Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Aunty Menas (again) - Wellington - New Zealand

We found ourselves in Wellington during the day on New Years Eve when it was freezing cold & bucketing down rain.  After we had enjoyed our first visit to Aunty Menas, we decided to go back for a bowl of laksa to warm ourselves up which ended up being the perfect idea.

We were pretty hungry by the time we got there so ordered vegetarian nuggets to start with.

Vegetarian Nuggets $7.50
These were trashtastic mock chicken nuggets that tasted very similar to their non vegan counterparts (from what I remember of them.)

Dumpling laksa $11.50
I ordered the dumpling laksa.  Oh my goodness this was so good.  It was absolutely the perfect thing to sit down to while it poured rain outside.  It was creamy & mildly spicy & filled with dumplings, tofu & vegies.

Chicken laksa $12.50
Greg ordered the mock chicken laksa which was the same as mine but with mock chicken instead of dumplings.  He very much enjoyed his laksa as well.

We chatted to one of the owners before we left who was very friendly & coincidentally a former Melbournite.  I really liked Aunty Menas & will definitely be heading there next time I find myself in Wellington.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Aunty Menas - Wellington, New Zealand

Greg's family are all in New Zealand & somehow I have never been over there so we decided to go over for 2 weeks for an NZ Christmas.  Firstly, let me just say that from the little I saw of New Zealand it is absolutely beautiful.  The food I ate was great, the wine I had was fantastic & the vintage clothes shopping is incredible!
We were mostly based in Wellington as we were staying with my mother in law who lives in a suburb of Wellington & although we didn't eat out heaps as we cooked for ourselves a lot I did have a few places that I wanted to eat at in NZ.
After reading this post by Carla I was pretty keen to check out Aunty Menas, so our first day checking out Wellington we headed to Aunty Menas for lunch.  Aunty Menas is based on Cuba Street which is a very vegan friendly part of town & I absolutely loved that part of Wellington.
It is a very unassuming restaurant but the sign out the front proclaiming it as a Vegetarian & Vegan Restaurant was a pretty happy sight to see.



We were greeted by a brusque, efficient man who advised us that must of the items on the menu are vegan.  We ordered, dumplings for Holly, Chow Mee for me & Dumpling Soup for Greg.
Dumplings $8.50
Holly's dumplings were really good.  Steamed & then lightly fried on the bottom & filled with vegetables.  Holly loved these!

Chow Mee $13
This was so delicious, I want to eat it again now!  It was a delicious, charry stir fry of noodles, mock chicken & vegetables.  The one vegetable that Holly flatly refuses to eat is broccoli & even she ate the broccoli out of this because it was so tasty!
Dumpling Soup $11.50
Greg is a big fan of dumpling soup & he really enjoyed this.  It looked quite bland when it came out but it was actually quite well flavoured & was filled with dumplings, cauliflower, broccoli & carrots.

I really enjoyed my meal at Aunty Menas & thought it was extremely well priced (especially when converted to AUD!)


Aunty Menas
167 Cuba Street
Wellington