Lord of the Fries VII

April 5 & 7, 2012

Vegetarian burger chain Lord of the Fries is continually evolving. Last winter they introduced a diner-style outlet on Chapel St, this March they've brought a similar store to Brunswick St, Fitzroy (which we were thrilled to discover open after 11pm on a Thursday night) and they've expanded their menu too. We dropped by the Brunswick St and Melbourne Central stores last week to sample some of the newer items.

The burger options have increased to six - there's now a non-mock Guru burger, while the popularity of the limited-time-only Parma burger ($7.95 for 'big', pictured above) appears to have earned it a more permanent place on the menu. It's not difficult to work out why, with mock chicken patties smothered in Napoli sauce and cheese, topped with bacon. I don't like the diced raw onion but that's a matter of personal taste.

Hot dogs come in four varieties and two sizes. Michael trialled the big Tijuana ($7.95) with veg bacon ($1 extra) - he dug the spicy, sauce-heavy combination of jalapenos, cheese, onion, sour cream, ketchup and mustard, and highly recommends you too spring the extra for bacon.

LotF has more sides on offer than ever before. Vegos nostalgic for a certain fast food chain (Danni among them) have been thrilled to see coleslaw and potatoes with gravy made vegan-friendly. I kinda liked the idea of potato cakes ($1.95, pictured above) but the reality is too greasy and definitely needs sauce.

Chilli poppers, stuffed with vegan cheese then crumbed and deep-fried, are fun and pack enough heat but at $3.25 each their price is punchier still.

I was similarly surprised to see a small tub of chocolate mousse cost $3.95, but it's actually very rich even in this quantity. It's got a lovely smooth texture and sweetness about it, but it's short on the cocoa and I could taste the soy. Some will love this, though it's not quite my style.

It's great to see Lord of the Fries regularly redefining veg junk food - while not everything hits the mark, I admire their adventurous and flexible approach to menu development.

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We've reviewed a number of Lord of the Fries outlets one, two, three, four, five, six times. It's beloved by veg*ns, appearing recently on crosslegged on the front lawn, The Vege-Table, Veganise This, Louise, by Degrees, Vegawesome and Vegan SJ. A post on Backyard Activist indicates that it's a favourite of the Sea Shepherd crew too.

Positive reviews also appear on omni blogs Foreign Food Affair and new international students. Raging Cravings think these are the best fries in Australia, while Eat, Cook, Drink pitched them against their Chapel St neighbour Hooked and deemed them second best of the two.

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Lord of the Fries
383 Brunswick St, Fitzroy &
Knox Lane, Melbourne Central, Melbournce CBD (plus others)
veg snacks & meals $1.95-15.95
http://www.lordofthefries.com.au

Accessibility: The Fitzroy store has a standard-width door and (we think!) a ramp to enter. Front tables are moderately crowded but movable, side booths are comfy but less flexible. Ordering and payment takes place at a high counter. We haven't visited the toilets.

Miss Marmalade II

Update 12/06/2023: Miss Marmalade is now closed.

April 7, 2012

Saturday started early, with Cindy and I heading off to meet some friends at Miss Marmalade for breakfast. Like many of Melbourne's cafes, Miss Marmalade barely paused for the Easter weekend and was open and busy by the time we arrived at 9. The menu hasn't changed much since we last visited, with a decent variety of sweet and savoury veg breakfasts to choose from.

Cindy ordered the same thing I'd had last time (minus the egg), the farmer's market breakfast (home made corn bread, hash potatoes, cherry tomatoes, and the pick of market vegetables with micro herbs and avocado crush, $15.50).

Look at all those colours! The little crispy fried potato pieces were Cindy's favourite, but there's something deeply satisfying about a plate full of fresh, high quality vegetables to start the day. There's some pretty excellent corn bread hiding under there somewhere too.

I had an inexplicable urge for something sweet and opted for the Myrtleford ricotta, blueberry and vanilla bean hotcakes with poached plums and amaretto mascarpone ($15.50).

These fluffy, berry-stuffed hotcakes were top notch, with the generous slathering of mascarpone really making this feel like a ridiculously indulgent breakfast. As good as it was, I quickly found myself envying the hash browns and scrambled eggs on friends' plates - I think I need to stick to savoury in future.

We had great coffee and excellent service again -it's worth noting that they're very happy to provide gluten-free versions of their menu and are generally pretty flexible and helpful. Miss Marmalade is a great little local cafe - stop in if you're in the neighbourhood.

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Read about our first visit to Miss Marmalade here. Since then, katealice cookbook, Temasek, Let's Get Fat Together and CHOMP and SLURP have positively reviewed it.

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Miss Marmalade
126 Union Street, Brunswick
9388 8202
veg dishes $6 - $16.50
http://missmarmaladecafe.com/

Accessibility: The entryway is flat and the interior is relatively spacious. Ordering happens at the table while payment takes place at a low-ish counter. We didn't visit the loos but a few reviewers have particularly noted the baby-friendliness of the facilities.

Newmarket Hotel

April 6, 2012

Our main discovery this Easter weekend has been the surprising ease with which tables at Melbourne's trendiest restaurants can be procured while most of the population is hanging out at campsites and holiday houses along the Great Ocean Road. We decided to take advantage by crossing town for lunch at the much hyped Newmarket Hotel in St Kilda.

Despite the mountains of coverage this place has received (check out the list at the bottom of the post), it hadn't really made our way onto our wish-list, probably because almost every post focuses on crab tacos, roast pork and steak. Once I bothered to actually look at the menu though, it was clear that the Newmarket had plenty to offer vegos - we were particularly excited to have a chance to eat huitlacoche again.

The Newmarket presents an unassuming facade, befitting the kind of place with a fairly seedy history, but the inside has been remodelled to within an inch of its life. It's fancy. And while it still calls itself a pub, it's pretty clearly a restaurant - I can't imagine you can turn up of an evening and grab a drink and a bite, this is a place where you book a few weeks in advance. There's not an overarching theme to the fit-out, with concrete arches butting up against novelty wallpaper and old-fashioned carpet clashing with trendy light-fittings. The leafy courtyard looked glorious on the sunny afternoon we went, but I guess even on Good Friday you need a booking to secure a table out there.

The menu is heavily Mexican inspired, with a hint of Spain and California peeking through. It's also long, complicated and not particularly well designed. Thankfully, our waitress gave us a quick rundown and helped us figure out what kind of quantities would be appropriate (hilariously, she did mention that she's not allowed to use the word pizza when describing the wood-fired flatbreads, which suggests someone at the Newmarket takes themselves a smidgen too seriously). It's a menu focussed on sharing, and Cindy and I split three dishes between us.

First up, the soft tacos with crisp zucchini flowers, goat's cheese, olives and roasted peppers ($17).

I really liked these - they were a great combination of flavours and textures, with the cheese taking pride of place (a note for vegans: almost all of the veg stuff here is cheesy, although the menu does proclaim a willingness to cater to all dietary requirements). Still, as delicious as they were, $17 for two tiny tacos does feel a little bit wrong.

We couldn't resist ordering the huitlacoche quesadilla, with bbq mushrooms, spinach and jack cheese ($17).

This was a crispy, cheesy delight, but both Cindy and I were a bit sad that the flavour of the corn smut was kind of buried by all the other stuff. It still had a hearty mushroomy flavour and was complemented by the crunchy corn kernels sprinkled on top. Not too shabby.

The somewhat surprising star of our meal was the side-salad: a combination of radicchio, witlof and fennel with figs, mozzarella and an artichoke and walnut dressing ($16).

This was perfect - the sweet figs and salty mozzarella working turning the fairly simple medley of greens into a show-stopper of a salad. Cindy detected a hint of honey in the dressing, while I was trying to figure out how they'd snuck so much flavour into the white sauce on top of the mozzarella. Outstanding.

We'd intentionally saved ourselves a bit of dessert space, and happily split the Mexican coffee and tequila flan with drunken cherries ($14).

Boy were those cherries drunken. Deliciously, deliciously drunken. Yum. The flan itself was great as well - rich without being overwhelming and with a cute crispy fan of sesame seeds to provide a bit of textural variation. This is a fine dessert.

The Newmarket is pretty good at what it does: fancied up Mexican food with some clever twists. You do end up paying for it - I doubt the $17 tacos in the 'street food' section of the menu appear on any street in the world - but we didn't really feel like we were getting ripped off. For a tick over $30 a head, Cindy and I got four pretty wonderful dishes and were treated to friendly and helpful service from our waitress (although the surly guy who seated us is a weird choice as the first person you deal with). They take their drinks pretty seriously as well, with a wide range of excellent beers on tap and some stunning sounding cocktails. If you think of the Newmarket as an upmarket dining experience rather than a night at the pub then I doubt you'll come away disappointed.

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Bloggers have gone mad for the Newmarket, check out Gourmet Chick, Boy Meets Girl Meets Food, Poppy Gets a Life, FoodsCrazy, rebeccaanneparish, Mr Smith's Food Journeys, spicy icecream, two munch (special food festival event), the silent observer, Eat and Be Merry for Tomorrow we Die(t), MoMo & Coco, Terroso, The Burger Adventure, melbourne gastronome, Saucy Onion, melbourne food journal, Kit's Cucina Culinaria, consuming design, Sweet Cherrie Pie, Out of my kitchen, feedmemelbourne, whatiatelastnight, Gourmet Belly, Friday Night Date Night, Cooking with Goths, This Food Guy, onemelbournian and yo tengo ambre de viejo.

Where Adles Eats, The Very Very Hungry Caterpillar, AndAnotherThing and Black Garlic were all a little less impressed, although nobody really seems too disappointed by the food.

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The Newmarket Hotel
34 Inkerman Street, St Kilda
9537 1777
veg dishes $9 - $20 (expect to spend about $35 each for a decent sized meal)
http://newmarketstkilda.com.au

Accessibility: Excellent. There's a ramp entryway, a disabled toilet and plenty of space to manoeuvre around in (although the concrete arches make for some weird tight spots). Service and payment is all at the table.

Madame K's Vegetarian II

Edit 12/04/2026: Madame K's closed in September 2024.

April 4, 2012

We first hit up Madame K very soon after it opened and, while the food was excellent, things were still running a bit sluggishly. We'd since heard a few people express their disappointment in Madame K in terms of both food and service, so we thought we should go back and reassess.

Things were fairly quiet at 12:30pm on a Wednesday, but it was clear that they'd got their shit together a bit in the last few months - our order was taken quickly and food came out within 15 minutes or so. Even better: the food was at least as good as our first visit.

I ordered the Prik Khing (stir-fried crispy tofu with red curry, beans, capsicum, chilli and jasmine rice, $14.90).

This was a nice combo of fresh, crispy veggies and deliciously fried tofu chunks. The curry sauce was mild but tasty and the rice was cooked to perfection. $14.90 is pushing it a bit for a fairly straightforward veggie curry, but everything was executed nicely and there was plenty of food, so I'm not really complaining.

Cindy ordered from the entree part of the menu, settling on the roti channai massaman (mushroom-made lamb curry served with (non-vegan) roti bread, $8.90).

This is super value - it's a decent sized serve of excellent 'lamb' curry with fresh and delicious roti bread to scoop it up with. A very impressive sub-$10 lunch.

So we're standing by our first review of Madame K - everything we've eaten there has been pretty damn great. Prices aren't cheap, although there's value to be had in the entree list, and the standard of service seems to have improved markedly since they first opened. I think Yong is still a marginally better bet (wider range, slightly cheaper prices) but Madame K is a welcome addition to Fitzroy's vegetarian riches.

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Surprisingly few bloggers have visited Madame K since they opened - just Life is Random popping up with a positive review since we last reviewed it.

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Madame K's Vegetarian
367 Brunswick St, Fitzroy
9415 6909
snacks & mains $4.90-16.90

Accessibility: There's a small step up on entry and tables are quite densely laid out. We ordered at the table and paid at a medium-high counter at the back. We didn't visit the toilets.

Gasometer VII

11/11/2013: We're sad to report the closure of our beloved Gasometer.

April 3, 2012

The excellent Cherchez la Femme has shifted venues from one of our favourite pubs to... our other favourite pub! It turns out Gasometer has this back room (behind the 'back room' we did know about) fitted out with a little stage, lots of fairy lights and - you'll never believe it - a removable curved roof! We've yet to witness that stunt ourselves but surely Cherchez host Karen wouldn't spread such a fabulous lie.

A Tuesday night Cherchez la Femme also happily coincides with Gasometer's special cheap menu - for $15 you may choose one of six meals (half of them vegan) plus a beer or wine. They're currently grieving the East Brunswick Club's demise by offering a vegan parma - it's just as thick-set as the original, though Gaso have made it their own by replacing the grated packaged vegan cheese with some kind of creamy sauce. It's a fine innovation!

The menu had Michael at 'chorizo' - it's stuffed into a burrito, along with potatoes and rice. This was drier and blander than he would have liked: Michael wanted more spice in the chorizo, less repetition across the potato filling/chip side, and some of my cheesy sauce to bring it all together. When Michael hit the bar for another beer, he was horrified to witness another diner with the cheese sauce smothering their burrito. Did they simply forget it on his? Another burrito was delivered to Cherchez sauceless so it's difficult to know.

Chips and veg are pretty standard sides but gosh, the Gasometer kitchen does them well. These chips are without peer, crunchy-fluffy-maybe-battery, and the vegetables retained a bit of bite and sported a nice subtle garlic butter-type dressing.

The reduced pricing doesn't mean a reduced portion - these meals were enormous! And unusually, ordering around 6pm, our food arrived in a jiffy. Just the thing to fortify us for a few hours of feminist debate and hilarity.

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You can also read our many previous accounts of Gasometer's menu: one, two, three, four, five, six. Since our last post, Mel of Veganise This has aptly dubbed this pub Bloatometer, while off the spork and the burger adventure have enjoyed their omni wares.

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The Gasometer
484 Smith Street, Collingwood
9417 5539
veg eats $5 - $21 (Tuesday night specials $15)
facebook page

Accessibility: The Gasometer has a small step on entry. The tables are crowded in some areas but the booths and tables closest to the entry are relatively spacious. Ordering and payment occurs at a high counter. Male and female toilets are on the same level as everything else but are not particularly spacious.