Veggie Bites

This was a take away experience – there has been some debate as to whether take away experiences should appear in these reviews, but I am of the opinion that if it is a restaurant, then I should probably comment! This is about food dammit not about service or how pretty the restaurant is… So – food… We have eaten in and got take away from Thai Chiang Rai a number of times and the food is good. It is not the cheapest Thai food in town, but you do get a decent amount of food for your money, even for take away (unlike some other places!). We had the veggie curry puffs (nice but had peas!), followed by a red veggie curry, tofu with dried chilli and cashews and veggies with peanut sauce. Their curries are always good, the sauce is spicy and the veggies are not mushy and overcooked. The tofu with dried chilli and cashews was also a winner – it is one of their dishes we haven’t tried before, but I think we will be ordering it again in the future! The veggies and peanut sauce was a little disappointing… the peanut sauce could have been a lot more peanut-y! I have to say, that I think I can make a better peanut/satay sauce than this one… not to worry though, there are plenty of other veggie dishes on the menu to eat, including a rarely seen in Thai restaurants, vegetarian fried rice – which is something we have ordered in the past and is very yummy!

Breakfast again! A friend and I have instigated a fortnightly breakfast ritual, as we can never seem to find the time to catch up for lunch (and sadly we don’t seem to be able to stick to the fortnightly routine all the time either)! So far we have been to the same place (Milk & Honey), but today we decided to try something different. Unfortunately the place we were going to go to is closed on Mondays, so we ended up at Gus’s. Gus’s food is pretty good, no matter when you go and I love eating here – there is a good variety of veggie breakfast dishes even before you look at removing meat from the meaty ones! Today I had the Spanish Omelette without the sausage, my friend wanted the toasted cereal, but they had run out, so she opted for raisin toast instead. The omelette was filled with potato, capsicum and a touch of chilli and came with two giant pieces of toast, so all in all it was a very filling and delicious breakfast!

Well, it was a cold, wet dreary day, not the type of day that was expected when this lunch at the cafe in the Botanic Gardens was planned! The cafe was crowded and noisy despite the fact we were sitting outside… The food was ok, there is a pretty good variety from a vegetarian perspective, but the food itself was not spectacular. I had the vegetarian samosa which comes served with salad and fruit chutney. The samosa itself is pretty big and there was a very high percentage of peas – which for me is a bad thing, so I spent the whole meal picking the peas out – which I don’t mind so much… The fruit chutney was quite nice, although I had certainly had enough of it by the end of the meal. The salad was a little uninspired – a stack of lettuce, 2 pieces of tomato, 3 cocktail onions and 2 olives on a mound of beetroot dip – again not my favourite thing! Overall it was a little disappointing, Hudson’s food is usually quite good – but then again, it may have been my mood, and the general dreariness of the day. I have certainly had better cafe meals, but if you are going to the Botanic Gardens anyway, then this is probably better than bringing your own picnic!

The Green Herring is a little out of the way and for that reason is probably not somewhere you would think of going unless it was a special occasion. A friend wanted to check it out for just that reason, so we decided to head there for lunch. I have been here before and was quite impressed – it was during the middle of winter and there was a fabulous roaring fire in the room we were in. But it was years ago and it was a banquet, so I was keen to check it out again. And let’s just say, I was certainly not disappointed! The food was amazing! We both started with pumpkin and sweet potato soup (yes in the middle of summer!) and it was great. For the mains my friend had fish, while I ordered the salad with mixed lettuce, avocado, vermicelli, capsicum etc with a vinagerette (I can’t remember exactly what was in it) with rice noodles and fresh asparagus. After taking our order, the owner/waitress returned and told me that they didn’t have any fresh asparagus but they had a variety of other fresh vegetables they could use, and asked me if I wanted to pick or let them ‘go crazy’. I decided to let them ‘go crazy’ and it was the best option! The salad came served in a crispy edible bowl type thing and it wasn’t until I was half way through it that I discovered the bok choy that they had added at the bottom! I think it was one of the best salads I have ever eaten, despite the fact that it was without the fresh asparagus that attracted me to it in the first place… For dessert we shared their famous ice cream filled profiteroles. I say famous because that is the main thing that I remember from the last time I was there and because whenever you say the Green Herring to someone, they mention those profiteroles! And they are so very yummy! Well worth saving space for them when you are considering what you will order for entrée and main! And even though we were sharing a single dessert – they were kind enough to put them on separate plates for us – which really impressed me. Overall, we were incredibly impressed and have vowed to go back! It is certainly not the cheapest place to eat, but the food is well worth it. My only complaint is that the menu is completely carnivore and you have to ask for a separate vegetarian menu, but once you get it the options are plentiful and the food is inspired.

This was a large organised function, so it is hard to comment on the menu as such, but the food we had was really, really good. Originally there was not much of an option for vegetarians, but a few extra things were added on request. We started with the usual dips and bread, followed by fried eggplant things, mushrooms and zucchini balls. The remainder were meaty but we got a veggie substitute – filo sticks filled with goats cheese. For our main there was more eggplant with a mix of onion, capsicum and roasted tomatoes on top. Not being a fan of eggplant all the time, I found this to be a bit too much eggplant and ate the topping with some rice and salad… Sadly we had to leave before dessert, but we ate more than enough food… We have been here once or twice before (when they were in Manuka) and have found it a bit difficult to eat, so it might be interesting to go back and see what veggie options (if any) are on the standard menu.

I have heard people mention this place a lot, so I guess I went with high expectations. Although, I have mainly heard people mention Chill in the context of breakfast, and we went at lunch time… maybe breakfast is better! There are only four vegetarian choices on the menu, and two of them are salad. Since Martin is not a fan of goats cheese and I am not a fan of boconccini, we were slightly limited in our choice. So, we went with the Greek salad and the roasted pumpkin pizza. The pizza was pretty good, it had caramelised onions and oven roasted tomates on it, and it came on sort of a long bread type base instead of a round pizza base. The Greek salad on the other hand was disappointing, every mouthful I had tasted gritty. I doubt that I would bother going back…

Yet again, this is a place that I have never ventured into before due to a lack of vegetarian options on the menu. However, strolling through Civic with a friend, looking for somewhere to have lunch, she commented that the pizzas were pretty good and she used to eat there regularly. So, after checking the menu, we decided to go in. We both had pizza. I suddenly discovered that my friend was a closet meat fiend as she ordered the pizza with the most meat on it and added pepperoni! There were a couple of vegetarian options, I stuck to the plain old vegetarian but added pineapple and chilli, however, there were a number that you could convert to vegetarian by asking for the meat to be left off. The pizza was pretty good – thin’ish and crispy base and not too much cheese and not too greasy. One complaint I would make was that there were a lot of mushrooms on my veggie pizza (fine if you like mushrooms as I do) but they were tinned mushrooms, not fresh ones. This struck me as odd, since they added fresh chillis!

We had dinner here with friends before a concert. It was quite a bizarre experience because we bumped into the guy who used to own our favourite Thai restaurant before it suddenly became an African restaurant! He is now managing this restaurant and he remembered us! It struck us as a bit weird that a Thai person would be managing an Indian restaurant, but hey, I guess it doesn’t really matter if they do a good job! The food was pretty good, the entrées were great – aloo tiki and spinach fritters and potato salad (can’t remember the Indian name!). We then went mainly veggie for mains, malai kofta, vegetable jalfrezi and a dahl, along with a butter chicken. Of course, we also had breads and a mixed raita. It was all pretty tasty, although I have to say I was a little disappointed with the vegetable jalfrezi, but the malai kofta were pretty good. The raita had a very interesting flavour that none of us could place – I was a little concerned that the yoghurt may have been off, but then, none of us got sick. It is certainly not the cheapest Indian food around, but it is pretty good, so I think we will go back!