Pilgrim III and Farm Gate IV

January 15 & 17, 2016

MOFO was primarily based out at MONA this year, so we didn't get too much time for Hobart eating. We were out at the festival by lunch every day, so we really only had time for breakfasts. Our first stop was a return visit to Pilgrim Coffee, a regular haunt on our Hobart trips. The menu has changed around a bit from previous meals, meaning I had to branch out from the bean-heavy 'hipster breakfast' that I usually order, instead trying out the omelette with kim chi, rice, spring onion, wombok, coriander and crispy shallots ($18).

The omelette is a wonderful combination of flavours - little dabs of blended up kim chi give it all a great spicy tang, while the shallots and rice add some crunch. It's a top-notch example of the genre, but at $18, it probably needs a slice or two of toast to go along with it.

Cindy's breakfast was even more minimalist - she ordered the charred stone-fruit with vanilla goats curd, mint and almonds ($15).

And she got this bowl containing one halved peach, a smear of curd and a decent sprinkling of roasted cashews on top. For $15! She was quite happy with the dish itself, but it's the kind of thing you feel like charging even $10 for would be a bit cheeky. 

I enjoyed my coffee as usual, but Cindy's chai was bergamot-heavy and lacking in other spices. All in all, Pilgrim has slipped down our Hobart breakfast ranking a bit - the quality of the food is still high, but the prices are a bit excessive (note also: there aren't any obvious vegan options on the current menu).

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On Sunday morning we headed back to the Farm Gate Market, the less touristy and more food-focussed alternative to the popular Salamanca Market. There's lots of excellent-looking fresh produce for sale, a decent selection of other food stalls (jams, teas, cheese etc) and a thriving little food court for people seeking brekkie - we come here every time we're in town these days (see one, two, three previous visits).

We got things started with a coffee and a blueberry bagel with raspberry cream cheese ($6.50) from Bury Me Standing - a perfect way to get Sunday going.

I was then drawn inexorably to Pachamama, for my annual Hobart breakfast burrito - they've always got a vegan option, but this year I couldn't resist the classic egg-cheese-bean combo, slathered in their smoky chipotle sauce ($13). It's a complete winner.

Cindy somehow resisted the lure of the burritos, ducking next door to Mountain Pepper Pizza who were offering up a range of rosti-based breakfast treats. She ordered the mushroom option ($7.50) and was well satisfied with the mix of starchy potatoes and creamy, saucy mushrooms. (They also do a vegan bubble & squeak with kasundi.)

We're always a bit sad that we can't buy up more of the great market produce each year, but it's hard to go past a $9 kilo bag of the plumpest, juiciest cherries imaginable. We gobbled these up far too quickly.

Farm Gate is well worth a visit on any food-related Hobart itinerary - there are tons of vegan options, foody gifts and souvenirs, and a steady stream of cute puppies awaiting your attention.

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Straight Up

January 16, 2016

The Hobart eatery at the top of my wish-list this year was Straight Up. I read about this all-vegetarian cafe on quinces and kale about a month before we arrived, and we shared our breakfast with the very same mutual friend as they did!

Straight Up is quite centrally located on Liverpool St, and has a light, casual look and prominent espresso machine that's likely to attract non-veg diners. Once in, they'd surely not be put off by the menu! It's stealthily gluten-free and absent of bacon, of course, but who wouldn't be tempted by corn bread topped with grilled haloumi, avocado and herb salsa, spiced ginger buckwheat porridge or miso marinated pumpkin? And that doesn't even cover the dishes we did order...

Michael picked out the vegan BBQ king brown mushrooms served on potato hash with caramelised onions, harissa and kale chips ($17.50). Michael didn't miss his toast with a potato hash in play, and he loved the meaty mushrooms and slaw-like toppings. His only wish was a little more spice from the harissa.

Our friend and dining companion ordered my plan B and was kind enough to offer me a bite. It was a pretty and gently sweet plate of smashed banana on toast, topped with soy ricotta, pink pear slices, popped amaranth, activated buckwheat and drizzled stripes of date syrup ($13.50).

Lovely as it was, Plan A ensured I had no order envy. Behold, the chocolate waffles ($15)! Vegan and gluten-free, these waffles were thick, crunchy and a guarantee I wouldn't need lunch any time soon. Cinnamon grilled bananas, berry sauce, chocolate icecream and coconut crumble lent softness, sweetness and tanginess, bringing together the best darn vegan waffles I've ever ordered.

Our hot drinks were pretty good and the staff were chipper. This cafe has gone Straight Up to number 1 in our breakfast recommendations for Hobart.

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You'll struggle to find a bad word about Straight Up in the blogosphere, where it's been mentioned on chocolatdehaut (twice!), Two Clowns Tripping, The Hobart Life, Walking the Derwent River and quinces and kale.

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Straight Up
202 Liverpool St, Hobart
(03) 6236 9237
breakfast, drinks
http://www.straightupcoffeeandfood.com.au/

Accessibility:  The door has a small lip owing to the street-level incline. Tables are generously spaced inside. We ordered at our table and paid at a low counter. Toilets were unisex but narrow, with stair access.

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Preachers, Hobart

January 14, 2016

We headed down to Hobart on Thursday for our annual pilgrimage to the wonderful MOFO festival. With no gig-going planned for our first night in town, we met up with some friends to suss out some bars around Battery Point. We started off at the cute and difficult-to-find tiki bar South Seas Cocktail Lounge, which got us started with some lovely cocktails.

The cocktails left us keen to find dinner somewhere close by, so we ducked around the corner to Preachers, a burger-focussed pub that we knew had a few vego options. The wind had kicked up too much for us to enjoy the beer garden (complete with school bus), so we huddled inside and looked over the menu.

It's surprisingly veg-friendly - there's a vegan pumpkin and mushroom burger and a vego felafel one, plus a good array of fried small plates and a salad. I was pretty psyched to try the vegan burger, but Cindy returned from the bar with the surprising news that Preachers had somehow run out of burger buns at 8:25 on a Thursday night and what's more, we had 5 minutes before the kitchen closed. We quickly rejigged our plans and ordered one each of almost everything else vegetarian on the menu - clockwise from the top: felafel ($12), pumpkin and chickpea salad ($12), fries ($6.50), onion rings ($6.50) and Tasmanian tempura mushrooms ($12).

The felafels were just passable - a bit doughy, but at least not too dry, but everything else hit the spot pretty well. The mushrooms and onion rings were probably the stand-outs, but the salad was an essential dish given how fried everything else on the table was. I think we were all a bit disappointed about the lack of burgers, but this table full of fried goods was a reasonably good fallback.

Fortified, we decided to continue bar-hopping, heading back to Society, a place that Will had scoped out earlier for its fancy spirits range. Look at that bar!

The cocktail selection was superb - Cindy's chocolate and whey (with Hartson sheep whey vodka, Mozart dark chocolate liqueur and chocolate shavings, $18) was the pick of the bunch, smelling like a box of Cadbury Roses and packing a delicious boozy punch. My Salamanca sloe gin was a combo of two kinds of McHenry gins (Sloe and Dry), with sugar, lemon and soda ($18) was a bit more refreshing, but I couldn't hide my chocolate envy.

With such a bar-heavy start to our weekend in Hobart Preachers turned out to be an excellent dinner choice, soaking up the booze and leaving us in good shape to tackle MOFO 2016 (see first day pics below).

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The first place we spotted Preachers was on Veggies & Me's vegetarian guide to Hobart. It's also been reviewed positively at Living and Loving Hobart, The Hobart life and katiecrackernuts. 

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Preachers
5 Knopwood St, Hobart
6223 3621
burgers and salads, share plates and fried stuff
facebook page

Accessibility: There are steps up into the bar, although things are relatively flat and clear once you're in. We ordered and paid at a high bar, and didn't visit either the beer gardens or the toilets.

Cafe Lalibela II

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on

January 11, 2016

Cindy's family wanted to meet us for dinner in Footscray and, with our enthusiasm for our new Cheap Eats 2006 project still high, we decided it was a good opportunity to revisit Cafe Lalibela. It's been more than seven years since we last visited, and not much seems to have changed. The staff are friendly, the service casual, the menu has a good range of vego options and there's a steady stream of people coming through the door.

We made the same move as last time and ordered the beyainetu (the platter below serves 3), a combination of different veggie dishes on an injera platter ($14 per head - up from $12 seven years ago, which is pretty good going).

The dishes are heavy on the protein: lentils and beans cooked in various sauces, along with a potato and carrot dish. The injera is the star of the show - the fermentation adds a citruss-y kick to the chewy, spongy bread, which soaks up the relatively mild flavours of all the stews. It's fun and messy to tear at the injera and scoop up the stews - it's a rare treat to eat with your hands. Added bonus: the delicious Ethiopian beers are a ridiculously affordable $5 a pop.

Cafe Lalibela feels timeless - almost nothing has changed since we visited nearly eight years ago - great, cheap food in a cheerful, casual setting. We really need to go back before 2023 rolls around.

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Since our visit in 2008, Lalibela has been positively written up by vegos In the Mood for Noodles and omni-bloggers Footscray Food Blog, Howie's Melbourne Food Blog, Gosstronomy, Apples Under My Bed, Eurasian Sensation and Eat and Be Merry for Tomorrow We Die(t).

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Cafe Lalibela

91 Irving Street, Footscray 
9687 0300
vegetarian menu

Accessibility: The entry is flat and there's a reasonably clear path up the middle of the restaurant, although the tables themselves are all wedged in pretty close together. We paid at a high counter and didn't visit the toilets. 

Tom Phat III

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on


January 6 & 10, 2016

In 2006 Tom Phat was a new entry into the Cheap Eats guide, on the frontier of Brunswick gentrification and Asian fusion food. A decade later its brunch & bar fit-out has barely changed and aged rather well, with floor space doubling thanks to an extension into a neighbouring shopfront. While dishes have shuffled around from time to time, the menu has remained a mish-mash of eggs and roti, curries and stir-fries, cocktails and mocktails, with well-marked veg options, plenty of tofu and at least one mention of tempeh.

We first visited and blogged Tom Phat in 2008 and made a follow-up post in 2011. While these describe positive encounters, we'll admit to a couple of disappointments regarding both the food and the service in between; Carla was far more thorough in her polarised feelings on easy as vegan pie. In the past week we've returned for both dinner and breakfast to find out how Tom Phat is faring in 2016.

For dinner, Michael ordered the fried crispy silken tofu with red pumpkin curry, basil and lime on rice ($19). The tofu pieces were like deep-fried clouds, the curry was fragrant and citrusy, and Michael was very pleased.

I took on the nasi goreng ($18; we paid $12.90 for the same dish in 2011). It was sweet with kecap manis and a little smoky, with skewers of tofu and tempeh and a fried egg that spilled golden yolk over the rice. Another winner, we reckoned. I washed it down with a tangy Eastern Sunset mocktail ($6) of orange juice, pineapple juice, lemon juice and grenadine.

With happy memories of a scrambled tofu dish back in the day, Michael set his eye on their current version for breakfast ($14.90). It wasn't the spicy egg-substitute he was anticipating, instead a soupy bowl of 'roast tomato salsa' holding silken tofu blobs, wilting spinach leaves and a few button mushrooms. 

Michael does credit Tom Phat for introducing him to Vietnamese iced coffees (still $4 after 5 years). He's mighty fond of getting his summertime caffeine with a shot of condensed milk, though he now does so more often from Wide Open Road.

Meanwhile, I was curious to revisit the roti pancake ($12.90; up from $11 in 2011). Indicative of changes in me more than at Tom Phat, this didn't work out. Tough to cut, filled with mashed banana and encased in toffee, this was extraordinarily sweet even before the icecream hit the plate (oh, for a little lime or spice to cut through the sugar!). My two favourite things about roti are its flakiness and its delicate crunchy surface, and this approach maintains neither.

If nothing else, Tom Phat remains consistently inconsistent! It seems any dish is equally likely to generate a grin or a grimace. We were similarly bemused by the playlist, a mix of early '90s hip hop by night and Wilco backed up against CDB by day. The service staff, at least, were reliably friendly and efficient. It's fascinating that such a restaurant has persevered for a decade with very few updates - we'll probably continue to swing by every now and then, but Tom Phat has never really locked down our loyalty.

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You can also read about one, two of our previous visits. Since then it's received praise from fellow veg blogger little vegan bear.

There's also praise on omni blogs frenchtoastandindiepop, gluten shmooten, Eat Like Ushi, Peach Water, I Talk Too Much My Mouth Hurts, Klaus and Fritz, Only Through You, TEXTURE by alexandra, egg tarts and apple pie, Asian Restaurants in Melbourne, Melbourne Epicurean Eats, Chomp And Slurp, krapow, Lots of Cravings and Ms I-Hua.

Reviews are more mixed on Mon's Adventure, The Misadventures of MissC, New International Students, Skinny Glutton, bows with boats, The Bakeanista and Monschable Melbourne.

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Tom Phat
184 Sydney Rd, Brunswick
9381 2374
breakfast & drinks, lunch & dinner
http://www.tomphat.com.au/

Accessibility: Tom Phat has a small ramp on entry. Tables are aligned through the length of the building with a corridor through that starts off wide but gets a little more crowded towards the end. There is a disability-marked toilet out back. We ordered at our table and paid afterwards at the low-ish counter.