Veggie Bites

Well, as you know, this is one of my favourite restaurants, so maybe I shouldn’t review it every time I eat here… Oh well, why not. Next time, I will definitely try something different so I have something new to write about… This time, Martin had his usual, and I ordered the gado gado and a shallot roti. This was exactly what I felt like at the time, however when it arrived on the table I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t ordered something else… It was still delicious… We also had dessert, I opted for the coconut pandang pancakes and Martin had the black rice pudding. I have tried the black rice pudding before (when someone else ordered it) and I am not a huge fan, although this time, it wasn’t too bad. I think it is a hit or miss dessert, so I doubt that I would ever order it for myself! The pancakes, however, are delicious, although a little scary since they are green! But they are filled with coconut and are topped with a fantastic caramel-type sauce and come with a scoop of ice cream… The other dessert worth mentioning is the banana fritters – which I had here once – they are particularly good!

We were going to Tilley’s to see Diesel (again!), so we decided to get there early to get a good seat and have dinner… I am sure that last time we ate at Tilley’s when we saw a band that they had their normal menu as well as a few specials… This time the only food they had was what was on the specials board. Nonetheless, there was still a decent range of veggie options. We started with some mixed dips with bread that everyone shared and then I had the pasta – which was freshly made filled pasta of some sort, with pumpkin, spinach, sun dried tomatoes and pine nuts. It was delicious. Martin opted for the nachos – which were bigger than normal! A couple of our meat eating friends also opted for the pasta, while another chose the chicken. All in all, everyone was happy with the food. But we still managed to fit in some dessert! I find it really hard to go past Tilley’s cheesecake – it is just so delicious! So, that is what I had, while Martin had a chocolate friand, and our friends had some carrot cake and pecan pie. None of us found anything to complain about with dessert! So, as usual the food was great. Oh, and by the way, so was Diesel!

This place is a rather large café in a garden centre and my parents suggested it for a late-ish lunch. We started with some garlic and olive bread which were pretty good, while we perused the menu. There were not a lot of vegetarian options on the menu. Martin opted for the veggie sambo, however I didn’t really feel like that, or the penne napolitana (since we were going out for dinner as well), so I decided on nachos. The menu stated that they came with kidney beans, jalapenos, sour cream, guacamole and eshallots. As an afterthought when ordering, I asked if they were vegetarian and the response was no, they are not, but they can make them without the meat. I would have thought that meat would have been listed on the menu, since they went to all that trouble to list the ingredients all the way down to eshallots (of which there were about half a dozen bits on top when they arrived!). My parents both went for meat dishes. Martin said his sandwich was nice, however I have to say that the nachos were rather ordinary, and I can make better guacamole any day! Probably not a bad place for the meat eaters!

We ended up getting take away from here with some friends. The menu has a variety of options from a variety of cuisines – something that I usually avoid, because often, none of it is very good. Mina’s offers choices from Indonesian, Thai or Vietnamese dishes. Sadly though, between those three cuisines, there wasn’t very many vegetarian entrée options. We went with the only one on the menu – stuffed bean curd, which came smothered in a peanut sauce and was pretty good. For mains we ordered a red veggie curry, veggies with chilli and cashew nuts (both Thai dishes) and a Gado Gado (Indonesian). The red curry was fantastic, as was the veggies with chilli and cashew nuts. The gado gado was a bit average – I have definitely had better at other places. Our friends went with Thai meat dishes – a mussaman beef curry and the chicken version of our veggies with chilli and cashew nuts. I later heard that the Vietnamese dishes on the menu were not very good (there wasn’t a lot of Vietnamese veggie options) so, maybe if you stick with the Thai food, then you will have a really good meal…

A friend mentioned that a new café was opening at Campbell shops and since we were both being very indecisive about what we wanted to eat for lunch we decided to head there to see if it was open yet. It was, so we ate there. We later discovered that this was their first week of opening. In general the menu was a little limited, but there were 3 or 4 vegetarian choices and some others that were adaptable. My friend had the soup of the day (pumpkin) and was assured that it was not made with chicken stock. I opted for the mixed lunch salad without the chicken because it sounded pretty interesting – coming with grilled potato, walnuts, avocado and egg. And it was pretty interesting, it was also pretty big – there was a lot of lettuce, but also a reasonable amount of the other things as well. My friend said the soup was a little salty, and I then realised that the grilled potatoes in my salad were also a little on the salty side – but neither dish was so salty that we could not eat them. Given that it was their first week, there were a few little things that happened that will probably be improved in the future – such as my friend being given a knife and fork after ordering soup and then once the soup arrived being given the option of a soup spoon or a dessert spoon with which to eat it. Then, when she chose the soup spoon, the dessert spoon was placed on the table in case she changed her mind! The service was a little strange, but nothing else stood out. The food was nice and appeared fairly quickly. As my friend put it – it is a good place to come to for a quick lunch away from work…

Another lunch experience with a group of people for someone’s farewell lunch. I know I have said that I wouldn’t bother with pizza from here again, I had hoped that there would be a veggie option, or at least an adaptable option on the specials board. Sadly there was not. I quite like some of the tapas-type meals – they are really quite yummy, but expensive and too large for just one person. The person organising the function had mentioned that it was 2 for the price of 1 pizza on Tuesdays, so we decided that would probably be the best option. 2 for 1 actually makes the pizzas here a reasonable price. A friend and I decided on 2 small pizzas – I went for the potato and he went for the chevre – with artichokes and goats cheese. We swapped a piece each and both pizzas were pretty good. I do think that the potato one would get a little boring if you ordered anything more than a small one though… I might go back and eat in, but I was pretty disappointed with the lack of veggie options or adaptable options on the specials board. And it is all quite expensive – especially for bar food…

Take away food – it is the best thing in the world when you are too tired to cook! Especially when they deliver it! We had recently received a menu in our letter box from this pace, and since they delivered we decided to try it. We ordered veggie spring rolls, veggie chow mein, szechuan vegetables and mapo tofu – with the intention of having leftovers for lunch! The food was pretty good. Martin spoke to them on the phone and was a little dubious that the spring rolls were actually veggie (they were not listed as such on the menu), so we broke them open before biting into them and they were safe! The mapo tofu was pretty good, although it contained peas (YUCK!). It wasn’t really as spicy as I expected and I think they used silken tofu – not my favourite type, but still it was good. The szechuan veggies were great, although again, not as spicy as I expected, and the sauce was kind of more sweet and sour than what I would expect szechuan to be. The chow mein however, was the highlight of my meal! It was great – I could eat a whole one by myself! Sadly they took quite a while to deliver it, so by the time it came we were starving! Next time, we might ring up and order it, then walk down and pick it up, as it is actually fairly close to home – as long as we are not too tired!

This was a large extended family dinner to celebrate Father’s Day and some birthdays. There were 16 of us, but we booked in advance, so they knew we were coming. This is a pizza and pasta type joint that also did steaks and fish and various other meaty dishes. We were told not to worry because they did have some veggie options on the menu, however there were only 2 real options – not counting salad or dessert! Neither of us really felt like veggie pizza, so went with the only other option which was pasta napolitana – I got the large (which was huge) while Martin opted for the small and got pancakes as well. We also decided to share a Greek salad. Well! Our Greek salad arrived without olives or feta, which really made it a green salad with Greek dressing. My parents had also ordered a Greek salad, which also came without the bits that actually made it Greek, so we both sent them back. A few people had ordered pizza and it came out half an hour before everyone else’s meals arrived – which was approximately an hour and a half after we ordered. The pasta was ok – at least it had fresh tomatoes in it, but it certainly wasn’t great! And on top of that, other meals that had been ordered with vegetables came with chips, and vegetables were only brought out after this was pointed out… The service was incredibly average and the waitress seemed unable to remember anything about who had ordered what… We also overheard them offering another table free drinks because they had waited so long for their meals. That table of people arrived and ordered after us, however a number of their meals came out before ours. The waitress commented that it was due to having a large table in the restaurant that night… Geez – we had booked – how hard would it have been to put on a few extra staff to cope with the demand?? I personally won’t bother going back!

I love eating at the Green Herring… although, as I said previously, I hate the fact that they have a separate vegetarian menu that you have to ask for… Oh well – at least they have one! Yet again we started with the pumpkin and sweet potato soup and it was as good as ever… so good in fact, that I have since tried making my own version – yum! Anyway, my friend decided that she really wanted dessert, so opted to skip a main meal, however I preferred a main instead of dessert! My main was the home made saffron noodles with a creamy gin and something sauce. It also came with Asian greens and (I think) leeks. It was incredibly delicious! I would definitely order that again. My friend’s dessert was a chocolate and whisky cheesecake which she insisted that I taste and I have to say it wasn’t bad. Not being a fan of whisky, it is something that I would never have ordered myself, however the whisky was not the prevalent flavour. Since we were being a little weird and not ordered the same types of meals, we were asked if we wanted the cheesecake and the noodles to come out at the same time, which we did. This is something that I love about this place – they are very considerate and willing to change things to make your meal enjoyable!

This was my birthday dinner, and I thought it would be nice to go here as they have delicious food and it is usually nice and quiet. This night, however there was a big group celebrating a 25th wedding anniversary, so it took a bit of an effort to get in the door, but they didn’t really disturb us much once we were seated. Luckily the restaurant is separated into a couple of ‘rooms’ so the noise is minimal. We started with the sweet potato and pumpkin soup and the pear and asparagus salad with lime and balsamic dressing. We were both sitting there, trying to decide between these two entrees so we decided to order both and share them. They were delicious! For mains, I ordered the potato bake that came served with salad and steamed green beans and Martin had the grilled eggplant with hokkien noodles. Again, both were amazing! (Of course, my descriptions of the meals are not exactly as they are written on the menu!!) For dessert I was always going to have the profiteroles (I simply can’t go past them), Martin on the other hand couldn’t decide, so opted for the Taste of Herring, which had a sample of all five (yes five!!) desserts on the menu. The food here is amazing (I think I have said this before), but it isn’t cheap – but it is definitely worth it!! Yummo!