Veggie Bites » Vegetarian

Satis

mel — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:45:21 +0000

Date: 3 October 2009

I have been meaning to review this great little place for some time now. We have eaten here a few times and tried to eat here a few more times. It is a funky little veggie place with a great open kitchen and a very happy following of food loving regulars! It is often hard to get a table as it is pretty much packed at meal times and they are only a small place. We tend to end up here just after the main meal times, so occasionally miss out on the dishes we want – but it is not usually a problem – everything is yummy! This time, late as usual, I had the pizza with pumpkin, pesto and cherry tomatoes, and while Martin initially wanted the fajta, he ended up with the tofu burger as they were out of the fajita. The pizzas are delicious and very generous – they are made on square lebenese type bread, and the pesto on this one was amazing! Martin was very pleased with his tofu burger, although I thought it would have been nice if it came with some salad on the side…

Definitely good food and we’ll definitely go back – might even try and get there in time for breakfast one time!

Sirens – Hobart, Tasmania

mel — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 14:00:00 +0000

I was in Hobart for work, and was basically in the hands of my boss who had lived there for many years and she suggested that we should go to this place for dinner, and I am so glad we did. It was amazing! The restaurant itself was beautiful, the decor was fabulous, although, I have to say that the very low chairs around the low table were a little uncomfortable after a while… Anyway, food – we started with some bread which came with some sort of dip which I think was garlic-y – I am not sure but it was certainly delicious! Since it is a veggie restaurant, there was lots to choose from, I eventually decided on the three cheese and pistachio cannelloni, with a spicy avocado salsa. It came as two large freshly made cannelloni’s absolutely smothered with this wonderful spicy avocado and tomato salsa. It was fantastic. I am almost sure that one of the cheeses in there was a blue or a gorgonzola which I am not a fan of, but it didn’t really matter as that flavour was not overpowering. My companions ordered the banana dahl, which came with pakoras, parathas and raita, and the twice baked souffle, which she had also had the last time she came here. Both looked delicious. The servings were quite large, but we decided to share a dessert between three and settled on the orange pistachio cake which was absolutely divine – and certainly big enough to feed three of us. Given the fabulous food, it was a little disappointing that is took us so long to order our dessert, as the waitress was off chatting – to her grandmother we later found out… However, I am keen to get back to Hobart to revisit this great place and in the meantime, I will just be sad that there isn’t a great veggie restaurant like this in Canberra…

Sunshine Cafe – Banff, Alberta, Canada

mel — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 14:00:00 +0000

We deliberately headed here because it is a vegetarian restaurant and I think we were both in the mood for some good veggie food that we could trust! And when we got there and checked out the menu, I think we were both a little excited at the prospect of eating there! However, when we went to order, the waiter told us that he couldn’t do a number of things on the menu – sadly a number of them were the things that I wanted to eat – a huge omelette and the swiss cheese rosti – however they could do the frittata Espanol – which contained both eggs and potato which were also the main ingredients in the omelette and rosti! Oh well… getting my third choice isn’t so bad… Martin went for the soup of the day – potato and corn chowder – and a cup of chilli. He also had a fresh apple juice – a far wiser choice than my option of a fresh lemonade, which was really just lemon flavoured water… The food was ok. The soup was quite bland, although Martin claimed that salt and pepper perked it up a bit. The chilli was ok, and there was nothing really wrong with my frittata – it just wasn’t as ‘wow’ as I expected it to be… Maybe they were having an off day, but there were a number of other people eating there that also looked less than impressed with their food…

Bernadette’s

mel — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 14:00:00 +0000

Well, I think this will be my last review of Bernadette’s – which is sad really. As I have previously said, Bernadette’s used to be our favourite restaurant and we ate there so often before it changed hands that we were at ‘regulars’ status, and got a few special treats – like being allowed to order and take home desserts that you couldn’t usually get take away! Anyway, the experiences have been mixed since the new owners took over, and last time I was pretty impressed with the new menu and the pizza that I ordered. So impressed in fact, that I decided to order it again. However, the whole experience this time was very, very poor – food, service, everything! To start with, they were busy – really busy for a late Saturday lunch, and there were only 3 staff working and that included 2 chefs. So, it took a long time to get menus, then a long time to order and then a long time for our drinks, we had to ask for water after we were told it was coming and it took a really long time for our food! We ordered a mixed bread basket, a tandoori pizza and Caribbean tofu strips. I ask you – how hard can it be to stick some bread in the oven and get it out to people so they are not sitting there starving while waiting for the rest of their food?? Instead we sat and waited while the chefs were intent on getting out the main meals to the table of 9 sitting behind us. Which is fair – they were there first, but our bread arrived after our other meals were brought out! I think the total waiting time for our food was about 30-45 minutes, and when it arrived it was pretty disappointing… The Caribbean tofu was about 6 small strips of tofu on some rocket with a largish dollop of humous, my tandoori pizza was simply tofu, a pappadum and the fruit chutney – it was missing the cucumber, tomato and coriander salsa and the yoghurt listed on the menu, and which made it really tasty the last time I ate it. We considered complaining, but decided it wasn’t worth it. We also considered ignoring the bread, but Martin decided that he would actually need it to fill him up, so we asked where it was and we were told it was coming… it finally arrived and I have to say it was the highlight of the meal! I only ate half my pizza and donated the other half to Martin to stop him from starving to death and had a few pieces of bread instead. I doubt that we were the only ones who were disappointed with eating there – there was another couple who arrived after us who had to ask for menus and then wave down the waitress so that they could order… amazingly (since they ordered after us) their meals arrived before ours! To top it all off, there was a man sitting to our left who was there when we arrived, he was working very hard with quite a few piles of papers – his meal arrived just before we left, and it certainly didn’t look like anything off the menu – and we didn’t see him order it. In fact (and I could very well be mistaken since I couldn’t see properly) it looked like a big chunk of meat with mushrooms on top. As I said – I could be mistaken… however, given my disappointment with this experience, I don’t think I’ll take the chance!

Bernadette’s

mel — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 14:00:00 +0000

I have reviewed Bernadette’s a couple of times since they changed hands and while we haven’t been overly inspired, we also haven’t had completely horrible experiences! This time I had lunch there with a friend, since it is close to home and we didn’t have a huge amount of time. Considering it was a Friday lunch, I was a little surprised at how empty they were… I guess others have been more uninspired than us! This time I was impressed by the menu – they have a stack of new choices on it and seem to be trying to make it their own, and I was equally impressed by the food… I tried a “new” tandoori pizza and I hope they decide to add it to their standard pizza menu because it was great! Small chucks of Tandoori tofu with cucumber, topped with yoghurt, a pappaddum and fruit chutney. Really, really tasty!

Sprouts – Adelaide, SA

mel — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 14:00:00 +0000

We discovered this place a couple of years ago when we were in Adelaide and when we were planning this trip to Adelaide we were very excited to go back to this restaurant. I can’t remember what we ate here last time, but I know it was great – the food really blew us away as it was good quality imaginative food that was also vegetarian! The menu this time was a little disappointing as four of the eight or so mains were burgers. While veggie burgers do have their place, I would have thought that one would have been sufficient on a menu in a restaurant! However, we managed to find other things that we wanted to eat! We started with the house platter which included bread, roasted veggies, salad, olives and crispy veggie balls and a yoghurt sauce. Yum, yum, yum. Those crispy veggie balls (although deep fried) are really good! For mains, Martin had the maize and ricotta hotcake stack – which was huge and almost defeated him! While I had the spinach and ricotta cannelloni which also had some sort of roasted nut in it that I can’t remember, and the nut flavour really made it special… I think it is one of the best cannelloni I have ever eaten! We also ordered a side of garlic potatoes – I simply can’t go past potatoes and these came roasted with the perfect amount of garlic. I could have eaten the whole plate myself! This is a great restaurant and I would highly recommend a visit if you are anywhere near Adelaide!

Bernadette’s

mel — Sat, 09 Oct 2004 14:00:00 +0000

A lunch experience this time (actually on 9 October 2004), and I was happy to see that there are ‘meals’ available on the specials boards and are available for lunch and dinner. We had the roasted yam salad and tofu burger and while both were good, I have to say the whole experience was a little un-inspiring! The salad was a little oily and the burger bun was enormous (more bread than any one person could actually eat I’m sure)! Nevertheless, we returned the next day with my parents, again for lunch. They were as impressed with the new pizzas as were we on our first return visit (FYI – they are called Medieval and Green Kai!) and seemed impressed with the pumpkin risotto, which Martin thought was a little dry! I stuck to an old favourite – nachos and discovered that although it was similar, it wasn’t quite the same as it used to be – and that had nothing to do with the really small servings of sour cream and guacamole on top! While I don’t expect things to be exactly the same as before, I would have thought that if they are advertised on the menu as ‘Bernadette’s famous nachos’, then people will expect them to be the same! Actually, what I would prefer is if they remove those references and add their own personal touch to the dishes! Anyway, we will continue to go back, the food is still good and it will be interesting to see if it is personalised by the new owners/chefs…

Bernadette’s

mel — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 14:00:00 +0000

This was an interesting experience. We have been eating at Bernadette’s since they were at O’Connor shops and became regulars (eating there weekly – sometimes more) after they moved to Ainslie shops. We stopped going there for a while, we had a couple of not so good experiences and had cut right back on eating out anywhere (it made us fat!)… Then we noticed that they had closed, so when they re-opened we decided to try it again – finding out on the night that Nick and Bernadette were no longer the owners. The menu is still all vegetarian and pizzas still feature prominently. Sadly the menu (at this time) didn’t really feature any main meals other than pizza, but the pizzas are great. We had a bread and dip platter to start and that was very yummy, followed by a half and half pizza with a couple of new toppings that we hadn’t tried before – I can’t remember the actual names, but one had a green curry base and the other had a red onion saucy thing… They were great! Talking to a waitress, we found out that they had re-opened with a completely different menu, but changed back after a week following customer complaints! I would like to head back soon to see if they have changed the menu again – hopefully they will remain vegetarian, as they are one of the few fully vegetarian restaurants in Canberra and pretty much the only one that doesn’t do psycho chicken (imitation meat)…