East Elevation IV

Edit 02/01/2021: East Elevation is no longer trading as a cafe, but is available as a function venue.

September 6, 2013

It would be remiss of us to spend a month vegan-blogging without revisiting East Elevation. At least, that's what we told ourselves; we're rather fond of the place and would make almost any excuse to visit. EE have just held their second vegan five-course feast (it was pretty special from what we hear) and their daily brunch menu has some nice options too.

Michael ordered the Full Veggie ($18), where chipotle tempeh or mushrooms can be served in place of the standard eggs. The tempeh was smoky, saucy and an excellent choice, there were plenty of beans, a smattering of spinach and avocado, and Michael even deigned to eat the tomatoes. He reckons they could do better with the toast, but there was enough sauce across the plate to distract from the lack of a butter substitute.

For me, it was all about the warm rhubarb and coconut tapioca ($12). I liked but didn't love their previous incarnation of this dish, and now they've nailed it! Drizzled with coconut milk, the warm tapioca pearls need never be gluggy, while the stewed rhubarb, fresh strawberries and pistachios really work together. It's a cup of freshness, creaminess and something to chew, it's sweet and tangy but not sugary.

The tapioca also goes awfully well with a cup of Buddha's Tears tea ($4). I could inhale and sip and watch those tea leaves unfurl all morning, and I'm sure Michael felt several hours pass as I slowly drained my pot.

Though we've been to East Elevation many times, I still marvel at its light and space. It really is a lovely place to inhabit, especially on a quieter weekday morning. I've a history of scoffing at $18 breakfasts but have never complained while here. That could be down to the fine execution, the novelty of chipotle tempeh on a brunch menu, or the fact that we inevitably rack up a bill on takeaway croissants and Monsieur Truffe chocolate anyway.

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You can also read about one, two, three of our previous visits. East Elevation's daytime menu has received positive reviews on chilipadi's kitchen and Doughnut forget me!.

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East Elevation

351 Lygon Street, Brunswick East
9380 4915

veg dishes $6-18
facebook page

Accessibility: Excellent. A ramp on entry, great light, lots of space and a dedicated disabled toilet. Ordering happens at the table and payment at a reasonably low counter.

Walnut-crusted tofu cutlets

September 5, 2013

Some months back, we had a brief twitter exchange with Marieke about some delicious sounding tofu cutlets that were in her regular rotation. Cindy added them to her Delicious bookmarks and then we promptly forgot about them for eight months. And then, having no real inspiration for a quiet dinner alone, I stumbled across the link and decided it was time to give them a shot.

I'm very glad I did - these will rocket straight towards the top of our extensive list of excellent tofu-based meals. They're relatively simple to make but taste like something you'd spend hours slaving over. The braised marinated tofu is delicious enough, but then you've got two layers of wonderfulness taking things to amazing new places. The tahini spread has a nice tanginess to it and if you get the top layer right you get a mix of toasty, spicy goodness. For all their flavours, the topping mixes don't take much work - you can basically mix them up while the tofu is going through its marination and baking.

Added bonus: Cindy tells me that the leftovers are brilliant at room temperature. We'll definitely be making these again soon.

Walnut-crusted tofu cutlets
(slightly adapted from this recipe at Atkins Chef Recipes)

marinated tofu
3 tablespoons tamari
1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons water
3 medium/large cloves garlic, pressed or minced
500g tofu

tahini spread
1/4 cup tahini
juice of a small lemon
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon tamari
1/2 teaspoon salt

coconut-walnut crust
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt

Pre-heat the oven to 190°C.

Slice the tofu block into roughly one-inch thick rectangles, and then halve them diagonally to make triangular cutlets.

Combine the marinade ingredients in a baking dish and lay the tofu out to soak up the flavours. The original recipe suggested just 5 minutes of marinating, but I probably gave the tofu about 10 minutes on each side.

Bake the tofu for 10-15 minutes, until most of the marinade has been absorbed.

Meanwhile, combine the ingredients for the tahini spread in one bowl and those for the parsley/walnut/coconut crust in another.

Once the tofu is ready, take it out of the oven and spread each cutlet with a thick smear of the tahini spread. Top with the walnut crust - stacking it on as heavily as you can (it doesn't really matter if some falls off the edges!)

Bake for another 15 minutes or so, until the crust goes golden brown and a little crunchy - check it carefully from about 10 minutes onwards, it will go from perfect to burnt quite quickly.

Serve with your favourite side veggies (I went with a lazy stir-fry of beans and carrot with a dollop of mustard).

Kake Di Hatti II

Update 12/06/2023: Kake Di Hatti is now closed.

August 31, 2013

We visited Kake Di Hatti in our first months of blogging, and have since stopped by occasionally for no-frills but satisfying Indian meals. We now live just a short walk away, and have recently learned that they're vegan-friendly (just quiz them about ghee!). We picked up a few dishes to share with friends while needlessly but gleefully re-watching Step Up Revolution.

Kake's subjee pakora ($3.99) are potato and eggplant discs dunked in a gluten-free chickpea flour batter, which were beautifully tender but lacking a bit of crispness once we got them home. The gluten-eaters enjoyed dense wholemeal roti ($1.70 each).

From there we helped ourselves to creamy mixed vegetables ($8.50), a butter-free daal makhani ($5.99), alu cholle (chickpeas and potatoes, $8.50) and vegetable kadhai ($11.99). The daal and alu cholle won votes for favourite curry, though I had some lingering disappointment that they couldn't prepare their saag dairy-free.

Even as we crept back to the table for second and third spoonfuls of our favourites, we had a lot of leftovers. The benefit of takeaway Kake Di Hatti is that you can dine on it for days!

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You can read about our first visit to Kake Di Hatti here. Since then it's received positive reviews from Nigel Adler, EAT AND BE MERRY, FOR TOMORROW WE DIE(T), Melbourne Fun, Sharking for Chips and Drinks, my diet "starts" tomorrow, the melbourne local, foodie about town and Skinny Glutton, and met with indifference on Ray Is Always Hungry.

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Kake Di Hatti
128 Lygon St, Brunswick East
9387 7771
veg dishes $3.99-11.99
http://www.kakedihatti.com.au/

Accessibility: Kake Di Hatti has a couple of steps on entry and a fairly crowded interior. We ordered by phone, then picked up and paid for food at a high counter.

Code Black II

August 31, 2013

On the weekend we found ourselves on the prowl for a vegan brunch to keep the MoFo material coming. Wide Open Road is a pretty reliable source of vegan brekkies, but we'd eaten there a couple of times already since our move to Brunswick. We aimed a little further afield, heading back to Code Black Coffee for a second visit.

Business at Code Black is booming, but thankfully they've got such a gigantic space that there was still a spare table for us to grab. The menu has changed a bit since they opened, but it's still very clearly labelled and pretty vegan friendly. They've ditched their baked tofu dish, but there's still a couple of savoury brunches, a sweeter option and then a quinoa and pumpkin salad and a pickled eggplant sandwich. There are heaps of vegetarian options as well - the majority of the menu is meat-free.

I thought about the artichoke, currant and mint caponata on toast ($17.90), but in the end I couldn't go past fritters - broccoli, almond and chia fritters with grilled corn salsa, coriander and avocado ($16.90).

The trimmings of this dish were great - a smooth avocado mush on top with a lightly charred corn salsa, and the fritters tasted fresh and healthy, but they were texturally a bit soggy. I had imagined something a bit more fried, but I guess people ordering dishes made of broccoli, zucchini and chia aren't looking for something shallow-fried. Satisfying, but not as indulgent as I was hoping for.

Cindy took the sweetest vegan dish on offer, a breakfast couscous steamed with fruit juice, roasted nuts, dried peaches and cranberries served with house made creamy coconut yoghurt ($13.90).

This was a revelation, especially once you poured the berries over. The coconut yoghurt was rich and creamy and had reinvigorated Cindy's enthusiasm for having a crack at her own version, and the couscous mix was sweet and light. It was a little drier than I was expecting, but with the yoghurt and berry mix it was texturally pretty perfect. Highly recommended.

The coffees were good and the swarms of staff were friendly and efficient - Code Black Coffee is booming and it's easy to see why. They've got a decent range of vegan dishes and are definitely worth adding to your brunching rotation.

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Read about our previous visit to Code Black here. Since then, The Good Hearted have enjoyed their vegan options, while PETIT MIAMx, thehangrybitch, Brunch Addict, The Glutton and the Lush, grazing panda, Let's Get Fat Together and Lucy Likes Food have all given them the thumbs up. Deconstructing Comestibles liked the coffee, but wasn't so impressed by the food.

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Code Black Coffee

15-17 Weston Street, Brunswick

0402 532 578

veg breakfast $6-$19, lunch $12.90-$15.90

http://www.codeblackcoffee.com.au/
 

Accessibility: Excellent. Flat entryway, spacious interior and a fully accessible, unisex toilet in addition to standard gendered toilets. There's full table service.

Dainty Sichuan

August 30, 2013

We've had some spicy good times at South Yarra's Dainty Sichuan, so were excited to read Simple Eater's review of the new Box Hill version, which focuses on the Sichuan hotpot experience. We were even more excited when Steph, The Simple Eater and Hayley invited us to join them on a jaunt out to sample it for ourselves.

Steph is a passionate advocate of the hotpot, so we let her give us the run-down on the whole process. It's pretty simple: you just pick your preferred soup base (vegos can pick from mushroom, spicy or super spicy - or not, check out the new comment from Ruby) and then go crazy with things to cook in it. You can even get a split soup base - I went for a combo of mushroom and spicy, because I figured you can't really go to a Sichuan place without getting stuck into some chilli.

Turns out this was kind of a mistake - the chilli base is pretty potent and tended to overpower a lot of the fillings. And you don't need to focus your chilli energy on the pot, because Dainty Sichuan has a condiment station!

Look at all those condiments! There's about three different kinds of chilli sauces, a big pot of sesame oil, shallots, garlic, soy, vinegar and on and on and on. I made up a quite glorious little bowl of vinegar and Sichuan pepper, which would have served all my spice needs. So, a quick tip: get the mushroom stock and then go crazy with the chilli-based condiments - it gives you a bit more control. Luckily, there are a range of cooling drinks - Cindy and I both went for a lychee ice ($4.50).

Sweet and icy - they did a good job of cutting through the chilli.

Onto the hotpot fillings! The menu is pretty well served with vegetarian plates, all of which were vegan. Steph took charge, ordering us enough dishes to cover every square inch of our table. We had two plates of the potato slices ($5 a pop), plates of pumpkin and lotus root slices ($5 each), Chinese cabbage ($5), seaweed threads ($5), a mushroom combo ($18), topped up with some bonus oyster mushrooms ($7), a plate of dried tofu sticks ($5), frozen tofu ($5), two plates of potato noodles ($5 each) and two of the rice vermicelli ($5 each). Look at it all!

Eating it all was a super fun experience - there's a bit of an art to knowing how hot to make the pot and how long to cook each of the bits and pieces. The potato, for example, goes quite quickly from being undercooked to falling apart - there's a sweet spot, but you've got to pay attention to make sure you hit it. It's worth the concentration. Throwing some noodles in the pot is crucial - the potato noodles in particular were slippery and delicious. The mushrooms were also outstanding, particularly if you cooked them in the mushroom pot and then dunked them in your condiment combo. My favourite was probably the frozen tofu - it quickly thaws itself out in the hotpot and soaks up all its flavours (it, along with the potatoes, worked the best in the chilli stock I'd say).

The hotpot experience is best enjoyed with a big group - it has the double benefits of letting you choose loads of dishes and giving you people to lazily chat to as you steadily pick at all your food. They happily top up your soup pots as the night goes on so if you over-order like we did you can basically sit there all night, waiting for your second (and third) wind to dive back in again. I'm not sure that anything quite hit the heights of some of the regular dishes at the South Yarra restaurant, but we had a great time sampling all of these goodies. If you're after a similar experience, the South Yarra Dainty Sichuan has a bunch of hotpot tables along with their other options, but only the hotpot focussed Box Hill place has the full condiment station, so it might be worth the trip east.

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There are heaps of reviews of the other Dainty Sichuans (see our previous post for a round-up), but only The Simple Eater has made the trek out to Box Hill.

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Dainty Sichuan

Level 1, 2a Cambridge Street, Box Hill
9041 4318
stock bases $6-8, veg elements $5-18 (we paid about $30pp for more food than we could conceivably consume)
facebook page

Accessibility: Dainty Sichuan is up a flight of stairs - I don't remember seeing a lift anywhere, but I wasn't looking that closely. Once you're upstairs it's a big space with a reasonable amount of space. Ordering and payments is at the table. We didn't visit the toilets.