Las Vegan Bakery

After nearly 11 months on maternity leave (aka the best time ever!) I returned to work last week.  I am lucky enough to be only working 3 days a week but it is making me appreciate the weekends again.  So this weekend I decided that we should head out to breakfast to start the weekend off in the best possible way.

I hadn't been to Las Vegan since the new owners had taken over & Greg has never been so with the lure of pancakes we decided to go there.  After much indecisiveness I ended up getting scrambled tofu on rosemary & olive sourdough with tempeh bacon & avocado while Greg got the sour cherry pancakes.

Greg loved his pancakes, they were fluffy & cinamonny & very delicious.

The sourdough toast with my breakfast was filled with big chunks of olives & was amazing, I would have been more than happy just to have that toast on its own.   But I don't think that the olive & rosemary flavour went well with the curried flavour of the scrambled tofu.  I liked both things separately but not so much together.  The tempeh bacon was also really, really good & has inspired me to start experimenting with making my own.

Overall we did really enjoy our breakfasts & it was a great start to the day.  We paid $25 for both meals & a coffee each.  They are also quite baby friendly with a few high chairs available.

I couldn't find anyone else talking up the Las Vegan breakfast, but others who have paid a visit at other times of the day are Vegan About Town, In the Mood for Noodles & Easy as Vegan Pie.


Las Vegan Bakery
22 Smith Street

Collingwood

03 9415 9001

Bo De Trai

Last weekend Greg & I found ourselves over the west side of town around lunchtime so luring Greg with the promise of wonton soup, we decided to make our way to Bo De Trai.  I love Vietnamese food & it is something that I have not gone out to eat much of since being vegan so I have been wanting to go to Bo De Trai for awhile.

I was planning on having a wonton soup but it was a warm day & I ended up getting the spring rolls on rice vermicelli.  This ended up being exactly what I wanted, not too heavy or spicy but with good flavours.  It was plain vermicelli noodles with lettuce, mint, chopped spring rolls & it came with a sauce on the side.

Greg went with the wonton soup which he enjoyed.  I tried some & it was nice, but featured coriander which I am not a fan of.  I am planning on going back soon & getting it without coriander which I think will be really good.

It is cheap & cheerful with fast efficient service - what more could you want from lunch?

Other bloggers who have been to Bo De Trai are Where's the beef, This is Vegan Melbourne, Footscray Food Blog & Aduki

Bo De Trai
94 Hopkins St
Footscray
9689 9909

The Abyssinian

I am so, so behind & have lots of posts to write for places I have eaten out at & some new cookbooks that I have so stay tuned!

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago a group of us went to The Abyssinian for my friend's birthday.  I have never eaten Ethiopian food before, but have been keen to go here for ages so was pretty happy when told we were going there.

The staff were wonderful & suggested we all get the combination plates to share so we did as we were told.  The others got meaty plates & being the only vegos there Greg & I got a vegetarian plate.  It is a massive big round plate covered in delicious injera covered in little bits of all the different vego dishes.  It was so, so good.  The food was super tasty & fun because you get to eat with your hands & who doesn't love that??  The highlight was without a doubt the shiro which is chickpeas ground to gravy tasting deliciousnes.  A big bowl of this might be a bit too much but just having a little bit was very yum.  I think our meal was $35 & well worth it, they are also BYO which is my favourite thing ever.  I am definitely looking forward to returning soon.

The Abyssinian
277 Racecourse Road

Kensington

03 9376 3031

East Brunswick Club - Weekend Breakfast II

For Greg's first Father's Day I told him that I would take him for a meal of his choice & he decided that he would like to go back to EBC for breakfast & try the pancakes.

I was quite hungry so got the Vegan Big Breakfast (which Greg got last time) & he went for The Elvis pancakes.
My breakfast was good, but I am still not sure that I love their scrambled tofu, although I think it was better than last time.  The toast is also much better, it is now turkish bread & it comes with nuttelex on it.  But the whole time I was jealously watching Greg eat his pancakes because they looked amazing!  I had a little bit & they were so, so good - fluffy & perfect.  They came with heaps of maple syrup, fake bacon, banana, ice cream & peanut butter.  Greg really enjoyed them & I want to go back next weekend & eat this.

Vegan Big Breakfast

The Elvis Pancakes

Breakfast is available on weekends from 12-4pm & they now also do $12 parmas on the weekend after 2pm.

East Brunswick Club

280 Lygon Street

East Brunswick  

03 9388 9794

Vegie Hut

We had a family dinner on a Monday night recently. The original plan had been to go to Enlightened Cuisine but they aren't open on Monday nights, so in the end it was decided to go to Vegie Hut as it is pretty much in the middle of the 3 locations that the 6 of us were coming from. 

There were a couple of issues - first of all, there was a big table with way too many people around it right behind us which made those of us on the side of the table next to them really squished in although there were quite a few empty tables. Secondly, the service was pretty much non existent, we had to flag down waitresses to order, to clear the table & to get the bill & no one was ever offered drinks. Thirdly, and maybe this is just because I love the Enlightened Cuisine banquet, but for the most part I found the food very meh. I am guessing that my family felt the same way because there were heaps of left overs & no one took any.

So, the food. We got a banquet which was pretty reasonable at $139 for 6 people with far more than we could eat.  Apologies for the awful photos.

Oriental Entrees Platter - in the middle were pickled vegetables which were really good, definitely the highlight of the platter

Shark Fin Soup - it was very gelatinous, but the flavour was gingery & quite nice

I think these were chilli prawns although they were not at all spicy - they were good though, deep fried prawniness

Lamb hot pot - quite nice with big pieces of mushrooms in it

This was some sort of fish, I wasn't a big fan of this at all

Black Pepper Steak - This was really good

Bamboo string on Chinese veggies - I don't even remember what this tasted like, but there was a lot left over

Dessert - this was delicious, my highlight of the meal!  It was like a lychee juice with jelly, sultanas, goji berries & lychees in it - I could have eaten a lot of this.  Note a crashed out Holly in the background getting cuddles from her Aunty

I think the meal would have been better of we chose our own food, I just think the banquet might have been a bad move.  I am still a huge fan of their Sunday yum cha.

Other Melb veg bloggers who have been to Vegie Hut are: Where's the Beef, Lisa & Vegan About Town.

Vegie Hut

984 Whitehorse Road

Box Hill

03 9898 2287

East Brunswick Club - Weekend Breakfast

I caught up with a friend for dinner at East Brunswick Club recently & was a little bit excited to see that they are now doing breakfast from 12-4 on weekends.  For the vegan options they have The Vegan Basic ($10) which is sourdough toast with facon & scrambled tofu, the Vegan Big Breakfast ($15) which is sourdough toast, mushrooms, roasted tomato, spinach, scrambled tofu, facon, fauxsage & a hash brown.  They also have 3 different sorts of pancakes which are veganisable -

• with maple syrup & ice cream 
• with maple syrup, bacon & ice cream 
• the 'Elvis' which I think consisted of something along the lines of peanut butter, banana, bacon, maple syrup & ice cream

I got the Vegan Basic & Greg got the Vegan Big Breakfast.  The scrambled tofu was made with silken tofu so it was much more what I remember the texture of scrambled eggs to be like than any other scrambled tofu I have tried before.  I am not sure about this, I liked it but didn't love it & was not a big fan of the toast that they use.  Greg, however, really enjoyed his breakfast & I tried his hash brown which was really good.
I am interested in going back & trying the pancakes because they did look pretty good.

East Brunswick Club

280 Lygon Street

East Brunswick  

03 9388 9794

Va Bene Pizzeria & Costco

One of my friends is currently living at the Docklands so today we met up for some Costco shopping & lunch.  I had never been to Costco before & was pretty excited about it.  I didn't buy too much today but I did buy a bulk pack of lint rollers (I was wearing black jeans & was having cat hair issues) & a big bag of dried blueberries.  Any suggestions of what I can bake the blueberries into?

We went for lunch at Va Bene Pizzeria which is his favourite local place.  The wait staff were incredibly friendly & were happy to accommodate me with vegan eats offering me a few different pasta & pizza options.  No pics because I forgot my camera, but I had the Pepperoncini pizza which had roasted capsicum, caramelised onion & parsley which was delicious.  It was not cheap at $19 but there aren't a whole lot of cheap eating options over at Docklands so if you are going to pay a bit for lunch it is nice to get some good service with it.

Va Bene Pizzeria

T10 Shed 9, Central Pier

161 Harbour Esplanade

Docklands Victoria 3008

03 8623 9690

www.vabenepizzeria.com

The Press Club II

Last night Greg & I went to The Press Club for a belated anniversary date.  We decided to go there since I had enjoyed the lunch that I had there so much & Greg was keen to go after hearing me raving about it.  Since we were having an expensive meal anyway we decided to go for the degustation menu.  I love a good degustation menu, I think because I decide what we eat every night I love that someone just brings me lots of food & I don't have to think about what I want to eat.

To start with, we were given complimentary pickled vegetables, Dench olive bread & Dench sourdough bread (not pictured).  The olive bread is so good & the breads were served with kalamata olive oil & organic black salt.  Greg says that I always use too much salt but he even loved the black salt.

 

Our first course was 3 salads, they were a dried tomato salad, a skewer with watermelon & roasted capsicum & olive bread salad - all deliciousness.  The dried tomato salad was particularly good - it was really intensely flavoured & I loved it.  Although at this point Greg was concerned that he was going to be hungry which he really should not have been worried about.  It is a terrible photo, but you get the general idea.

Next course was supposed to be "fish and chips", they normally serve chips with taramasalata, but for us they did chips & hommous with olive oil couscous.  The olive oil couscous is olive oil that has been frozen in liquid nitrogen so it looks super impressive when it is served up & also looks like couscous, but melts into delicious liquid olive oil on the hommous.  Our lovely waitress instructed us to dip the chips into hommous & eat which we did & it was really, really good.  The chips were quite possibly the best chips ever.

Next course was steamed Zucchini flowers, watermelon, pickled watermelon rind and daikon.

Next up was pasta with lemon, olive oil & fresh herbs with shaved Tasmanian truffles - simple & ridiculously good, although by this stage I was getting pretty full!

Then came out baby vegetables with celery gel, crumbled carrot cake & sunflower seeds.  Again it was another course of deliciousness.  I am not sure but I think there are purple carrots in there which were my favourite.

Then came dessert & I was really, really full but could not say no when presented with vanilla rice pudding with candied walnuts - I would like to eat this every day it was so good!

At this stage I was really hoping that the meal was over because I had eaten way too much, but we were then presented with our final course - poached pear with orange gel & pistachio praline with blackberry sorbet on crumbled pistachios. The blackberry sorbet was amazing!!  I am not a huge fan of sorbets but this was incredible!

It is certainly not a cheap meal at $125 each, but we were there for 3 hours, had amazing food with impeccable presentation & fantastic service - I think it is great for a special occassion.  And I am still full this morning!

Wood Spoon Kitchen

After reading about Wood Spoon Kitchen in the 2009 wrap ups from both Toby & Lisa I decided that I really wanted to go there so when I planned to go out to dinner with 2 of my favourite people last night - Wood Spoon Kitchen it was. There was a bit of confusion to start with because my friend Anthony beat Greg & I there & said that there was no booking & we would have to sit with other people, but then I found him sitting in Wabi Sabi. Once we got to Wood Spoon Kitchen they had my booking & we had a table to ourselves.

For entree we shared edamame which I love


And Agedashi Tofu - yum!!



For main I had Dengaku Don which was big chunks of super soft & delicious eggplant with other vegies & chunks of tofu in a miso-y sauce on rice - delicious, I absolutely love eggplant like this.



Greg had the vego miso soup with noodles which he liked but didn't love.



And my friend Anthony is omni so he ate something chicken-y which he liked.

I decided to get dessert, mostly because there was a vegan dessert on the menu. I ordered the Pumpkin Dango in Coconut Milk. I wasn't expecting much but this was my highlight, I absolutely loved it. It was little balls of super smooth pumpkin (like gnocchi) in a really sweet & creamy coconut milk topped with red beans - it was really, really tasty.





It is a really nice little restaurant, fairly quiet so you can chat easily & really friendly but unobtrusive service, we were there for a few hours & it was really relaxed & we never felt rushed.

Wood Spoon Kitchen
88 Smith Street
Collingwood

Automatic Cafe

Greg & I found ourselves at the Casino with some time to kill & in need of lunch recently & we ended up at Automatic which has 2 items on the menu marked as vegan. One is a breakfast which is baked beans & the other is yellow lentil dahl with warm oven bread and tomato kusundi. We both decided on the dahl. This was $11.90 & huge!! It was a big bowl of bowl with a small bowl of tomato kusundi & an enormous pile of pizza bread which would be the equivalent of a large pizza. The pizza bread was a bit weird with the dahl but it was still quite nice. We could only manage to eat half each so it would have been a super cheap meal if we had got one serve & shared. I actually really liked the dahl so it is a decent option if you happen to be over that side of the city & Elightened Cuisine isn't open.



Automatic Cafe
Crown
8 Whiteman Street
South Melbourne

The Press Club

I went to The Press Club for my work Christmas lunch today. We were trying to work out somewhere to go months ago & having read a review on Where's the Beef I had been looking forward to trying it so I suggested it, everyone was happy & off we went today.

When we first got there the waitress knew 2 of us were vegan & said that we could get a-la carte meals of spring vegetables or stuffed zucchini flowers or go for the 4 course kerasma where they bring out a variety of dishes. At this point, after essentially being offered a plate of vegies I was not too optimistic so we decided to go for the kerasma which proved to be the right decision. My meal was AMAZING! I didn't take photos but I should have because the food not only tasted amazing but looked amazing.

The 5 courses were:

• Tomato tea, marinated olives, pickled cabbage
  
• Steamed zucchini floweres with a watermelon & cherry tomato salad
• Risoni with mushrooms & roasted capsicums - seriously simple & the best meal I have eaten in a long time
• Spring vegetables with pine nuts, greek salad, cabbage salad & green beans in a tomato & breadcrumb sauce
• Dessert tasting plate - this was enormous & the absolute highlight, it was: watermelon, orange & mint salad, mango sorbet, berry sorbet, greek donuts with an orange sugar syrup

There was heaps of food & it was well considered & the service was friendly & attentive despite how busy it was. The only issue was that it was quite noisy, but we were seated close to the kitchen & there were a lot of big groups there. I am definitely going back there again.