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.

Balderdash - Port Melbourne

We happened to be in Port Melbourne on the weekend so decided to do a drive by to see what had become of our once beloved weekend breakfast haunt, Bowl of Soul. We were rather depressed when they closed, and nothing has really been able to fill the hole their closing has left over our side of the city.

We found that not only had the space BoS left behind been filled by a hip looking little coffee and cake style cafe called My Sister Says, but a new and equally inviting little cafe named Balderdash had sprung up only a couple of weeks ago where Silk Pirate used to be.

While we initially had intended to go to My Sister Says, we were more impressed by the offerings on the breakfast menu across the road at Balderdash. The coffee write up on the board sounded too good to pass up. Visiting My Sister Says to sit and reminisce in the empty shell that once was Bowl of Soul shall have to wait.



Love the little horse!

They have a couple of out door tables available, along with a variety of indoor seating options - a large communal style table, several 2 and 4 person tables, and a window bench. We seated ourselves at a small 2 seater table and were promptly visited by friendly wait staff to deliver menus and take our coffee order.

The coffees did not disappoint. I enjoyed my soy latte so much I ordered a second, and the long black earned a thumbs up from Kev which is rare. He is rather particular about his coffee and was quite impressed by the coffee he received.

The cafe has only been open perhaps 3-4 weeks and the menu is quite new. From this review they did not have a menu 2 weeks ago, and were serving only coffee and pastries. They have since introduced a full menu, and there were several vegetarian options available. They were also more than happy to make substitutions.

I ordered the corn and caramelised onion fritters which are usually served with a poached egg. When I asked if the egg could be substituted for mushrooms they were more than happy to oblige. The fitters were also served topped with relish. The fritters were fantastic and the relish worked really well with them. The mushrooms were also done well, good flavour and not served soggy like so many cafes do.  My only complaint was having to share half of one of the fritters with Kev since I had promised when I ordered that he could try some...

Kev ordered the pesto scrambled eggs with feta, plus a side of mushrooms and avocado. Pesto scrambled eggs is one of his favourite menu options from Seddon Deadly Sins so he was curious to compare. He liked that the toast was served unbuttered and separate to the eggs. Serving scramble on top of the bread just gives soggy toast. He really enjoyed the eggs here which he said had really good flavour and generous amounts of feta but still prefers the version that Deadly Sins do as they have a larger serving of eggs, and the pesto is more evenly distributed through the scramble.

All in all, Balderdash serve quality coffee with great food and friendly service in a relaxing and inviting atmosphere. They will be a very welcome addition to Bay street, which has been in need of some more interesting cafes. We will definitely be back here again when we get the chance.

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.