Jasmine Inn, Vegan Friendly Thai Restaurant - Yarraville

After a few bad experiences ending in allergic reactions, I've become rather sceptical of thai restaurants claiming that their dishes are or can be made vegetarian. I've been places where I have explained my allergies and ordered dishes based on the kitchen staffs assurances that a dish is vegan and shellfish free, only to have an allergic reaction a couple of bites in because there is a shellfish paste in the sauce or tiny bits of dried fishy things sprinkled on top as a garnish. Sadly after a couple of bad experiences, I was convinced I couldn't eat at a thai restaurant.

When I was invited to meet friends for dinner at one of the thai restaurants in Yarraville, I was very wary but agreed to go along, resigning myself to ordering rice. My friend had chosen Jasmine Inn which they advised me was the best of the thai places in Yarraville, for the restaurants atmosphere, the service quality and for the food itself.

When the wait staff came to hand out menus, I explained my allergy and asked if they could point out any vegan dishes. I was pleasantly surprised when they handed me a special A4 sheet sized menu, listing all vegan entrees, mains and sides. Turning the menu over, it had a list of all gluten free dishes too. They were both decent sized lists for a non veg, non GF restaurant. That they had enough awareness to create a specific menu for vegan customers had me starting to feel reassured that I could order safely.

We skipped entrees and went straight to mains. Unfortunately I only got 1 photo of food on the night, which was of the Salt and Pepper tofu main I ordered. I know, salt and pepper tofu is probably the safest thing I could have ordered with no sauce to hide fishy bits in, but it was what I felt like at the time and I was not disappointed. This dish was more tofu than I could manage to eat so my friends helped me out by trying some. The flavour was great, up there as one of the best salt and pepper tofu dishes I have had. The batter was perfectly crisp with the silky tofu inside. 

Crispy fried salt and pepper tofu

As none of our meals really came with much in the way of vegetables, we also ordered a plate of stir fried mixed vegetables to share which was very nice, along with roti and coconut rice as sides.

I have to say I am loving the increasing awareness of vegetarian, vegan and gluten free dining I am seeing in Yarraville and Seddon area recently.

Jasmine Inn

03 9689 8899

16 Anderson Street
Yarraville.

Urban Spoon Rocks

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.

Shakahari - Carlton

With the family over from Sweden we have been doing a lot of dining out while we have been out and about doing things around the city. There are a lot of blog entries just waiting for time to post them. So many photos of food and so little time to post... 


Last nights dinner at Shakahari though was so good it warranted forcing some time to write an entry.


One of my sisters in law had her birthday fall during the families visit, so we have done a couple of birthday dinners to celebrate. Last night was the second dinner where we took Agneta to Shakahari for a special birthday dinner. Lisa and John, our niece and nephew, also joined us for dinner.


We hoped our love of Shakahari would be shared by our guests. When they opened the menu and were more than a little apprehensive, but we have seen this a few times when we have taken omni guests here before. The menu at Shakahari is unusual if you are not used to veg dining, and a lot of the ingredients were things that our family had not seen before, coupled with language differences and one guest being a 17 year old boy, the menu was probably not overly inspiring to them.

So we started by ordering a few entrees for the table to get things going:

We ordered the Chia, Buckwheat, Besan trio, which was a really tasty gluten free, vegan flatbread with a delicious coriander coconut dip. This was really popular all around the table.

The Scent of a Green Papaya - a green papaya salad with a tangy dressing. I have seen this on the menu before, but this was the first time I had tried this entree. It was wonderfully crisp and refreshing.

The Avocado Magic, which is tempura avocado with capsicum and eggplant, with a coriander sauce. I've ordered this a few times before, on other occasions the batter has been undercooked in some parts of the roll but tonight it was all well cooked, and was beautifully presented. Unfortunately Kev got a little over enthusiastic about this plate arriving and moved one of the pieces from the display before I could get a picture of the presentation of the rolls.

And finally we ordered the Quinoa Gnocchi, triangles of gnocchi made from quinoa and rice flour with balsamic sauce. These also went really fast.

The entrees all went down really well and got great reviews around the table. The only issue we had was getting the plates to fit on the table - there were five of us dining and we had booked for 5, but the table we had was a 4 person table with a 5th seat tacked on the end. There was just not enough room for all the plates and glasses. I was impressed that ALL the items on the entree menu were listed as vegan and gluten free. I think this is the first time I have seen the menu like this.

We moved on to ordering mains. Kev didn't take long to order, it's a pretty safe bet he will order the Satay Legend (you can rename it Satay Shakahari if you like, but it will still always be the satay legend). Kev gave some pieces of the seitan to Agneta and Lisa, the first time they had tried it, and they said they were amazed at the meaty texture and liked the flavour of the satay sauce.

Agneta ordered the Couscous Ala Caspian, couscous served topped with a spiced baked tomato, eggplant and chickpea stew which she really enjoyed.

John and I ordered the Spaghetti. This dish was gluten free pasta with 3 kinds of mushrooms, asparagus and pine nut pesto. Lisa also wanted to try this but does not like mushrooms, so the chef made her a version without mushrooms, and put some broccoli in instead. I thought it was very cool of them to do a major substitution to a dish like this. No one noticed any difference between the wheat pasta we are used to and the gluten free pasta in this dish. John and Lisa loved their spaghetti. I enjoyed it too but did find there were more pine nuts than I would usually like, and a couple of the mushrooms were strangely chewy, almost like they were dried mushrooms that had not been soaked long enough. I just picked those out to the side. I can forgive little things like that when the asparagus is done so well. 

Again all the main menu items were vegan, and most of them gluten free. On other visits I remember there being a few dishes that had cheese in them on the mains, but on this occasion any cheese was soy cheese. I hope this is a trend that continues here. While none of us are vegan, no one even noticed that the dishes they were eating were vegan or even gluten free. It's good to see that there are more choices available for GF-Vegans nowadays.



After the entrees and mains, we were kind of full, but still managed to get some desserts to share.

We got the Thai Delight - baked cassava fudge with coconut black rice pudding and mango slices. This was not what any of us expected. I suppose when we saw fudge in the description we imagined something more like a traditional english caramel fudge, so the texture of the cassava fudge was unexpected. After the initial shock at the texture though, we all enjoyed this. Kev also liked that this dessert didn't seem to be overly sweet either.

We also tried the Soy Almond Panacotta. Agneta is a fan of the standard dairy based panacotta so was curious to see an almond based version. She was not disappointed, she said it was just as good, maybe even better than the panacotta she is used to. The combination of the smooth almond custard, tangy orange coulis and almond toffee was a perfect dessert. 

Kev chose the seasonal fruit crumble, which was mango this time. I didn't try this one myself after Kev had poured cream into the middle of it, but everyone else said it was delicious.

As usual all food was beautifully presented, everyone loved their meals and there was a lot of plate sharing and tasting going on. The service was also the best we have had there for a while. On previous visits we have had waiters forget to bring us water when we requested it, forget our wines and were just generally slow. On this occasion service was drastically improved. Our very courteous and patient waiter gave us water as soon as we sat down and the regularly came around to top our glasses up. We had very prompt with service all night, and the staff were very helpful with explaining menu items through the language barrier. I am still really impressed how easy it was to get a substitution to the spaghetti too. 


The menu changes on a fairly regular basis. Other recent reviews and blog posts off the same menu period can be found over at In the Mood for Noodles, Vegan About Town and I'm So Hungreeee.

East Brunswick Club

I can't believe it has taken me this long to get around to going to East Brunswick Club! Ok, so it is on the wrong side of the city for me and finding excuses to be in the area is a challenge, but I still should have found time to get there long ago.


I was taken by surprise by the size of the portions here! Massive! If we had known how big the serves were we would not have ordered a side of chilli fries with vegan cheese as well as mains. The chilli fries were great! I was expecting them to come out as fries with spicy salt coating topped with beans, they came out with this amazing spicy nacho style bean topping. And with loads of chilli! They were way more food than we needed, but seriously worth it.

For mains we decided to go the vegan parmas.

Kev ordered the Nacho style parma, which was a bit of a surprise to me. He eats very little meat, and has always had a loathing for eating chicken. To the point that he can't stand to eat mock chicken dishes. So I wasn't expecting him to order something that is made to look like chicken. I also wasn't expecting him to love it!

I ordered the traditional vegan parma. I swear the menu said this was meant to come with vegan ham, but I may have read the menu wrong. The parma was great, all fried and crispy with a tasty tomato topping. Though I had gotten the idea of it having some form of vegan bacon on top so was initially a little disappointed, I got over this pretty quickly.

 

There were some really tempting dessert options on the menu - peanut butter chzcake and hedgehog, both vegan - but after parma and chilli fries there was just no way I could tackle any more food. This just means I have to make time to head back out to EBC again, this time to try the philly cheese steak and a dessert.

There are heaps of other bloggers who have posted on East Brunswick Club. Check out a few of them here, here, here and here.

Kri Kri Mezethopoleion - Veg friendly Greek restaurant, CBD

Saturday night I took my mother and mother in law to see Hairspray. For pre theatre dinner, I wanted to find a restaurant as close to the theatre as possible so they would not have to walk far. My trusty smart phone app gave us a list of all the nearby veg friendly restaurants in the Spring/Little Bourke street area and we settled on Kri Kri Mezethopoleion, a greek restaurant on Little Bourke.

The menu looks like it is geared towards diners ordering dishes to share. To that end, they have 2 banquet menus available. The menu sports a large selection of vegetarian items and both banquets have a good number of vegetarian dishes for any vegetarians dining out with omni friends.Since we only had a short time to eat diner before the show started we ordered items straight from the menu. Given the sizes of the portions we received, we probably couldn't have managed a banquet anyway.

My fiance joined us for dinner, and he and I ordered 3 items from the vegetarian menu, that we were also assured were diary and egg free! While there were only 2 of us, we figured we would order 3 dishes since non vegetarians always enjoy trying the veg dishes as well.

We ordered the Tiganita me Skorthalia (Kolokithia) - Fried battered zucchini slices with garlic potato. The zucchini was beautiful, perfectly cooked. I've never had battered zucchini before. While it was a little oily from being fried, this is how I now think it should always be served! 

We also ordered the Patates Sto Fourno - herbed lemon potatoes. Again, these were beautiful. While they look oily in the picture, they were not. They just had a delicious lemony herby glaze.

Finally we ordered theYigantes - Giant white beans in tomato and onion. This had to be my favourite dish. It looks, as my mother said, like your basic baked beans, but the flavour was something else. I don't know what herbs they put in the sauce, but I will be hunting the internet for recipes for greek beans to try and find one that makes something similar to this dish.



Yum!


Kev wanted to order the eggplant dish, but opted not to because it had cheese in, and because I just cannot stand the vile purple rubbery blob that is eggplant. 

Mum loved the chicken skewers she ordered. It must have been seriously garlicky because from my side of the table it smelled like someone had just opened a jar of crushed garlic under my nose. Since too much garlic is still never enough for my mum though the dish was perfect and she was still raving about the food the next day. 

My mother in law ordered a salad off the specials, which I believe was a octopus salad. She also said the food was amazing, however the serve was bigger than you would expect from a salad so she was unable to finish it which she felt rather guilty about. She is always very careful not to waste food.

Since the food came out fairly quickly, we had time for dessert. Kev ordered the yoghurt with seasonal fruit, expecting it would be the least sugary dessert option. He did not realise it was going to be served drizzled with honey. A lot of honey. He just ate around this. When asked how it was he replied 'like yoghurt'. I'm guessing that means it was good???

Mum ordered the baclava. She had never had baclava before and had no idea what to expect. I think she may have built it up to be something more than sweetened nuts and pastry, because she was disappointed. She said it was nice, but not something she would eat again. I am allergic to walnuts so I stayed far far away from this dish... It looked pretty though.

My mother in law tried the Loukoumathes, which were listed on the menu as honey puffs with cinnamon and crushed nuts. I was scared off by the menu listing nuts, so initially wasn't going to try these, and the rest of the dessert menu was dairy, so resigned myself to no dessert. When the Loukoumathes came out to the table however, there was no trace of nuts to be seen, and the waiter said there actually were no nuts in the dish and they were not prepared near the baclava. Since the serving size was huge, my mother in law and I shared this one. They were basically just donut puff balls covered in honey and cinnamon. Nothing really special.

Kri Kri is somewhere I would recommend if you are looking for a vegetarian friendly greek restaurant, the mains were great and got rave reviews all round the table. The service was friendly (the waiter even very politely responded to my mum querying why there was posted written in french on the wall of a greek restaurant), and prompt and waiters were constantly coming to the table to top up or replace the water jug on the table. I would probably skip dessert however next time I go there. While the desserts each seemed fine, being all either dairy or super sweet options, none of them were really my thing.

Chan House - Healthy Vegetarian Option. CBD

I've been working in the city for about 18 months now. I now have a huge temptation to go shopping on my lunch breaks to buy crap I don't need... It's dangerous having so many book shops near my office. The best thing about working in the city is the access it gives me to catch up with friends for lunch.

So today I caught up with my bestest bud (whom we shall call Moshi J)  for lunch and went to Chan House. (Friend them on facebook to get updates on menu specials). It's a bit of a walk from my office but totally worth it.

Chan house is in a little food court off little Collins street, located between Queen and William streets. The service is very friendly and fast. There is shared food court style seating available for eat in.

They work from a revolving menu list, where they will have a few dishes that are always available (steamed or fried rice, noodles and mixed vegetables), then 3 daily special items from their menu. They also have dim sims, spring rolls, vegie or BBQ pork buns and prawn crackers. They offer 2 sizes of plate/takeaway, both with steamed rice and 2 dishes. The small is $5.80, large is $6.80. Fried rice or noodles is $1 extra.

I have been there for lunch a number of times before but have always gotten take away. Today Moshi and I decided to sit down and enjoy our lunch properly.

The specials today were szechuan tofu, a curry and ribs with a vinegar soy sauce. I ordered the szechuan tofu and ribs with fried rice. As you can see the serving size for the large is very generous. The tofu was beautiful, the sauce was very tasty. The ribs were great too though I didn't have much sauce. Vinegar and I have a strange relationship - I like the taste in foods (I used to love salt and vinegar chips) but I always end up taking a breath of air in as I eat anything with vinegar on and end up in a coughing fit. This sauce didn't do that though, there was just enough vinegar for the flavour.

I also ordered a BBQ pork bun which was delicious. If it were not for the fact I know all that bun bread would make me super sleepy, I could eat a full meal of just these!

Moshi ordered the fried rice with mixed vegetables and the ribs, and was kind enough to let me take a photo before he nommed his lunch. He also ordered a spring roll but I did not get a picture of that.

I'm really glad Chan House opened up in the city because we need more vegetarian options in the city. Check out some other great blog posts for Chan House here and here.

Monk Bodhi Dharma

It's kind of hard to justify driving for 20-30 minutes just to get breakfast so Monk Bodhi Dharma has been one of those places I just hear other people raving about (see the reviews that had me drooling here and here and here).

When we were heading out to Berwick this last weekend however, it was the perfect opportunity to drop in on the way through to try the food and coffee I have heard so much about.

We got there relatively early, around 9am. They were already busy by then and we snaffled the last available table. People started queueing soon after we got there, so I imagine it would be a long wait for a table if you arrived for a late breakfast. Next time I would probably try to get there even a little earlier and try for a better table, since the table we got was the one right inside the door, with one seat below the newspaper rack. Every couple of minutes someone was coming over to put a paper in or take one out and Kev got elbowed in the head each time. Depressing how few people know how to say sorry :(

There was a bit of a wait on breakfast, but our coffees came out really quickly. We just ordered standard blend coffees. I thought my soy latte was pretty good, Kev said his long black was strong but too bitter.

There were so many good options on the menu, but every review of Monk Bodhi Dharma I have read has raved about the vegan french toast, so I had to try it. The french toast is usually served with ricotta, but when ordered vegan comes with sweetened vegan cream cheese instead. It looked so delicious in everyones photos. And it was! The bread did prove to be a bit of a challenge to cut because the crust was a little chewy, but this worked really well with the pear. The pear was nicely flavoured and sweet from what ever it was poached in. It was sweet enough that I skipped on the cream cheese, it was just too sweet for me at breakfast time.

Kev ordered the sweet corn and ricotta hotcakes served with basil pesto and cherry tomatoes. He's a big fan of savoury pancakes, corn and pesto so this was like a breakfast dream come true. I didn't try these myself, however Kev said that they were great, plenty of corn, good texture and great flavour. His only wish was that there was more of it.

They had a selection of vegan cakes available too, and I did think about getting one to take, but decided against it. I got all excited when I saw they had brownies, but was crushed to see they had walnuts in. Being allergic to walnuts sucks, most brownies and carrot cakes get walnuts stuck in them. Boooo. The cupcakes looked really good, red velvet I think. In hindsight I regret not getting one, but I was all pouty about not being able to get a brownie. The pic below is not great, but you can still kind of see how nice the cupcakes looked - I liked the icing, red and brown swirled together.

I'd definitely come back here again, maybe for one of their degustation breakfasts (next scheduled are on the 30th November and 1st December).

Why is everything awesome so far away from my house :(

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.

Lord of the fries, you made my day!

Technically this should not be a blog post since there is really no content for it, other than me wanting a forum to be able to say that the burger and fries I got from Lord of the Fries Melbourne Central were the best I have had for a long time!

I'd had some disappointing food from there in the last few months and for a while I had noticed a decline in the quality having gotten things like cold chips and stale buns. Maybe I caught them on bad days, but was really impressed by how good they were today. You totally made my day, thanks LotF!

Since I have nothing else to say, so this post doesn't look pathetically short, here is a picture of a Zombie Ninja fighting a Dalek.

Loving hut

Occasionally I get to work out of the Richmond office rather than in the CBD. Aside from giving me an excuse to drop into Ikea, it gives me a chance to try somewhere new for lunch.

Today I went to try Loving Hut (hopefully their website will update soon to include the Melbourne location).
I think this place has really only been open a couple of weeks, and they are still finalising their menu. When K and Toby from In the Mood for Noodles reviewed them, not all their menu items were available. Maybe it was because I went on a week day, early in the lunch period, but they were serving their full menu today.

Rather than order a main from their menu, I decided to try the options from the bain marie. $8 gets you your choice of 1 noodle or rice serve, with 2 choices of main. The serving size was really generous too. I opted noodles, with the beef in black bean and beef rendang dishes.

The dishes were really tasty. Unfortunately the food was nearly cold when it came to me. As much as I liked the taste of the dishes, I struggle to eat barely warm food. I really wished I had ordered a main off the menu, their menu options all sounded really tasty, but I was pressed for time so went the quick option of the ready made dishes.

I had ordered a serve of dumplings to try for a side. These were made to order, and were really tasty and completely worth the trip. The sauce was good, the filling was really tasty and fried nice and crispy.

While I was disappointed with the dishes from the bain marie not being hot, I think I might have gotten them on a bad day. The staff were really friendly, and they have only been open a short time. They are still settling in. I will be going back here, and next time getting a dish made to order from the menu.