Gasometer II

It's been a busy week with Christmas preparations getting all the food ready for Christmas, two days of Christmas celebrations (Swedish tradition is to celebrate Christmas eve) and spending time with the family doing touristy things around the city. 

On Monday though the family all went to visit old friends and we were left looking for ways to fill our day. After spending most of the day doing loads of washing and cleaning (it's amazing how many towels and sheets get used up with all the extra people around) Kev decided we needed to go out for dinner, so took me to Gasometer. It must have been the place to be last night because soon after we sat down, K and Toby from In the Mood for Noodles came in too. Small world :-)

Our intention when we ordered food was to have just entrees then mains, no dessert. Unfortunately despite ordering entrees and mains as separate courses all the dishes came out at the same time.

We ordered the Spanish Style Mushrooms, which I thought were really tasty. Kev didn't like these much though, he couldn't pin point what is was exactly but there was something in the flavour of the sauce that he didn't like. That just meant I got to keep this entree to myself :-)

The second entree we ordered was the smoked tofu strips. These were great just like last time we ordered them, though I don't think they were as spicy as I remember. Next time I'm ordering these brutal instead of just spicy.

For mains I really wanted to get the Vegan Chorizo Burger that Kev ordered last time, but there was a main on the menu that I hadn't tried yet so I ordered the Cuban Beans with Rice, vegan. Bad choice. Really bad choice. The beans were super dry, there was waaay too much rice, and not a lot of flavour in the dish at all, except for something resembling soap. Even after I tried to improve the flavour by pouring the sauce left from the mushrooms over the beans, I still couldn't eat it. Kev didn't like it either, he took one fork full and that was all he was prepared to eat. I wish I had ordered the burger instead and just left this one untried.

Kev was a lot happier with his main than I was with mine. He ordered the black bean burrito, with dairy cheese. He was really pleased with the flavour and really enjoyed it. His only criticisms were that pot that looked like it was meant to be tomato salsa seemed to be just mashed tomato with a little water and no flavour, and that he would have preferred more beans and less rice, but since he doesn't like rice much that is to be expected.

Since I didn't eat my main, I ended up having room for dessert. Every cloud has a silver lining :-) I ordered the vegan pumpkin pie with gingerbread ice-cream. This was really, really, really good. The gingerbread ice-cream was good just on it's own, but was amazing with the lightly spiced pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is now my second favourite way to serve pumpkin, behind pumpkin curry.

Aside from the mix up with all our food coming out at once, and the disappointment with one of our mains, we had a really good night out.

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.