December 7, 2008: Concorde crepes

January 2016: Doing a bit of blog tidying up and it looks like this place has been closed for ages.

Local blogs tummy rumbles and Melbourne Gastronome recommend plenty of tasty and affordable meals around the city, but most of them are closed to the weekender like me. Not so Concorde Crepes (reviewed by Mellie here). This stand, located on the Elizabeth St side of GPO, was open and poised to crank 'em out at lunch time on Sunday.

At first glance the menu's got quite the variety of meat going on, but there are actually plenty of vegetarian options too: vegemite and Jarlsberg cheese; tomato, basil and mozzarella; egg, cheese and parsley; even one with chilli beans! Michael opted for a filling of grilled veges, basil, goat cheese and spinach ($9.90) and was thoroughly impressed. I'd be surprised if any of the others could hold a candle to my crepe (pictured above), which featured Swiss brown mushrooms, thyme, spinach and 3 cheeses ($8.90). Three cheeses is potentially a recipe for wrongness (think congealed oily ooziness everywhere) but these folks get it so, so right - there's just enough curd to meld together the mushrooms and spinach in savoury perfection.

If you're after something on the sweeter end of the scale, they've got you covered with a few classics - lemon and sugar ($4.90, tested and approved!), jam, honey or banana and nutella. There's a couple more elaborate fruit-based ones, but don't go expecting lavish plates tizzed up with aerosol cream and icing sugar; this stand is augmented with only four seats (and smoking-friendly ones at that) so everything's designed to be enjoyed on your feet and potentially with one hand.

Address: corner of Elizabeth and Little Bourke Sts, outside GPO
Unlicensed
Price: veg crepes $4.90-$9.90

December 6, 2008: Strawberry & rhubarb pudding

I've no idea why I thought of this 18-month-old pudding recipe from Food Blogga on the weekend, much less why I baked it. But I did, and it was a fine thing. Perhaps it could have done with some vanilla essence, or a teaspoon of ground ginger, but it seems petty to disparage the pink, fruity pleasure it already is. It's more fruit than pudding and more pudding than my favourite pudding dish can handle. So I poured half of it into my second-favourite pudding dish and saved it for later. Not much later, mind - Michael's already eaten half of it! You'll have no problem doing the same if you're partial to rhubarb.


Strawberry and rhubarb pudding
(taken from Food Blogga, who was inspired by a recipe by Jill Dupleix)

600g rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch lengths
1 cup strawberries, chopped
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 cup plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
100g butter, softened
2 eggs
100mL milk

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Grease a large baking dish, and drop the rhubarb and strawberries into the bottom of it. Sprinkle them with the brown sugar, then with a couple tablespoons of water.

In a small mixing bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder.

In a larger bowl, beat together the butter and sugar, adding the eggs one at a time and continuing to beat until it's all well combined. Continue to beat the mixture slowly, adding a third of the flour mixture, then half the milk, alternating again until they're all incorporated.

Spoon the batter over the fruit and smooth over the top a little. Bake the pudding for about 40 minutes, until it's golden brown on top and a skewer comes out clean.

December 5, 2008: East Brunswick Club IV

Edit 22/05/2012: The EBC has now closed, but most of the menu has migrated to The Cornish Arms.

Yes, yes, this is our second visit to the East Brunswick Club within a week, but we had a good excuse - I'll get to that. Friday night saw a bustling pub and a full price menu. I took the opportunity to try their vegan fish and chips ($16), which comes with lemon, tartare sauce and a side salad. I'm pretty sure the 'fish' is the Lamyong product that I've bought once or twice before. It's chunky and very salty - not a particularly convincing imitation of a battered cod but rather addictive in its own right, especially when slathered in tartare sauce. The sauce portioning is quite reasonable, but sauce-fiend that I am, I wished for more to dip my chips into. Thank goodness for those lightly dressed greens to freshen everything up.

And here's a slightly better lit pic of the vegan 'chicken' parma, which goes for $17 when it's not on special. It's not as jaw-droppingly special at this price, but the EBC deserves props for offering such vegan-friendly pub meals all week long.

Our 'excuse' for such a quick return visit was to take advantage of one of the EBC's other features - the band room. Though we were expecting the Basics to light up our night, it was cute Tokyo interlopers the Bawdies who won our hearts and shook our fairly awkward hips.

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You can read about our previous visits to the East Brunswick Club here, here and here.

December 3, 2008: Gujju's Cafe and Chaat House

When Aduki's Melbourne Veg Food Guide came out, I didn't expect it would tell us much we didn't already know. After all, we knew all about The Vegie Bar, The Vegie Hut, Soulfood, Bowl of Soul, Trippytaco, La Panella, Shakahari, Enlightened Cuisine, Bodhi, Lord of the Fries, Bo de Trai, Invita, Mr Natural, The Moroccan Soup Bar, Gopal's, The Tofu Shop, Soulmama, Lentil as Anything, Vege2Go, Vegetarian Nirvana and White Lotus - plus places like Las Vegan, Plush Pizza, Fo Guang Yuan and Ganesh that we've yet to blog about - how much more could Melbourne have to offer?

Quite a lot as it turns out. The best thing about the Veg Guide is that it identifies vego places lurking in all kinds of Melbourne suburbs - and in regional Victoria. There are many, many places to discover. So this week we decided to start discovering them, turning a standard Wednesday night into a mini-adventure to Melbourne's south-east. The destination: Gujju's Cafe and Chaat House in Malvern East. Gujurat, in western India, is almost entirely vegetarian, and is famous for its veg-cuisine.

Gujju's, in south-eastern Melbourne, is entirely vegetarian and deserves to be famous for its thalis and chaat. It's a fairly unassuming place - concrete floors, plain wooden furniture and a tv in the corner pumping out Indian news. The menu is pretty simple: choose from around a dozen chaat options, including potato dumplings, lentil cakes, soups, puri and many others; or just dive in to the all you can eat thali.

Of course, we chose the thali: undhiyu, daal, kadhi, pickle, salad, roti, thepla, a curry of the day (palak paneer in our case), dessert of the day, buttermilk and a few little fried delights that I can't name. And all of it is wonderful. The soup comes in spicy and sweet versions - both perfect for dunking roti into, the battery fried treats concealed roasted chillies and a mashed vegie filling, the pickles were salty and sharp, the daal was chunky and flavoursome, the undhiyu lightly spiced and filled with fresh vegies and the palak paneer was just heavenly. One of the finest palak paneers that I've tasted. And I tasted quite a bit - getting a couple of top-ups and sneaking a bite of Cindy's. The breads were fresh, hot and plentiful - everything was just wonderful. We ordered mango lassis to drink - thick, tasty and cooling.

Even the buttermilk, which I've never been a fan of, was drinkable. The dessert was a tiny plate of semolina-based sweetness - a nice little end to a ridiculously good meal.

It's not the cheapeast thali around ($16.90), but it's more than just a simple thali - it's an all you can eat feast! Every few minutes the friendly staff stopped by out table offering us more roti, more fried treats, more curry, more soup - they seemed almost disappointed when I finally declared that I could eat no more. As well as endlessly offering us food, the staff were really helpful - pointing out to Cindy which of the dishes were likely to test her spice-eating abilities and which were going to hit the spot.

To sum things up: this place is a hidden jewel, easily accessible by public transport (#3 tram or Caulfield train station), overflowing with stunning vegetarian Indian food. Make the trip people, it's well worth it!

Address: 1/131 Waverley Road, East Malvern
Phone: 9571 1188
Price: thalis $16.90, chaat $3.50-$7.90
Licensed

December 1, 2008: The East Brunswick Club III

Edit 22/05/2012: The EBC has now closed, but most of the menu has migrated to The Cornish Arms.

The $10 Mondays at the EBC are a sure-fire vegan winner - a board full of cheap pub food options, all veganisable with the help of cheezly and soy products. So with our fridge full of lunch leftovers, Cindy and I decided that a lazy pub meal was the order of the day. We'd envisaged parking ourselves in a corner, filling up on beer and food and riding back on home in time to get angry at the 3rd episode of The Howard Years (aside: is there anything more infuriating than Peter Reith's idiotic face? Answer: yes, Alexander Downer's pathetic simpering. Oh God, I've just got to move on).

Instead, we ran into an impromptu vegan meetup, starring Kristy and Toby, Rachel, Buttons, Caroline and T and, the guest of honour, Theresa from Tropical Vegan (visiting from Townsville). They kindly invited us to join them, and we settled in to the strange little dining room just off the main section of the pub. Cindy decided to branch out from the standard pub fare, opting for an Asian smoked duck and crispy wonton salad.

The duck was tender and duckish and the salad was fresh and plentiful, but the whole dish was smothered in some sort of sweet chilli-based sauce that was a bit too sweet and overpowered the whole dish. Still, where else can you get a vegan duck salad for $10?

I couldn't go past the pub-food options - this time I went for the cheese and bacon burger, with a big side of chips. The chips were much better than last time - surely a key factor in a good pub meal - and the burger was gigantic and delicious. Fake bacon will never quite bring the same flavours to the party as the real stuff, but the 'meat' patty was outstanding - maybe not quite up to some of our homemade efforts, but pretty close. The whole thing just filled the cheap pub meal niche brilliantly.

I was happily full after putting away my massive meal, but Cindy had been eyeing off everyone else's dessert and let me know that I should duck around and order her something. It's hard to ignore a choc-cherry cheesecake at the best of times, but I was even more intrigued to try a vegan version. I snuck a few mouthfuls away from Cindy and can confirm that it was outstanding. Lots of cherry mush smothering a delicious and slightly cheesy cake between two layers of chocolateness. Not too shabby.

The service isn't really the pub's strong point - there were some strange delays between dishes arriving at our table, but it's worth noting that the EBC was packed out again - they've really found a way to fill the pub on Mondays.

So what began as a cheap and speedy meal turned into a cheap and chatty meal - it was great to meet Theresa, Caroline and T and to catch up with most of the Melbourne vegan blogging gang. Undoubtedly we'll return to the East on a future Monday, and we're almost certain to bump into some familiar faces when we do.

Read about our previous visits to the East Brunswick Club here and here.