Cafe Lalibela

I haven't eaten a lot of Ethiopian food in my time. In fact, to be honest, this was my first experience. So it's hard to place this in comparison to other Ethiopian food I've eaten, but I'm told Lalibela is one of the best Ethiopian restaurants in the country, and I don't doubt it, considering the delicious meal we had.

Lalibela is a cosy place, and the idea is that you share your food. We ordered the equivalent of 4 servings between the 5 of us and it all came out on a big communal plate. The base of the meal, and I guess what you use as your cutlery, is a pancake-y bread called injera which is made of teff flour and is slightly sour because of the fermentation process. Covering the injera are little piles of wat (ethiopian stew) made of corn and lentils. Then there are fresh vegies around the edge. Allow me to illustrate.

We had around 4 different wats to choose from on our injera, and they were all delicious. It was hard to tell which was which, and I didn't really read the menu to see what we'd be getting, but it seemed mostly to be different pulses with spices added. It's the easiest meal - you just scoop up the stew with the pancake. It's also really nice in terms of a communal meal - it's kind of the ultimate in sharing.



And as well as all this, it's cheap too, and you can buy interesting Ethiopian beers to go with your meal.

I think this place is onto something...one plate and no cutlery between 5 people sure makes for an easy time doing the dishes...





Cafe Lalibela
91 Irving St, Footscray
9687-0300
Daily: 11am-10pm

Bo de Trai

After doing a lot of eating, blogging, talking about eating and blogging, Lidia and I got onto the topic of the vegetarian network site (www.vnv.org) and its amazing list of restaurants. What better thing for a couple of bloggers to do, we thought, then to eat//blog our way through the list. Genuis! We decided to go alphabetically, because I'm a little bit anal and I like things to be done in order.

So, first on our list was Bo de Trai, a vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant in Footscray, which does a lot of mock meat. Everything in the menu is listed as pork this or chicken that, but it's all imitation. It's a good feeling.

We started with spring rolls, served in the classic way with lettuce and dipping sauce. It's hard to get these wrong, and Bo de Trai is no exception: perfectly crispy spring rolls and that tangy sauce.

I ordered a seafood stir fry, Lidia had a chicken noodle dish and Rocket ordered tofu with chili and lemongrass. It was decided by the end that I had made the best call - the seafood was eerily similar to real fish, and it came with fresh green vegies and was served with this amazing sauce that none of us could quite place...maybe it was sesame, I'll never know. Lid's soup was good too, but perhaps a little bland - the best thing about Vietnamese food is often the sauces, and the soup was lacking something. Rocket's tofu, however, was amazing! Fried tofu dusted with chili and lemongrass, it would have been better ordered as something to share between the table, rather than a main on its own - I think it got a little full on after a while.



In addition to the amazing food, Bo de Trai is blissfully cheap, with quick and friendly service, and the thermos of tea on the table is really nice touch. Highly recommended, which is a good feeling after eating at so many mediocre places recently.



Bo De Trai
94 Hopkins Street, Footscray
9689-9909

Urban Burger

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Urban Burger is one of those places that is a bit shit. It's one of those new trendy "gourmet"
burger joints, similar to Grill'd. I'm a bit over the gourmet burger, to be honest. I think it's tired. However, sometimes you want fast food, and you're in Middle Park or Port Melbourne or wherever and it's easy and so you do it.

Urban Burger, to their credit, have a burger called "Vegan Vibe". Now, most intelligent folk, putting the title to use, would assume the burger is vegan. It's not. Gah. Not a huge deal, you just have to ask for it without aioli. But really, why would they name a burger vegan when it isn't? Surely that's just a little bit dumb. The burger itself is okay. It has a nice pattie made of red kidney beans, lentils, coriander and chili and it comes with salad, avocado and relish.

Personally, I prefer Grill'd. This may have something to do with my obsession with satay sauce, which I find can be satisfied quite well at Grill'd. Either way, Urban Burger is not the devil, but it is still a chain and it's just kind of boring.

(Note: picture features Emily's hand, as many of my photos tend to do)

Urban Burger
Check the website www.urbanburger.com for locations, cos they have quite a few.

Dinner Party!

A little different to how I normally blog, this is about a dinner party we had not long ago. It's not a restaurant, but the food was vegan and i'll chuck in a recipe at the end. Mostly it's just photos of a good night. We decided on sushi, rice paper rolls and blondies.

Lidia preparing the sushi and rice paper rolls.The vegibles and tofu for the rice paper rolls.
The blondies!

The table
The destruction!

It was a fun night. I don't normally cook, so Rocket and I were pretty proud of our efforts with the blondies. The recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance, but I will give it to you here. (P.S. They taste pretty awesome)

ingredients

FOR THE BLONDIES:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 ozs. silken tofu
1/4 cup soy milk
1/3 cup oil
2 cups sugar
2 tbsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups raw macadamias, partially chopped and partially ground

FOR THE TOPPING:

1/4 cup soy marg
2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup raw macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped

instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9 X 13 inch pan.

In a blender or food processor, blend the tofu and soy milk until smooth. Add the oil, sugar and vanilla dn blend again. Combine this with the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix well. Fold in the nuts. The dough will be think. Spread into the baking pan and bake for 25 minutes.

Prepare the topping: Mix all ingredients except for the nuts in a saucepan. Heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat and bring to boil for 1 minute. Stir in nuts and remove from heat.

Remove blondies from over, pour topping on them, and bake for 10 more minutes. Let cool completely before serving.

Camy Shanghai Noodle & Dumpling House

Everyone in Melbourne knows about dumplings. Most people know that Camy is the only place in the city to eat dumplings. This place has become quite trendy and even Street Party has appropriated it for its own use (ugh). Either way, Camy is becoming something of a Melbourne institution. I haven't been able to eat it for awhile, since an eat-off a few months ago where I managed to consume 50 in a sitting. (Doesn't sound like much here, but it was quite a feat)

But, even after eating that many, you always go back. I went with my sister before the Tilly and the Wall show. It's wise not to order anything apart from the dumplings, and maybe the spring onion pancake. For vegetarians (and vegans) the best option is the mushroom and vegetable dumplings. They are cheap and cheerful. They aren't any sort of culinary masterpiece, but it's a damn good feed before a show and a plate of 20 is only $6.50.

Camy Shanghai Noodle and Dumpling House
25 Tattersalls Lane, Melbourne

TOFWD

TOFWD stands for The Organic Food (and) Wine Deli, but I never think of that when I go there. I either think of tofu or that internet gaming slang "Pwned" which reveals just how nerdy I truly am. That aside, everyone I know calls it "The Overpriced Health Food Store on Degraves" and that is probably an accurate name.

Normally I just go for coffee. The coffee is generally good. The hot chocolate, at least the vegan one, is kinda shit. It tastes like dirt. That's all I have to say about it. Anyway, on this day, strictly in the interests of blogging, I decided to eat.

I had a tofu and mushroom pie. The pastry on this pie is different to your traditional pies, with their flaky pastry. It is thicker and chewier, almost bread like. This doesn't take away from the delicious filling. The tofu clearly just acts as a filler, because you can't really taste it. The mushroom flavour is really strong and the pie is really filling. I recommend accompanying your pie with a Phoenix Organics juice.





Avi, my lunch date, had the aforementioned fairly good coffee, and a pumpkin and spinach pie/pastie thing. It had the same chewy crust as my pie, but the filling was a different consistency, as one would expect from a pumpkin item.

To be honest, there isn't much I want to say about this place. It's good, y'know, but not amazing. Can you ever just be whelmed?

Tofwd
28 Degraves St, Melbourne

Lord of the Fries

Everyone knows about Lord of the Fries. It's kind of the go-to destination at 3am in the city. What some people don't know is that it's entirely vegetarian. One of the descriptors on the sign is "meaty" but there is absolutely no meat at Lotf. It's kind of awesome to go there and see hordes of drunk kids lining up, desperate for a burger, with no idea that they're eating VEGETARIAN FOOD!

Anyways. When Lidia, over at http://moretolovevegan.blogspot.com/ reviewed Lotf, she didn't give the fries a particularly good report. And I know where she's coming from. I've been to Europe, eaten the real thing, and, okay, they are kind of amazing. But Lord of the Fries is a damn good substitute. The best sauce, hands down, is the thai satay. It is, unfortunately, often sold out, in which case the gravy is a fairly good second choice.

Then there's the burgers. Most people love them. They've got a good patty, lettuce, tomato sauce, mustard, and pickle. I, however, don't like them much at all. This is simply because I don't like mustard. Or pickle. I forget this every time I go there, order and regret it. But if you're someone, like Lidia, who loves mustard, then you'll probably enjoy the burgers.
Take note that not everything is vegan. You will have to ask for your burger to be made vegan so that they take out the cheese, and just double check with the sauces, because they aren't all vegan. Happy munching!

Lord of the Fries
Corner Elizabeth and Flinders Streets, Melbourne
Mon-Wed: 10:30am - 10:00pm
Thursday: 10:30am - 10:30pm
Fri - Sat: 10:30am - 4:00am
Sunday: 11:00am - 10:00pm