Vegie Kitchen

Update 04/01/2023: Vegie Kitchen is now permanently closed.

April 18, 2017

We were saddened late last year when the news broke that Enlightened Cuisine was closing down. We'd been visiting there on and off for a decade, enjoying their mock-meaty Chinese food. Their closure, hot on the heels of White Lotus' shut-down, left a big hole in Melbourne's veg restaurant scene. Luckily 2017 brought good news: Enlightened has reopened under a new name, Vegie Kitchen. We checked it out for a quick meal before heading off to see the amazing Patti Smith at the Arts Centre.

Aside from the new name, almost nothing has changed. The menu appears to be exactly the same, with more than 100 mostly mock-meaty dishes to choose from. We started off with an old favourite, a serve of the delicious prawn toast ($5), which remains a deep, deep fried delight.

We followed up with a couple of mock mains: kung po fish ($19.90) and ginger duck ($19.90).

These were both great - the fish had a really great chilli kick and the ginger duck was tangy and delicious. Both dishes broke up the mock meat with a generous serve of veggies. They're big meals too - we ran out of steam before quite finishing everything off. 

It's great that Vegie Kitchen has picked up where Enlightened Cuisine left off. There's no sign of innovation here and the ambiance isn't anything special, but it's a reliable veggie restaurant to satisfy your old school Chinese-food cravings. Long may it continue.

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You can read our old reviews of Enlightened Cuisine here, here, here and here. Nobody else seems to have blogged about Vegie Kitchen just yet.

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Vegie Kitchen
113 Queensbridge St, Southbank
9686 9188
drinks, food: one, two, three, four, five

Accessibility: The entry is flat and wide; there's a reasonable amount of space between tables. There's table service and bills are paid at a high counter. From memory, access to the toilets is narrow and includes a step.

June 18, 2011: Enlightened Cuisine IV

Edit 25/04/2017: Enlightened Cuisine is now rebranded as Vegie Kitchen.

On Saturday night we met up with some friends to feast on the Chinese-style mock meats at Enlightened Cuisine. The set banquets are always tempting, but we resolved to create our own Mighty Banquet of Probably Way Too Much Mock Meat.

The first plate to arrive held fried dim sims ($4.50) and they were gobbled up quickly, stuffed with a white mock meat that didn't taste of much.

Next came the highly anticipated sesame prawn ($4.50). This toast is deep deep-fried crispy and golden brown, all the way through to the mysterious white 'prawn' filling.

There were also chicken satay skewers ($5.50), which I thought were a bit undercooked in the middle. (Still it could be worse - they weren't undercooked actual chicken.)

The first main to arrive was some impressively sizzling pepper steak with mushroom ($17.90). The steak slices were homogeneous but tender and the sauce was certainly heavy on the pepper. It wasn't too strong, though, providing lots of seasoning without sticking in my throat.

I used up my ordering option on that ol' Aussie fave, lemon chicken ($16.90). I was delighted that the sauce wasn't sickenly sweet and had a proper lemon sourness to it. Alas, the battered chicken was soft and doughy again. Maybe I need to let this custom go.  

By contrast the plum sauce duck ($16.90) had an unremarkable gravy and superlative meat texture, crisp on the outside, just a little nobbly, and 'flesh' with a bit of chew but no rubberiness.

The sizzling lamb ($17.90) was another winner and arrived with a good dose of proper vegetables.

Once the steamed rice ($2.20 pp) supplies waned, some wag ordered a platter of special fried rice ($13). I could barely touch it, though I admired the charred corn kernels.

I did find room and sufficient encouragement for dessert. I shouldn't have bothered, though - the pineapple fritters were bloated and heavy with far too much batter. I ended up much the same, even though I didn't finish the bowlful. And would you believe that two of our number ordered more prawn toast for dessert? And they suffered less regret than I. Amazing.

We ordered with abandon and our bill (for four people, including drinks) came to $171. That's not cheap, but we ate well... perhaps not nutritionally well, but certainly in great quantity and with much enthusiasm! Enlightened Cuisine has been highly consistent in the four years we've been visiting - the great dishes have always been great and the few less wonderful ones disappoint for precisely the same reason each time. The wait staff are distant but never rude.

Enlightened Cuisine will not suit all moods and tastes but it's a delight when the right people, appetites and dishes collide. Especially when somebody orders prawn toast.

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You can read about some of our previous visits to Enlightened Cuisine: one, two and three.

This restaurant has received many reviews, almost unanimously positive, since then from Vegan About Town (three times!), easy as vegan pie, More Cheese Please, tofu in disguise, MEL: HOT OR NOT, vvoc.org, apmmryyu, Vegetarian Life Australia and MelbourneStaycation.com.

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Enlightened Cuisine

113 Queensbridge St, Southbank

9686 9188

veg entrées $4.50-5.50, mains $14.90-25.00, desserts unknown

www.ecuisine.com.au

Accessibility: The entry is flat and wide; there's a reasonable amount of space between tables. There's table service and bills are paid at a high counter. From memory, access to the toilets is narrow and includes a step.

August 10, 2009: Enlightened Cuisine III

Edit 25/04/2017: Enlightened Cuisine is now rebranded as Vegie Kitchen.

Mike and Jo typically share each other's meals whenever they eat out but negotiations became far more complex (albeit more polite) when they joined Michael and I for dinner at Enlightened Cuisine. Each individually wanting to try as many dishes as possible, our best strategy had to be a group ordering consensus. We eventually got there, with the help of a pot of tea and some patient wait staff.

The first dish to arrive was sweet corn soup for Jo ($5.50). Carrying tiny tofu cubes and shredded mock chicken, she was quite happy with this one and the rest of us enjoyed a taste too.

Lettuce cups ($4.50 each) offered some nice crunch, though the flavour was weak and salty.

Mike's curry puffs ($4.50 for two) weren't quite what he'd hoped, either. Though he was expecting puffy Indian-style samosas, these turned out to be small but dense triangles of filo-style pastry. They at least had a pleasantly spicy vegetable filling.

When it came to mains, Michael was most adamant that we would have Kung Po Fish ($16.90). The faux fish (Lamyong-style pieces) were accompanied by plenty of cheery vegetable chunks and almost as many whole dried chillis! Michael's convictions were well-founded, with this dish being one of the night's best.

The plum sauce duck ($16.90) was popular too, maintaining its crispness under a light but syrupy sweet sauce.

Jo and I agreed that some nostalgic lemon chicken ($16.90) was a must. The sauce was impressively acidic and naturally hued; unfortunately the chicken was stodgy, almost gluey in a too-thick batter.

Our last main was the spicy eggplant ($16), recommended by Lisa. It did indeed have a nice kick to it, and the eggplant was at optimum melt-in-the-mouth texture. Also along for the ride were tofu chunks and more mock meat.

Though Jo had staked a claim on deep-fried ice-cream early in the evening, none of us could cope with the thought of it after such a feast. Even sharing amongst a group, it seems impossible to sample the Enlightened Cuisine menu to full satisfaction!

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You can read about our previous visits to Enlightened Cuisine here and here.

April 19, 2008: Friday Featre Food - Enlightenment Cuisine

Edit 25/04/2017: Enlightened Cuisine is now rebranded as Vegie Kitchen.

Not strictly Friday, and not pre-theatre. Instead, we wandered across to Enlightenment Cuisine in South Melbourne early on a Saturday evening following a matinée showing of Holding the Man at The Malthouse. Cindy had one of her semi-regular faux-meat cravings, and our previous trip to the incongruously located (across the street from Crown) Enlightenment Cuisine had been relatively successful. It all added up to good excuse to make our theatre-related dinner a slightly more expensive experience (although it turns out they're now offering a series of $9 'food on the run' meal combos straight from the lunch menu, so it needn't have been quite so expensive).

Cindy, bafflingly, is rarely able to expand her faux-meat enthusiasms from the sickly sweet Chinese treats she remembers from her childhood: usually honey chicken, sweet and sour pork or lemon chicken. This week it was lemon chicken - I always enjoy stealing one little chunk off her plate, but more than that would be too much for me - Cindy enjoyed it though, happily chowing down the sweet, batter-y goodness.

I decided to try another 'fish'-based treat - fish with black bean sauce (see top). It was the same kind of weird dry fish substitute that we'd had at Ten Ren's, but this time it was appropriately smothered in sauce - a vinegary, beany black bean syrup. It also came with a decent number of vegies stirred through, something lacking from the lemon chicken. I'm not as enamoured of the Chinese faux-meat experience as Cindy is, and at more than $15 a pop, this isn't the great-value city food that we can score from places like Nila or Lord of the Fries. Maybe next time we'll try the $9 specials and see how they measure up.

Read about our previous visit to Enlightened Cuisine here.

June 29, 2007: Enlightened Cuisine

Edit 25/04/2017: Enlightened Cuisine is now rebranded as Vegie Kitchen.

We've been looking forward to seeing the Guggenheim Collection at the NGV and jumped at the chance to attend the preview screening on Friday night. As far as dinner goes, the surrounds seem to be dominated by overpriced bar food and the Crown. Rather than succumbing to the neon lights we discovered the more zen Enlightenment Cuisine Chinese Vegetarian Restaurant, tucked away a little further along Queensbridge St. Much like the White Lotus, this is a very mock meat experience (chicken, duck, beef, lamb and a variety of seafoods) although there are also tofu-based and vege-only dishes in the menu as well. Meals are free of garlic, onions and leek and the restaurant strives to be vegan-friendly. The meals are a dollar or two more here than at the restaurant's North Melbourne ally, but for those dollars you'll receive a more meditative atmosphere: tables are large, of lacquered dark wood, and well spaced; decorations are similarly sparse and tasteful, and piano music tinkles on the stereo.

Mindful of the few hours that the art gallery remained open, we reluctantly skipped the entrees and soups, heading straight for the mains. For Michael, it was Kung Po Lamb: gluten, mushrooms, capsicum and dried chillies in a sweet, tangy and somewhat fiery sauce. I thought it was great and I can only assume that Michael did too given how quickly he finished it. I tried the roasted duck: its 'skin' was super-crispy, probably due to the light use of plum sauce (sweet, but not syrupy). I, too, managed to clear my plate! Some more veges would have made a more well-rounded meal, but this portion size didn't sit heavily in my stomach and we comfortably bustled on to the main event.

Given its closer proximity to our home, we're more likely to make repeat visits to the White Lotus than Enlightenment Cuisine. However, Enlightenment Cuisine does a equally enjoyable line of Chinese mock meats and I may well rely on this haven again when I'm hungry and in the shadow of the casino.

Address: 113 Queensbridge St, Southbank
Ph: 9686 9188
BYO
Price: veg mains ~$12-23, rice extra
Website: www.ecuisine.com.au