open every night

breakfasting and brunching (a request for recs)

When we first moved to Melbourne I thought we'd be breakfasting and brunching all over the place; I love breakfast quite a lot, and it was something to which I was looking forward. Alas, after almost four months here I find that we've gone out for breakfast or brunch exactly twice, both times to Ceres.

I love the Ceres vegan big breakfast quite a lot, but over the next couple of weeks we've got quite a lot of Perth friends coming across to Melbourne, and we'd love to take them out. So if you'd please, I'd love it if you'd share your breakfast (vegan-friendly) recommendations with me. We're happy to travel for good breakfast, but preferably somewhere vaguely serviceable by tram.

sunday afternoon fake meat noms

Neither White Lotus nor Enlightened Cuisine are open for lunch on a Sunday. Can anyone recommend an Azn fake-meat restaurant that's open for Sunday lunch?

<3

cinnamon tea cake

OH YEAH DELICIOUSNESS.

This tea cake was really light and fluffy, and it had (has) a perfect cinnamon flavour, I baked it yesterday because D wasn't feeling very great and it was perfect. I am going to make this all the time. Maybe I'll have a tea party.



cinnamon tea cake

I'd never made tea cake before yesterday, so I modified a recipe from taste.com.au. I love that website.

ingredients
100g nuttelex
three quarters of a cup of caster sugar
half a tablespoon of vanilla essence
one and a half cups of SR flour
one quarter cup of plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 heaped (chinese soup)spoons of apple sauce
1 tbl ground cinnamon
half a cup of milk

topping:
1 tbl caster sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbl melted nuttelex


method
Cream together nuttelex, caster sugar, and vanilla essence. Slowly add apple sauce, and beat well. Sift flours, cinnamon, and baking powder together. Mix in to the nuttelex mixture, alternating with the milk.

In a round tin (greased), bake covered for 45 minutes, at 170C, then uncovered for 15 minutes. Leave to sit in the oven for five minutes, then remove from oven and let cool in tin for fifteen minutes. Remove from tin, and pour topping over the top.

Cool completely and serve.

accidentally vegan #1

This isn't a big thing for non-Australians, but Arnotts are The Brand in Australia, I can't think of a week of my time in Australia as a child that didn't include something Arnotts in my lunch box - Tim Tams and Mint Slice and Iced Vovos and Pizza Shapes and oh nom. Most Australian vegans (I find) have an "I miss X Arnotts product" somewhere in the back of their minds. Mine is Iced Vovos, Mint Slice, and Pizza Shapes.

I can't have any of those back (though Leda does an awesome imitation Mint Slice), but oh my word, I hope you understand how excited I was when I found out that Arnotts' BBQ Shapes are vegan.



I understand that this is old hat, apparently every other Aussie vegan already knew this, but not I, and my word did I eat a lot in a very short time. How I had missed them!



I also recently learnt that Allens' jelly beans are vegan! OH DELICIOUS JELLY BEANS, no terrible secrets just delicious sugary ness.

I'm excited.

Relatedly, if anyone knows of any vegan (or even vego) musk sticks, please let me know. It's not for me, it's for a friend. ;oP

book: vegan planet

So SJ picked up Vegan Planet ages ago, whilst we were out perusing books together, and promptly made the lemon risotto (p237), and it was delicious. I finally got a copy of it (thanks, Mum!) for my birthday earlier this year, but promptly moved across the country so didn't get a chance to try it out until recently.

As regular readers of this blog (or anyone who has ever talked about food with me for about half a second) would know, I love noodles. A lot. And my friend C has talked up some drunken noodles in Mt Lawley, so when I saw this recipe (p262) in Vegan Planet I thought I'd give it a go.



These were good. The flavour was a bit understated, but overall okay.



I've been really getting into tempeh lately, so I was excited to give this pappardelle cacciatore a go (p249). Unfortunately it was quite bland. If I were to give it another go, I would slice the tempeh a lot thinner, and go OTT on the fresh rosemary. And I would probably add some dried chilli flakes.



Finally, I tried out the red bean and sweet potato curry (p286). It was bland and watery, which was a disappointment. I think it needed some more cumin and curry powder.

Overall, I like the potential of Vegan Planet, but it needs a whole lot more spices and herbs for it to be my thing.