Gasometer, Collingwood

I've been wanting to go to try Gasometer in Collingwood for a few weeks now after hearing a new veg friendly place had opened. I had thought we were going there a few weeks back, but my boyfriend had other ideas - on the way there he drove me to the place we first met, proposed and then took me to Shakahari where he had booked a table with some of our friends to celebrate.

Tonight being the last weeknight we are going to be able to go out together for dinner on a weeknight for a while, we decided to venture across the westgate and finally check out Gasometer. We had heard really good things about the place, and we were certainly not disappointed. I think the place has only been open for just over a month or so in what used to be an Irish pub. They've done a really nice job on the place. Something about the interior kind of reminded me of some of the old school train stations we saw in europe though I am really not sure why that is. This is one of the places that has gone on the list of places we want to take the family from Sweden when they come over for Christmas.

There were many vegetarian and vegan options on the menu, and Kev, being the awesome guy he is, ordered dishes that I could try too, even though he was tempted by the ricotta and goats cheese options. We got there right at peak dinner time so it was really quite busy and the food orders took a little while. This just meant we had time to enjoy a beer or two.

Their menu can be found here - Gasometer Menu. Along with the standard menu there was a sheet of specials for the day. We did consider ordering the street corn from the specials menu, it looked really interesting (I can't remember what the description was, only that it sounded like I wanted to eat it), but we opted to try 2 items from the regular entree menu - the fried olives stuffed with vegan roasted pepper cheese, and the smoked tofu strips (ordered as spicy not brutal because we are wusses).

Entree serve of olives

Inside the olives

Smoked tofu strips

The tofu strips were really tasty, and the ranch dipping sauce was great. I'm glad we only ordered spicy and not the brutal, the spicy was perfect. If we'd gone for the brutal I might not have any taste buds left. Kev and I both agreed that the fried olives were absolutely amazing! I think I will have to try making something like this myself at home with black olives. Olives are awesome.

For mains I ordered the areapas with red chilli seitan. The whole dish looked so appetizing when it came out, with a beautiful mix of colours, and I'm always partial to anything that comes with a lime wedge! I was expecting the seitan to be spicy but it wasn't. At least I don't think it was, my tongue could have still been recovering from the tofu strips... I really enjoyed this dish, particularly the corn areapas. Kev was a little less enthused than I was, but he doesn't really like the texture of seitan. Flavour wise he thought it was great.

Kev ordered the vegan chorizo burger, and loved it. He was kind enough to let me have a bite, and it has to be up there as one of the best veg burgers I have ever had! I will definitely be ordering this again. The chips were great too, again some of the best I have ever had. And it came with a slice of pickle!!!!! It's the little touches that make a great meal perfect.

There was a vegan dessert on the menu, pumpkin pie with ginger ice cream. Unfortunately neither Kev or I had any room left for dessert so had to give this a miss. We figured when we ordered the 2 entrees that this was probably going to happen, but the starter menu items just sounded too good to pass up. Next time we will skip the entrees and give the pumpkin pie a go.