Stalwarts of West End, Brisbane

 April 17-22, 2021

   

We took some time off work to travel to south-east Queensland in April. It's been about two years since either of us has visited, and we had lots of family and friends to reconnect with. Our trip included almost a week in Brisbane's West End, where we lived just before moving to Melbourne. The neighbourhood has changed enormously, yet also retains many features that we remember fondly. We're amazed at some of the cafés still going strong 15 years later - here are three that we revisited.

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(Update 11/07/2022: Three Monkeys is now closed.)

To enter The Three Monkeys Coffee & Teahouse is to travel back in time 20 or more years (QR code check-in and hand sanny excepted!). It's a rambling converted home with tables tucked in nooks and crannies, opening eventually onto a leafy courtyard. Though I believe it's changed management along the way, the menu seems immovable: foccacia is stuffed with chicken, avocado and sundried tomato; there's Greek salad and quiche, spanakopita and lasagne (beef and vegetarian). A display case bursts with a dozen or more cakes and they're cut in huge slabs. 

After a long walk in the sun, I ordered a Sweet Passion blended fruit drink ($6.95) - unfortunately it was more cordial than fruit juice, but it was refreshing nonetheless. The main appeal of Three Monkeys is that you can laze for hours in the shady back garden without bothering the staff, and that's exactly what I did, with a big plate of nachos and three of my high school friends.

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Indian Kitchen opened up in West End while I lived there. I was a student, and their food was cheap, so a couple boxes of their curries and a naan was a favourite easy takeaway. On this visit we stuck around for lunch, and splurged on a full vegetarian thali each ($10 each) and the special naan of the day, paneer and herb ($5.50), which was cooked specially to order. The curries weren't quite as special as the naan, but still incredible value - on this day we were served (left to right) English cabbage and potato, vege kadhi curry (a new one for me!), and garlic dahl.

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I used to pick up the odd sausage roll from Kim Thanh Hot Bread before I was vegetarian. I don't think I knew a thing about banh mi then, but now I know well what I was missing out on. We grabbed a couple of their tofu-stuffed ones ($7 each) for a quick lunch and walked them home. I felt a pang of regret when I noticed another Boundary Street café touting vegan duck banh mi, but that was assuaged when I sat down and took a bite of my own. This was the most intensely marinated, 'meaty'-textured tofu I'd ever eaten: it had Chinese 5 spice, a slow-burning heat and a sweetness to it that I don't have a hope of replicating.

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Amongst these tasty servings of nostalgia, we also ate at some of West End's newer establishments! I'll highlight some of them in my next post.

Banh mi in Hoi An

August 31 - September 8, 2019

We didn't have too many plans for our week in Hoi An: take a cooking class, go birding for a day, swim in the pool and eat as many banh mi as possible. We went wandering on our first day in town and found our way to the central market. We'd had breakfast at the hotel and it wasn't yet lunch time, but there's no harm in a wander through the food court, right? We didn't find an entirely vego stall like the ones we feasted at in Da Lat, but we did find a couple with vego menus, including Mrs Ha. I decided a second breakfast was in order and grabbed a vego banh mi - it cost 20,000VND (about $1.25) and was a pretty basic tofu, veggies and sauce roll. Nothing fancy, but a good way to get a week of sandwiches underway.

We had to visit Banh Mi Phuong, made famous by Anthony Bourdain's endorsement. It's become a go-to place in Hoi An and there are usually queues out the door. We somehow hit a quiet patch, which meant we didn't have long to wait for a pair of tofu and avocado banh mi. This is a good sandwich - rich and creamy with avo and stuffed full of slightly sweet tofu. Add some chilli for optimal results. It's also vegan (although everything's cooked and served using the same implements), and just 20,000VND ($1.25).

One of the other hyped-up banh mi places in town is Madame Khan. They have an off-menu vegan option (tofu), but we ordered the regulation vegetarian roll: tomato, cheese, egg and veggies (20,000VND, $1.25). This was really great as well - probably my favourite bread of the week - worth your while if you want a break from tofu-based sandwiches.

Happy Cow pointed us to the one entirely vegan banh mi in town, a street stall that sells out by about 10am each morning. We went for 2nd breakfast one morning to try it out. This was pretty classic - nothing fancy, but a great combination of tofu, crushed peanuts and veggies on a crunchy roll. It's also the cheapest on our list, at just 12,000VND ($0.75).

Our last day in town was a two banh mi day, starting at Phi Banh Mi with a vegetarian special, that combined spreadable Laughing Cow cheese with crispy tofu, cucumber, fresh herbs and carrot (25000VND, $1.50). I wouldn't have guessed that cheese and tofu would work together, but they were a surprising hit here (you can sub the cheese for avo if you're vegan).

We signed off with a visit to the fanciest vego banh mi in town at Annen, a yoga studio and vego restaurant that we visited repeatedly. The banh mi comes with  crispy lemongrass tofu, mushroom, tomato, cucumber, papaya/carrot salad, greens and a big slab of nori. It's fancy, and you pay a premium for it - 55,000VND (a whopping $3.40) - but it's definitely worth it. I would eat this every day if I could.

It's hard to go too far wrong with banh mi - we had a great time exploring all that Hoi An had to offer. We'll have to make do with Trang and La Panella until we can go back.

Good Days

April 29-30, 2016

Good Days has opened so unobtrusively next to the Cornish Arms that I was at risk of overlooking it. Luckily for me, several friends tagged me into their Broadsheet coverage so I was soon in the know. I even managed to catch a cold, all the better to assess the restorative properties of their vegan pho.

The menu and venue are both small but carefully curated - there are rice paper rolls, pho, noodle salad and chicken rice, with well-marked vegan options on the former three. No hints for coeliacs; I'm hopeful the rice paper rolls might suit.

On my first visit I tried the mushroom pho ($15). The overall effect was very gentle, from the subtly flavoured broth to the lightly braised and grilled mushrooms, bean sprouts and herbs (there was chilli and a lemon wedge on hand for a bit of bite). My favourite part was the thick, slippery noodles.

I was also delighted to order and pour my own Vietnamese iced coffee ($4.50, pictured back). It wasn't as bitter as I've encountered elsewhere.

I returned the following day for the tofu & mushroom noodle salad ($13) and an iced jasmine tea ($2.50). The salad was a huge bowl with lots of trimmings - the tofu & mushrooms were inside the fried spring rolls, there were spinach and iceberg lettuce leaves, cucumber, herbs, peanuts, fried shallots, and a lovely carrot and daikon pickle that I made sure to spread through the thinner vermicelli rice noodles. The garnishing cassava cracker was fun, too.

The staff welcomed me warmly when I entered, which really put this lone diner at ease. I snuck up to fetch my own missing spoon on my first visit, went without a napkin and couldn't attract a water refill, but everything was running much more smoothly just one day later. I think this eatery will only get better because it's early days for Good Days, after all.

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Good Days
165 Sydney Rd, Brunswick
9041 2000
food, drinks
http://good-days.com.au/

Accessibility: Entry includes a shallow ramp and green push-button to open the door from the inside. There is a mix of high and low furniture and all chairs have low backs. Furniture is densely packed with a clear corridor through the middle. I ordered at the table and paid at a low counter. I didn't visit the toilets.

Great Aunty Three

February 20, 2015

Recent readers will have noticed my penchant for veggie banh mi. Every time we've mentioned banh mi on facebook Matt has raved about a place called Great Aunty Three in Sydney. The shop he visited was in Enmore, which wasn't really convenient for our trip, so I didn't think we'd get a chance to visit. But I handily stumbled onto a new Surry Hills branch on a quick wander around the neighbourhood and our Friday lunch plans were sorted.

It's a popular place - we turned up at 1ish and the queue was out the door. It moves pretty steadily though, so you've got to make your mind up pretty quickly. There are three kinds of veggie rice paper rolls (lemongrass tofu, vegan chicken, salad), a vegetarian noodle salad bowl and a vegan bao, plus the banh mi options.

We took one of each of the roll options - vegan chicken and vegan duck ($8 each). The rolls come with loads of coriander, big chunks of cucumber, lettuce, sprouts, carrot, a bit of chilli and, strangely, pumpkin seeds.

I ordered these mild, because I was splitting them with Cindy, so they didn't have the spicy pop of my regular Trang orders. The mock meat was good though, especially the duck (the chicken slices were a tiny bit dry). They're going for a more traditional crusty roll too, which will please the purists, but it meant that we scattered crumbs all over the hotel lobby where we scoffed these down.

At $8 a pop, these are raising the stakes a bit on Trang or Nhu Lan, but I guess you have to factor Sydney rents into the equation. They're also going for something a bit more like Roll'd in terms of aesthetics too, so it's not a ridiculous price. It's a pretty amazing world we're living in these days - mock meat banh mi are going mainstream and I couldn't be happier about it.

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Let's Nom Nom!, Jan's Lifestyle, B-Kyu, lateral eating, Happy Bites, Jugernauts, Grab Your Fork, noodlies, Scoff and Quaff and Not Quite Nigella were all fans of Great Aunty Three, while ChopinandMysaucepan was less impressed.

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Great Aunty Three
94 Wentworth Ave, Surry Hills
02 9281 8882
menu
http://www.greatauntythree.com/

Accessibility: There's a small step up on entry. Things are super crowded inside, at least at lunchtime. There are a couple of tables with high stools. You order and pay at a high counter. We didn't visit the toilets.

Trang Bakery

January 6, 9 & 24; February 12 & 16, 2015

A month or two back news of a place in Collingwood doing a great vegan banh mi swept Facebook. I stopped by Trang Bakery Cafe to check it out, expecting a tofu roll or something only to be confronted by this menu.

This changed everything - I couldn't do Trang justice with just a single visit, I had to commit to the full experience. So I went back 5 times and fully sampled the menu (sidenote: on my last visit they'd added a vegan prawn option to the list, but my journey was complete).

A Trang banh mi follows a pretty simple formula: some sort of roasted eggplant relish as the base, a pile of fresh vegetables and herbs, generous chunks of your choice of mock meat, fresh chilli, peanuts, and fried shallots plus a couple of mysterious sauces. They're $5 each, made on the spot and they're stuffed to the gills with goodness. The centrepiece below is the mock duck banh mi. It's surrounded by (clockwise from top-left): mock chicken, lemongrass tofu, ham and tempura eggplant.

I've given quite a lot of thought to my order of preference - I think I'm settled on: duck, tofu, eggplant, chicken, ham. They're all excellent though - truly delicious and ludicrously cheap rolls. The word has clearly got out - Trang has had a queue out the door almost every time I've visited. It's not that close to my office, but it's so spectacularly good that I've managed to sneak in five trips in five weeks (actually six trips, but I doubled down on the duck on one of them). Check it out y'all, it's probably the star of Melbourne's cheap vegan eating options.

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Trang Bakery and Cafe

382 Smith Street, Collingwood

9722 4352

Accessibility: There's a small step up into a narrow and often crowded space. There are just a handful of seats on the footpath. You order and pay at a high counter.

Roll'd

December 13, 2014

Way back in October when I was going through a slightly obsessive banh mi phase, Cookie Daux tipped us off via Facebook that the chainstore-looking Vietnamese place at Barkly Square was a creditable veg Vietnamese option. We've stopped by a couple of times since then, but finally used a lunchtime Saturday visit to blog the place properly.

Roll'd is a fast-growing franchise, with twenty-something locations listed on its website. Their focus is fast, affordable Vietnamese food, a kind of food-court version of the super cheap bakeries you find in Richmond and Footscray. The menu is pretty veg-friendly - there's a tofu option for each of the six or seven dishes they offer, including pho, noodle salads, rice dishes and more. The atmosphere is cheery, but you're still sitting in a shopping centre, so you're not really going there to soak up the good vibes. 

We started out splitting a tofu soldier (rice paper roll filled with tofu, rice noodles and fresh veggies, $3), with a serve of the chilli mayo for dunking. This was fine - a bit noodle heavy and not bursting with flavour, but cheap, fresh and a good warm up for our mains.

I couldn't resist the tofu banh mi (or, as they strangely label it: Bun Mee). It's a pretty decent rendition - crusty roll, loads of fresh chilli, coriander, carrot, mayo, cucumber and a few cubes of tofu dotted throughout ($7.90). Vegans will need to alert the staff to hold the butter and double check the mayo situation - we've also heard a few reports of pate turning up on the tofu banh mi as well, although that's never happened to us.

Cindy ordered the tofu and mushroom banh xeo - a crepe with a tofu/mushroom mix, chilli some greens and a few herbs ($6.90) served with a sweet sauce. It's a light meal (3 bits of tofu and 3 mushrooms), so it doesn't really compare with the similar dish offered at Fina's or our homemade version.

She bulked it up with a side order of sweet potato fries ($3.90), which were surprisingly crispy unlike so many sweet potato chips - probably Roll'd's most impressive achievement!

You can order Vietnamese iced coffee, iced tea and aloe vera drinks to take the heat out of the chilli. Service is brisk, friendly and effective. Roll'd are never going to measure up in either quality or value with traditional Vietnamese bakeries like Nhu Lan or N. Lee, but it's a super convenient option for us and does a decent enough job of veg-friendly Vietnamese. They're popping up all over town, so keep an eye out if you're struggling for lunch in a food court somewhere.

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There's plenty of love for the various Roll'd stores, with mostly positive write-ups at Gastrology, Arrow Foodie, MEL: HOT OR NOT, Eat And Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Die(t), Peach Water, Asian Restaurants in Melbourne, Love, Adjpants, Calenex, Champagne for the Pain, Krapow, Banh Mi Maniac, Chomp and Slurp, JP & Melbs and foodie about town.

The Very, Very Hungry Caterpillar, Pigging Out Around the World, New International Students, Consider the Sauce, Gourmet Chick, PhoCity and I talk too much my mouth hurts weren't as impressed.

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Roll'd
Barkly Square, Sydney Road, Brunswick
9380 9075
http://www.rolld.com.au

Accessibility: Roll'd has a flat entryway and a slightly cramped interior (especially during the lunch rush). There's a mix of high and low tables. You order and pay at a low counter. We haven't visited the toilets (in fact they probably rely on Barkly Square's general public toilets, which are pretty accessible).

Nhu Lan

Update 17/06/2023: Nhu Lan has now closed.

September 21, 2014

It's hard to go past a good vegetarian banh mi - we've had some luck with a seitan-based version at Tan Truc Giang in Footscray and the mock-pork variety at Fina's, and have incorporated a Vegan Dad-inspired version into our home cooking roster. Still, we're always on the lookout for more, so we were pretty excited when Olaf left us a comment recommending Nhu Lan in Richmond. We took advantage of a sunny Sunday afternoon to go and check it out (as an aside: we love it when people recommend place or recipes to us - please do leave a comment here or chase us up on Facebook or Twitter).

Nhu Lan is a classic Vietnamese bakery - no fuss, no chit chat, just speedy service, made to order sandwiches and a decent range of sweet stuff and pastries. It's all pretty pork heavy, but the $4.50 tofu roll is clearly marked on the menu. Vegans will need to be clear that they don't want butter or mayonnaise, but the rest of the fillings are pretty straightforward: grated carrot, slivers of cucumber, coriander, chilli and tofu.

Unlike our Fina's and Tan Truc Giang experiences, this isn't really trying to mimic the pork roll - the tofu is lightly battered rectangles with a slightly sweet marinade. The chilli provides the necessary bite and the fresh, crunchy roll is top notch. I think I still favour the seitan-based version, but this is a cheap, easy and delicious lunch in Richmond if you don't have time for a sit down meal at Fina's or Thanh Nga 9.

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It seems as though the Footscray branch of Nhu Lan is popular with bloggers, but not many have reviewed the Richmond one - Ministry of Gluttony and teenagefoodie weren't wowed, while chasing a plate, krapow  and Swimming in Coffee were much more enthused.

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Nhu Lan Bakery
152 Victoria Street, Richmond
9429 5545
menu

Accessibility: There's a small step up as you enter and the interior is pretty crowded (at least when they're busy). There's not really anywhere to sit. You order and pay at a high counter.

Lâm Lâm

July 28, 2013

We've become quite slack about Northcote, only really exploring all the cafes and restaurants if we're in the neighbourhood for other reasons. This Sunday evening we'd hit up Women of Letters and were on the prowl for an early dinner. We'd had word that the veggie menu at The Wesley Anne had hit new heights, but the miserable weather made its only spare tables (in the courtyard) unfeasible. We needed something close by with indoor tables and good veg options. Cindy poked around on her phone for a bit and came across Vegematarian's endorsement of conveniently located Lâm Lâm. Problem solved.

It's a pretty basic looking place - not somewhere you'd go for a relaxed or romantic dinner. Lâm Lâm is about serving you cheap fresh food quickly and then getting you on your way. There's no shortage of demand - it was basically full when we turned up at 5:45pm and stayed that way for the next hour or so. Throw in a steady stream of takeaway customers and its clear that Lâm Lâm has found itself a market in Northcote.

The menu is massive, with a small section of well-marked veggie options. We thought about the char kway teow ($11.50) or the mi goreng ($11.50), but couldn't resist Vegematarian's suggestion of the crispy bean curd with spicy salt ($11). This was served with a tangy and spicy clear sauce and was excellent - it's hard to go wrong when you deep-fry tofu with loads of spices and salt.

To counteract the fried-ness, we also ordered the rice-paper wraps, stuffed with tofu, veggies and noodles ($8).

These were a pretty reasonable rendition, although some of the fun gets taken away when you're not building your own. The filling was probably a bit heavy on the noodles and light on the tofu and veggies for my tastes, but the thick and spicy dipping sauce made sure every bite was delicious.

Our final dish (which was pretty unnecessary - we were both pretty full after the first two) was the rice vermicelli with veggie spring rolls ($9).

We almost always order this dish when it's an option - there's something very satisfying about stirring little deep-fried spring-roll chunks through a noodle dish and pretending that it's okay. This was another decent effort - the spring rolls were delicious, there were a reasonable amount of veggie pieces and the noodles were good. It won't change your life, but it will do an excellent job of filling you up for $9.

Lâm Lâm is a cheap and speedy dinner option in Northcote - as Vegematarian notes, it really has the feel of Victoria Street rather than High Street. I wouldn't suggest heading to Northcote specifically for a visit, but if you're in the neighbourhood and feel like a quick and satisfying meal you could do far worse than stop in.

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A few bloggers have enjoyed Lâm Lâm - Vegematarian's post was our prompt to visit, while Happy Nation and The Tasty Dozen were also impressed. Asian Restaurants in Melbourne and  Juganaut's Foodie Thoughts had less enjoyable experiences. 

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Lâm Lâm
209 High Street, Northcote
9482 5258
veggie dishes: $4-$11.50

Accessibility: Lâm Lâm has a flat entryway but is pretty crowded inside. You order at the table and pay at a low counter. We didn't visit the toilets.

Fina's Vegetarian Cafe II

Update 17/06/2023: Fina's is now closed.

May 25, 2013

With a free Saturday night and a craving for some Vietnamese, Cindy and I roped in a couple of friends and headed off to Victoria Street for a return visit to Fina’s. Our last trip had been a speedy pre-festival lunch, so we enjoyed having a bit more time to work our way through the gigantic menu.

We started out with some shared entrees, including Fina’s vegetarian fried wontons ($7.50).

These crisply little treats were stuffed with a delicious mixture of silken tofu, mushroom and the occasional chunk of mock-prawn.

We also sampled a serve of the vegetarian Vietnamese grilled pork skewer ($18.50).

Not having paid close attention to the photos on the menu, I had imagined these as just a big pile of skewers. Instead, we got a big pile of skewers plus salad, noodles and rice paper wraps to make our own little rolls with. The ‘pork’ skewers were brilliant, although my rice-paper wrapping skills need work.

Our final starter was a single serve of the ban xeo chay (Vietnamese pancakes, $10.50), which Cindy sampled on our previous visit. More awkward wrapping of things (this time with lettuce leaves serving as the wrappers) and more superb food – the pancake is stuffed with an excellent mess of sprouts, mushroom and mock meat.

Onto the mains! We all sampled a bit of the vegetarian salad ($10.50), a tasty mix of fresh veggies, crackers, noodles and mock meat.

You pour a little bowl of vinegary sauce over the salad and toss it all together before everyone tries to pick out all the weird little ham pieces for themselves.

I was convinced by the very charming owner of Fina’s to sample their specialty dish – vegetarian spicy noodles ($9).

This is a massive bowl of soup loaded up with noodles, chunks of mysterious mock-meat, eggplant and a side of sprouts, lemon for squeezing and fresh chilli. I made the mistake of adding both fresh chilli and a generous dollop of chilli oil and then spilling noodles straight into my tea cup, which left me spluttering embarrassingly with nothing to drink to sort myself out. Spluttering aside, this is an excellent dish – there’s way too much food for you to eat, it tastes superb (apparently the stock cooks for 10-12 hours) and it costs $9. Not too shabby.

Cindy went with the vegetarian dried noodles ($10.50), a tasty hodge-podge of noodles, tofu, salad and two kinds of mock-meat.

The prawns weren’t a huge hit, but the curly bacony looking things were a success. I was a bit overwhelmed by my spicy noodles to really sample this dish, but Cindy gave it the thumbs up.

End of meal table wreckage

Our second visit to Fina’s was as big a success as our first – they’re cheap, friendly and the menu is massive and massively delicious. There are still loads of dishes for us to sample, along with an incredible range of intriguing cold drinks. Fina’s may have surpassed both Thanh Nga Nine and Loving Hut as our go-to Victoria Street option.

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Nobody else seems to have blogged Fina's since we visited back in February.

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Fina's Vegetarian Cafe
268 Victoria St, Richmond
9428 6765
veg dishes $4.50-18.50, drinks $3.20-7.50
facebook page

Accessibility: There's a small step on entry, but the interior is flat with a clear passage through the middle. Tables are moderately crowded. The venue is well lit but the menu font is difficult to read - it's got photos of all the food anyway. We ordered at our table and paid at a low-ish counter. We didn't visit the toilets.

Fina's Vegetarian Cafe

Update 17/06/2023: Fina's is now closed.

February 17, 2013

It's taken us far too long to visit Fina's for the first time. Reader Ben emailed us about it more than a year ago, Jay reminded us more recently and, after we found their shopfront closed during the Christmas/New Year period, The Simple Eater stopped in and wrote a very positive post about the cafe. Hopefully having some friends living back in the Richmond neighbourhood will give us the excuse we need to sample more of their lengthy all-vegetarian, Vietnamese menu. We met our mates there between two of tomorrow's parties.

The menu is quite something to tackle - a plastic folder with a photograph of every dish plus a title and blurb in a difficult-to-read curly font. Don't dilly dally in front of the manager though! He doesn't care for time wasters. After the usual rice paper and spring rolls, the menu offers a wide range of soups, some noodle dishes, stir-fries and hot pots - many dishes are vegan, and there's a mix of mock meat and non-mock options. The enormous cakes out front look decidedly less vegan, and gluten-free choices aren't clear (though amongst all the vermicelli and rice paper I'm sure there are some).

On yet another hot morning, I was thrilled to see an extensive selection of juices, ice slushies and bubble tea. Michael fell back on a Vietnamese iced coffee ($4), served half-full as pictured above. He missed the shaved ice that it comes with it elsewhere, but most importantly it was strong and sweet.

I've long wished that iced chai was more widespread, so I had to try Fina's Ice Chai Latte ($5.50) even though I didn't really want something creamy. Oops. This was a triple-dairy-threat of milk, icecream and thick piped cream, more like a vanilla milkshake with cinnamon sprinkled on top. Fun but lacking the spiciness I want from chai.

By far the cheapest way to eat is to go with their vegetarian roll ($4.50), a mock-pork banh mi with a sweet and somewhat spicy sauce, plenty of fresh salad and peanuts. Michael slammed it in little more time than it took me to photograph my food.

On our friend Clamps' recommendation I tried the Vietnamese pancake ($10.50). It's an enormous vegan omelette imitator with a batter of rice flour and coconut milk coloured with turmeric and studded with chunks of onion, mock ham, mock prawn and mushroom folded over a mountain of bean shoots. The objective is to fold portions of it into lettuce leaves, add mint and dip - the pancake was a little greasy, and I was slow and messy at the task, but it was well worth the effort.

Fina is colourful, comfortable and casual. We encountered brisk but friendly service and didn't feel at all rushed. Meals are cheap and, for the most part, very generously portioned. Thanh Nga Nine and Loving Hut have a real rival here for our Victoria St affections.

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Fina's has previously received positive reviews from The Simple Eater and foodie about town, and an ambivalent one from Phúc Buddies.

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Fina's Vegetarian Cafe
268 Victoria St, Richmond
9428 6765
veg dishes $4.50-14.00, drinks $3.20-7.50
facebook page

Accessibility: I think there's a small step on entry, but the interior is flat with a clear passage through the middle. Tables are moderately crowded (see photo above). The venue is well lit but the menu font is difficult to read - it's got photos of all the food anyway. We ordered at our table and paid at a low-ish counter. We didn't visit the toilets.

May 12, 2011: Miss Chu

Update 11/08/2022: Miss Chu no longer operates from the CBD, look for outlets here.

I always struggle to think of cheap, veg-friendly places to eat dinner in the CBD, often falling back on Indian food or dumplings. So when we were trying to arrange a quick dinner for five in town, I was pretty stumped. Luckily someone suggested Miss Chu, which I'd seen mentioned on twitter and which promised a wide variety of vegetarian dishes.

Miss Chu is a self-styled Vietnamese 'tuckshop', imported from Sydney and offering takeaway, delivery and dine-in. Like almost every vaguely trendy new place in Melbourne, you can't book ahead if you want to dine in. Which meant that, despite being assured that turnover was pretty fast, we ended up standing around on the street for half an hour before they could squeeze us in. At least it wasn't raining.

It's a pretty crowded and trendy fit-out - cute bowls as light fittings, big collages (kind of weirdly making something stylish out of what looked like photos of refugees), and lots of hip Melbourne-ites chowing down. The menu is quite long, with loads of vegetarian and vegan options - basically broken into dumplings, rice paper rolls, salads, spring rolls and a few other odds and ends. Miss Chu call themselves 'Queen of rice paper wraps' but we looked elsewhere, starting with a big pile of dumplings. They come in two vegie varieties, spinach and tofu and Asian vegetables with garlic chives ($5 per serve). I was pretty impressed with these - the skins weren't too thick or gluey and the fillings were great (particularly the tofu) . A good start.

I was tempted to try the papaya salad but someone who'd visited before told me it wasn't going to give me the chilli kick I was looking for (seriously folks, where can I get a fierce vego papaya salad?). Instead, Cindy and I both went for varieties of the Vietnamese vermicelli salads.

She got in first and ordered the vegetarian fried net spring roll salad ($12).

The spring rolls had a super crispy coating and tasted mostly of delicious deep-fried. They were piled on top of some nice rice noodles, laced with a fairly sweet chilli sauce, all piled on top of some salady bits (they're hiding in the picture above). The sauce was a bit light on, which meant that once you got through the rolls the remainder was a bit on the bland side.

I took the other salad option: a vegan salad, filled with enoki, shitake and shimeji mushrooms ($12).

I was pleasantly surprised to get a few delicious tofu chunks amongst all the mushies. Everything had been cooked over pretty high heat, so there was a nice smoky flavour to it all, which went well with the few pieces of chilli scattered throughout. I could have done with more chilli but that's just me being difficult.

There's a pretty substantial drinks list yet Cindy and I went non-boozy, opting for 'coconut young juice' ($3), which was sweet and coconutty. The beautiful chunks of coconut meat resting on the bottom filled in nicely for dessert.

I was fairly happy with Miss Chu - there were plenty of vegetarian options and the food was fresh, tasty and relatively healthy. A few people have complained about the prices - I'm sure you can find cheaper Vietnamese than this on Victoria St, but we're happy to pay a bit more for a place that serves up decent vego dishes. Having said that, I'm not sure we'll hurry back - the combination of its crowded layout, counter service and current buzz mean that the whole experience is a bit stressful. On the upside they do takeaway and delivery on cute little electric bikes and are up the same end of the city as my work, so I'll probably get to sample the food again without having to go through the whole rigmarole.

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Lots of people are fans of Miss Chu, see Bellygood, Very Hungry Caterpillar, Blithely Unaware, Delicious Gathering and Bang Bang Chronicles for positive write-ups. Melbourne Gastronome and Tomato were a bit less enthused. We're not the first vegos to visit - The Big V was way ahead of us.

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Miss Chu
297 Exhibition Street, Melbourne
9077 1097
rice paper wraps $6, dumplings and spring rolls $5, salads $12
http://www.misschu.com.au

Accessibility: There's no step to get in but Miss Chu is crowded and pretty narrow. Ordering and payment happens at a high counter.