Roslyn Thai Cafe

September 27, 2024

   

Roslyn Thai Cafe popped into my instagram feed at some point in the past year, and their pastel sweets earned my follow. It was a convenient lunch stop on Friday's public holiday on our way to the Untitled Goose Exhibition at ACMI, and we didn't mind waiting 10-15 minutes for a table given the rare, fair weather. We assumed we'd be seated in the small, dark interior but were happily led to a terrace out back.

Roslyn's menu is not designed with veg*ns and the gluten-free front of mind though the vegetarian, dairy-free, nut-free and gluten-free options are marked. Pork features widely across the main dishes, with vegetarians having the choice of scrambled eggs on a baguette and a seemingly-vegan roti murtabak.

   

Michael was enthused about the roti murtabak ($19) and added a soft boiled egg ($3) into the mix. The roti was golden and flaky, stuffed with a dry curry mushroom, potato and onion; Michael slathered over the mild satay sauce, cucumber relish and actually-solid-yolked egg.

   

I picked the kaya set ($13.50), a sweet that sticks out amongst the other mains. Here four puffy Chinese donuts are teamed with two pudding-like dips, flavoured with pandan and with Thai tea. They were prepared perfectly, with the hot toasty donuts contrasting effectively with the cool sweet accompaniments. (In the background is Michael's also-very-sweet O-liang black coffee; $5.50.)

   

Roslyn Thai Cafe also features abundant puffy toasts with sweet toppings, fluffy cakes and colourful drinks. They were all out of the sweetcorn custard cake that I ordered, and a staff member helpfully recommended the pandan coconut chiffon ($10.50) as an alternative. Michael and I both derived equal delight in its layers of feather-light pandan cake, coconut jelly and whipped cream.

   

Roslyn Thai Cafe is a cute spot for fancy snacks on an otherwise unattractive street. I'm so glad we stopped in and hope we'll have an excuse to do so again.

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Roslyn Thai Cafe has also received positive coverage from mamma knows melbourne and momentsinmelb.

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Roslyn Thai Cafe

477 King St, West Melbourne

0451 348 039

ahaan/food, cakes & drinks

https://www.roslynthaicafe.com.au/

Accessibility: There is a small lip on the door due to the uneven street. Furniture is densely packed, with low-medium height tables and a mixture of backed chairs and backless stools. The pathway through the furniture is winding. We ordered and paid online via QR code and received food at our table. We didn't visit the toilets.

Hotel Spencer

November 5, 2020

   

Most of Melbourne is revelling in the relaxation of lockdown rules and eagerly returning to pubs, cafes and restaurants. Our mate Jess swiftly organised us a table for four at the Spencer Hotel, which serves one of his favourite vegan burgers. In light of current spacing rules, we had the entire front bar to ourselves (with other tables in use in the dining room and out on the footpath) and full table service.

The menu covers familiar ground: for the omnivores there's steak and chips, fish and chips, a parma, bangers and mash, pulled pork and Southern chicken burgers, and hot wings. The vegetarian burger looks like a rich one with mushrooms, potato and four kinds of cheese. For vegans, there's a hearty-looking bistro salad and one-to-two burgers. I'm hedging because the beef-style Smokehouse burger wasn't available and I'm not sure if they're bringing it back. Most importantly, Jess' favourite Faux' Boy ($20) was still on offer and it was all we wanted.

Cute as the pun may be this seems a very loose tribute to the Louisiana po' boy, which is commonly filled with seafood, but can be made with other meats. It features two filling pieces of battered mock-chicken, slaw, and plenty of sauce. The menu lists three condiments - cheezy bacon sauce, chipotle aioli, and jalapeno salsa - but they mostly just melded into a pleasant and slightly drippy mix. Vegans usually miss out on the 'brioche bun' nonsense that's saturated Melbourne, but the fluffy potato bun here is a worthy analogue and it contrasts well with the chicken. It steers this burger away from being a gluten-brick, which I've sometimes struggled with in other pubs.

Hotel Spencer's chips are great, there are sauces aplenty at the table, and we felt well looked after in these times of distanced-dining. While other bloggers mention it as a convenient stop-off before a show at Festival Hall, we'll have to find another excuse to revisit given that gigs are still a ways off and FH has been bought by Hillsong.

   

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Hotel Spencer has clocked up a few reviews, all positive, and most around 5 years old, see Gastrology, Eat & Be Merry, live life love cake, Consider the Sauce, Parma Daze and Gastronomical Ramblings.

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Hotel Spencer

475 Spencer St, West Melbourne

9329 9116

menu 1, 2

https://www.hotelspencer.com.au/

Accessibility: Oof, I am out of practice with this! There was a step up on entry, and medium-spaced furniture inside. We received full table service, but this might shift to ordering and/or payment at a high bar as the pandemic eases. The toilets were gendered.

Loving Hut

Update 18/06/2023: Loving Hut is now closed and has been replaced by Tofu Shoten.

October 28, 2017

Melbourne has a new, third Loving Hut! And it's located in the shopfront that used to hold White Lotus; it's inexplicably comforting to me that there's a veg*n restaurant nestled in this spot again. The Loving Hut team have redecorated the interior yet it's instantly familiar, both from its past life and via the distinctive yellow branding of the Loving Hut chain.

The menu is all vegan with numerous other dietary considerations (e.g. gluten, onion, garlic, raw) labelled throughout. There are dozens of dishes on offer, and I hear it runs closer to the Richmond offerings than the Northcote ones.

We stopped in after big, separate days running about - neither of us had a huge appetite and were glad to order simply, sit at the empty communal table, and keep to ourselves. Unusually, this Loving Hut is largely run from the counter, and this suited us fine.

Michael was a big fan of the nasi lemak ($16). This version is centred on coconut rice and a spicy mock meat rendang and has all the right trimmings: sambal, fresh cucumber and tomato slices, peanuts, and crispy mushroom mock anchovies.

I played it safe and standard with the salt and pepper tofu ($16). This, too, is a lovely rendition of a common dish, with lively spices in a crispy coating and refreshing capsicum and lettuce surrounding the tofu.

There's still so much more for us to try at this Loving Hut - entrees, noodles, soups, smoothies and perhaps dessert. The proselytising posters are cheesy and the drinks menu's flooded with kombucha, but we can always rely on Loving Hut for a casual, comfortable meal.

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Veganopoulous got into this Loving Hut branch early and enjoyed her visit.

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Loving Hut
185 Victoria St, West Melbourne
9326 7551
entrees, mains, drinks & dessert
facebook page

Accessibility: There's a shallow ramp on entry and clear corridor through the middle of the restaurant (see top photo). Tables are medium spaced. We ordered and paid at a low counter. We didn't toilets.

Warung Agus II

May 17, 2014

After talking up tempeh on twitter last month, we arranged to make a long overdue return to Warung Agus with a couple of friends. This restaurant's menu has only changed marginally since our last visit but we were still overwhelmed with the options, electing for a vegan banquet selected by the chef ($50pp).

Throughout the meal I sipped an expensive Es Jus Campur ($9), slushie of fruit juice and ice that tasted primarily of banana. Bowls of eye-watering chilli sambal and lemongrass-spiked onion pickle turned up early, to perk up all of what was to come.

Our first bites were the Krapuk Singkong, thick but airy cassava crackers served with the smoothest peanut sauce I've ever eaten, sweetness offset with fried shallots.

Next, mountains of steamed rice and a procession of 'proper' dishes. The room temperature Apokat Mebasa Santen Misi Oong won me with its mushrooms, generous avocado chunks, cherry tomatoes and coconut cream sauce.

Warung tested the strength of our satay love with tofu-tempeh-vegetable skewers drowned in more of the sauce and we passed, clearing the plate with only the briefest of second thoughts. Only I dabbled in the lightly pickled tomatoes and cucumber on the side.

The Pecel was a charming coconut-based stew filled out with mung beans. We'll have to hunt down a recipe for this one, as I reckon it'd make a great stand-alone winter meal to curl up on the couch with.

More of the tempeh we came for! This dry-fried Tempe Jagung, sticky with kecap manis, did not disappoint.

The Mie Goreng, though good, suffered for all the fine food we'd already filled up on. I enjoyed the vegetables but could only pick at it.

I just barely performed better on the widely recommended Tuung Mebasa Santen Lalah Manis, a silky eggplant and tofu dish that's a worthy centrepiece in other circumstances.

To finish, the four of us shared a single bowl of the Bubuh Injin, a thick black rice porridge. While it was comfortingly warm and only gently sweet, we wished for more of the coconut cream to thin it out.

We couldn't even entertain extra warm beverages at this stage, so full were we. (This banquet has previously defeated the largest appetite we know.) This is a huge portion of comforting food in an equally cozy restaurant. Warung Agus is a lovely, gentle family-run business that shows no signs of changing - here's hoping they never do.

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You can read about a previous visit to Warung Agus here. Since then it's received entirely positive reviews, from vegos at words@random, The Good Hearted and veganopoulous, then omnivores at All hail your Huiness and Asian Restaurants in Melbourne.

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Warung Agus
305 Victoria St, West Melbourne
9329 1737
menu: entrees & accompaniments, mains, dessert, drinks
http://www.warungagus.com.au/

Accessibility: There is a small step up into the restaurant and a step down between the two dining rooms. Tables have only low-to-medium amounts of space around them, though a fairly wide path has been made from the front door, right around to the farthest tables. There's full table service. We didn't visit the toilets. The air is very thick with incense so beware if you have a sensitive olfactory system.

July 29, 2011: Warung Agus

Warung Agus is a family-run restaurant that's been serving up Balinese food for more than two decades. A post about it on Confessions of a Food Nazi brought it to our attention and is as thorough a write-up as you should need. It's been more than two years, though, since AOF's review was published and what's more, I am a ridiculous completist, so I'm going to write about it too! A restaurant this lovely deserves renewed endorsement every so often.

Warung Agus is just about as veg-friendly as meat-serving restaurants get. All the vegetarian dishes are marked with a V on the menu and we hear that (with the possible exception of dessert) they're all vegan. Roughly half the items have that V on them and they're appetising, protein-rich dishes.

Another feature that I appreciate? A full page of interesting non-alcoholic beverages. Many are, admittedly, Balinese-style preparations of tea and coffee that you might not want with your meal, but you can also get house-made iced fruit drinks featuring lemon, banana or avocado ($7). I know I should be more adventurous but a sweet'n'sour lemon drink hooks me every time - all the better that this one features slushy blended ice.

There was a minor seating mishap on the night, meaning that we needed to shift tables between ordering and receiving our food. While we weren't all that put out the staff were enormously apologetic, with the manager/chef even emerging from the kitchen to thank us for our understanding and give us a complimentary basket of cassava chips (krupuk singkong, normally $6), assuring us that the peanut sauce was not garnished with shrimp paste. (We hadn't said the v-word all night but he clearly noticed from our order - amazing!) What a treat - these are thick, airy, crunchy and lightly spiced crackers with the silkiest peanut sauce I've ever eaten. I could barely believe my eyes when, once two-thirds of the way through the crackers, they replaced our sauce with another fresh, hot bowlful! Heaven.

The vegetarian nasi campur ($28) is a tasty sampler of crunchy sweet-soy tempeh, sesaur (spiced golden shredded coconut sweetened with palm sugar), pecel (mung beans) and peanut sauce-smothered tofu around steamed rice, with a few lightly pickled vegetables on the side. Not pictured are the complimentary condiments - a tangy lemongrass-chilli mix and a fiery chilli sauce that Michael dug into with equal enthusiasm.

As I gobbled my share of the nasi campur I gave our other main a couple of sidelong glances. The monochrome tuung mebasa santen lalah manis ($20) couldn't possibly rival it, right? Actually, this dish of eggplant and tofu was just as gob-smackingly good! The gravy is smoky, sweet soy-ish and satiny with a splash of coconut milk. We were glad for some extra rice ($3) to soak up as much of it as possible.

Dessert was not an option. Our mains were incredibly filling (I fear the banquet!), and had plenty of palm sugar and coconut milk to go round anyway. I expect a lot of mains exceeding $20 and I reckon these delivered. The food was quite sweet and (coconut-)creamy across the board, but the condiments provided let hot-heads season to taste. Sweeter still were the staff! They were faultlessly welcoming and sufficiently attentive. I'll gladly return when I've a somewhat special occasion to celebrate.

(It's hard to believe but our meal was ultimately upstaged by the evening's entertainment. Compared to the two years I've sat on AOF's review, I've been waiting a decade for Pulp to return down under. They were kind enough to bring their greatest hits, a dorky laser show and a dolphin with them.)

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Everyone who blogs Warung Agus seems to love it! Our inspiration for visiting was AOF's two-year-old post. There's another veg-focused review at In The Mood For Noodles. It's also been covered on foodoalbum, Foodiefile, eat, drink, stagger and The misadventures of MissC.

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Warung Agus
305 Victoria St, West Melbourne
9329 1737
veg entrees $6-14, veg mains $19-28, extras $3
http://www.warungagus.com.au/

Accessibility: There is a small step up into the restaurant and a step down between the two dining rooms. Tables have only low-to-medium amounts of space around them, though a fairly wide path has been made from the front door, right around to the farthest tables. There's full table service. We didn't visit the toilets. The air is very thick with incense so beware if you have a sensitive olfactory system.

October 1, 2010: White Lotus IV

Edit 11/11/2017: Sadly White Lotus is no longer in business, but there's a Loving Hut here now.

White Lotus has always been a family-run business so when they had personal family business to attend to, the restaurant closed for several months.  But we're very happy to report that they've reopened!  They're back serving up Chinese-style mock meats on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.  Given their limited hours, I'd highly recommend that you book a table in advance.  We saw quite a few people regretfully turned away on the Friday night that we visited.

Though we were visiting primarily for the mock meats, it was a good thing that our wok tossed greens ($15) arrived first.  We hungrily lined our stomachs with bok choy before embarking on the richer stuff.

The restaurant's signature vegetarian fish in tamarind sauce ($19) was a must.  The 'flesh' was a little mushier and homogeneous that I recalled on past visits but the nori-and-bean-curd skin was delicate and crisp and the tamarind sauce as zesty as ever.

We also tried out one of the specials, sweet and sour spare ribs ($16).  I suppose we imagined something like the seitan ribs I made earlier in the year and received a starchy shock on first bite - inside were layers of vegetarian ham, pumpkin and taro!  They were tasty and novel once we got going, but pretty stodgy as we neared the end of the plate.  Like most things at White Lotus, the ribs are best shared amongst several people.

Although the restaurant was busy, the one waitress on duty provided us with reliable and unwaveringly friendly service.  Prices are a little steep but I don't mind paying them in support of a local vegetarian business on the odd night out.  And until Peace Harmony or Mei Lin see fit to open a restaurant here, they boast the best vegetarian fish in Melbourne.

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You can also read about our previous visits to White Lotus: one, two, three.

June 19, 2010: Global Green Vegetarian Food Mart

Keira from Around The World Vegan recently got the scoop on a new vegetarian grocery, Global Green, perched on the western side of the Queen Victoria Markets.  I eagerly stopped by the very next Saturday, strategically scheduling my visit to coincide with the 11am tastings that Keira mentioned.  When I arrived I was also greeted by the lovely Christine (whom Keira met), and she treated me to samples of stir-fried mock mutton and diced faux-chicken in a terrific tomato-chilli sauce.

As I enjoyed this late-morning snack I browsed the shelves.  With freezers full of mock meats, plenty of soy products and lots of condiments, there's a distinctly Asian bent; there are also a few veg*n bonuses such as Soyatoo cream, soy condensed milk and Cheezly.  Global Green stocks many products that were first introduced to me at Vincent Vegetarian Food - as well as the extensive mock meat selection, I was mighty pleased to see the brands of vegetarian 'oyster' sauce, 'fish' sauce and barbecue sauce that I've grown to love this year.

Global Green isn't actually a place to buy your fresh leafy greens but there's plenty of those across the street.  Instead I'd recommend any vegetarians frequenting the markets pay this shop a visit for a few unique treats that'll sit happily in your pantry or freezer before making their way to your belly.

Address: Shop 1/33 Peel St, West Melbourne
Ph: 9326 9686
Hours: Monday - Saturday 9:30am-6pm, Sunday 10am-6pm with tastings 11am Saturdays

Edit 26/01/2011: Global Green has recently moved to 105 South Rd, Braybrook.  You can keep updated with them via their website or facebook.

January 4, 2008: White Lotus III

Edit 11/11/2017: Sadly White Lotus is no longer in business, but there's a Loving Hut here now.

Friday found Cindy craving a fix of Chinese-style fake meats, so we met up after work at White Lotus in West Melbourne. White Lotus leads the way following our preliminary explorations of the fake-meat scene in Melbourne, and has the added advantage of being on our side of town. We continued our exploration of their menu: curry 'chicken'($13.50) for me, sweet and sour 'pork' ($13.50) for Cindy and some steamed vegies (pictured above, $12) for the pair of us to pick at.

The chicken was great - tender and melty the way good curried chicken should be. The curry was fine, with a good amount of spice and some nice fresh vegies, but I couldn't help imagining how great it would be to find an Indian restaurant that made fake meat curries with pseudo-chicken this good. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed a good chicken korma.

Luckily for me I resisted tasting Cindy's sweet and sour pork until she was eating the leftovers for lunch the next day. Otherwise I could easily have found myself volunteering to knock the leftovers off on the night, which could only have ended in some sort of terrible over-eating related accident. Suffice to say: it was pretty damn good.

The prices have gone up slightly, but the service is still friendly and the food remains worth the trip. A note for next time: it's BYO, remember to BYO!

Read about our previous trips to White Lotus here and here.

June 13, 2007: White Lotus II

Edit 11/11/2017: Sadly White Lotus is no longer in business, but there's a Loving Hut here now.

After about four days of subsisting on whatever's been in the fridge, supplemented with a few fresh veges, I decided that I'd splurge on a takeaway before Michael returns home. Several times throughout Wednesday I thought about what I should order. On a wintery evening with "showers and local hail" forecast, delivery seemed the smartest option. But delivery constrained me to pizza or Indian, neither of which I was particularly interested in. What I really wanted was some Chinese-style mock meat from the White Lotus vegetarian restaurant and I was pretty sure they don't deliver. Phoning ahead and picking up presents a few more obstacles than it should: you see, I don't drive. No license, no car. I just never got around to it. It would be a long cold walk, an extravagant cab ride, or a cumbersome tram trip. But as I walked home from work to clearing skies, I knew I wanted it that much. I phoned my order in, and the man receiving it warned me that they were busy and would need 35-45 minutes to fill my order. As it was I needed 35 minutes to get there! The thought of some steaming 'duck' and veges cocooned me from the cold air and I was in the restaurant for less then 10 minutes before I had my food zipped up in an insulated bag and out the door. I almost skipped back to the tramstop and fidgeted all the way home, knowing that the object of my desire was hidden in the bag beside me. By this time I was ravenous with hunger.

It was actually only a little over an hour between my phone order and arrival back home. Strangely I had the self control to present my sweet and sour 'duck' ($14.50), mixed veges ($11.50) and steamed rice ($1.50) on my imitation White Lotus plate (purchased in Footscray a few weeks ago) and take a few photos. The rice and mixed veges were nothing special, and after such a journey it was inevitable that the battered "duck" wouldn't be as hot and crisp as it should be. The sweet and sour sauce, packed separately, was pleasantly tangy and not the sugar syrup that it so often is. Hardly seems worth the trouble, does it? Yet the planning, the slightly inconvenient trip, the building hunger and the anticipation were an unexpected joy in themselves. And no lukewarm carrots could spoil that.

(You can read about our previous visit to the White Lotus here.)

April 13, 2007: The White Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant

Edit 11/11/2017: Sadly White Lotus is no longer in business, but there's a Loving Hut here now.

It could only be a matter of time before Michael and I sampled the 2007 Cheap Eats vegetarian dish of the year, from the White Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant in West Melbourne. As luck would have it, this restaurant is a leisurely bike ride from Michael's and my workplaces. Well, it would be leisurely if it didn't involve negotiating Victoria St in peak hour. For the last couple of blocks I took the safe but wussy option of walking my bike along the footpath - it's the only way to observe the regular honking and occasional yelling from the streets with a detached air and perhaps a short, dismayed laugh.

Had I been utilising my prop in the way it was intended, I could easily have glided right past the White Lotus, mistaking it for the local greasy takeaway. The cheap-looking tiles, paper tablecloths and vinyl seats are all there. The menu, however, is a study in the fine Buddhist tradition of mock meats. Sure, you could order some tofu, soup or noodles, but wouldn't you rather try the "fish" in tamarind sauce, succulent "duck" fillet with mushroom gravy or the Mongolian "beef"? Michael had already claimed the dish of the year for himself ($17) and it took some time for me to select a second faux-meat to sample. Nostalgia won out with a plate of lemon "chicken" ($14), surely one of the most popular orders from the suburban Anglicised Chinese takeaway. Most of the mock-meat dishes come with minimal veges (the waitress explained that the "fish" came with "five slices of cucumber" and lo and behold, she was right!). Thus, we ordered a plate of the mixed vegetables with bean sprouts ($11.50); rice also needs to be ordered separately (simple steamed is $1.50 per person).

The much-anticipated "fish" with tamarind sauce arrived first, and it certainly didn't disappoint. Thin sheets of bean curd are layered on top of one another to produce a soft, flaky, somewhat fleshy texture; a top layer of seaweed gives a crispy skin and the essence of the sea; finally, the moderately spicy sauce has just the tangy kick that so many of us seek to accompany fish.

The lemon "chicken" looked flourescently familiar, and must surely be colour-enhanced, right? The battered chicken bites measure up to the most convincing mock meats I've tasted previously, but all of them are at the 'processed' rather than the 'high quality, lean' end of the meat spectrum. Thankfully the lemon sauce proved to be a little less gluggy and sweet than those of my childhood experience, and I found that mushing the garnishing lemon slices into my bowl brought the sour element up to my liking.


The mixed veges were a welcome respite from our heavily sauced feature dishes, and the roasted cashews were a tasty, crunchy treat. The veges weren't jaw-dropping material, but then I really only had eyes for the fake flesh - I just know I would have missed the greens if we'd stuck with "meat" and rice.

Astoundingly, Michael and I nearly cleared the three huge plates between us - it was that good. No chance of a tofu ice-cream this time! I'd actually recommend one mock-meat and one vege dish to share between two for dinner, but on this first visit Michael and I couldn't resist ordering more. We're unlikely to reduce our order in the future either: although it's not accessible from the customer side of the counter, there are some takeaway menus tucked away. I think there'll be many future nights where one of us pulls out the pushy for a trip down to the White Lotus to pick up a mock-meat banquet that'll last two dinners and leftover lunches. This little vego has re-discovered the guilty pleasure of a night in with Chinese takeaway.


Address: 185 Victoria St, West Melbourne
Ph: 9326 6040
BYO
Price: vege mains $10-18, rice extra