Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery

Lidia took me to this place, it's a Buddhist gallery. They have a shrine and a meditation centre. Every day they have a different special of the day. On the day we went, the special was "roast chicken". Which is what Lidia had. In comes in a nifty box with compartments. It was delicious. I know, because I ate some.

I had eaten, so I just had a snack. Fake chicken nuggets. Which were AMAZING. Lidia and I made the decision to return when I had an empty stomach.

This place is adorable, and cheap, and full of tasty mock meat. Go there, eat it, convert to buddhism, y'know...

Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery, 141 Queen Street, Melbourne. Ph: 9642 2388.
Restaurant: M-F 12:30am - 2:30pm (lunch) & 3pm - 5:30 (afternoon tea)

Vegan Snack - Toasted Cheese and Tomato

Look, I know this isn't a restaurant. Or a ready made store bought treat. Or even something you need a recipe for. But it's tasty. And I thought it deserved inclusion because people often forget that they can still eat these old school snacks.

Use a toasted cheese maker. Use tomato, use nutellex and use tofutti cheese slices. Make them as you used to make them after school. Vegan cheese is notoriously bad for melting, but the tofutti slices (I think I used the mozarella style) actually work out okay, as you can see in the super amazing macro close up shot below. Enjoy.

Cafe Umago Pizza

Cafe Umago is famous for this pizza. It's got corn chips on it. It's basically nachos on a pizza. It's got spicy mexican beans, corn chips, avocado and sweet chili. You can also have jalapenos. Of course, if you're not vegan, you can also have sour cream and cheese, which I imagine would make it better.

There are a few other things I would like to note here.

1. The soy cheese at Umago is not vegan. You've been warned.

2. You can get these pizzas to take away, and it totally just occurred to me that it would be really rad to do that and then add your own vegan cheese and sour cream at home.

3. Brendan enjoying the pizza.


Cafe Umago, 171-173 Brunswick St, Fitzroy. 9417-4664

Soy Delicious Ice Cream

This is organic, dairy-free ice cream made by a company called Soy Delicious. Get it? It's like "So Delicious" but they've used the word SOY instead of SO. So you read it and you're like "Ooh, this is going to be so delicious....AND SOY DELICIOUS" and then you chuckle at their wit.

Anyways. This flavour is cookies and cream. And to be honest, it's not that great. Back in my pre-vegan days, I was quite the connoisseur of cookies and cream ice cream, so I know my shit. The problem with this is the oft-made mistake....not enough cookies. Also, cookies and cream ice cream is always better with some sort of a caramel ripple sauce through it. Mmm...ripple sauce....

However, beggars can't always be choosers. So if you really have a hankering for some cookies and cream, give it a whirl. But don't say I didn't warn you. You will probs regret not choosing tofutti....