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39 Temple St, Singapore

There’s an air of happy confusion at this laid-back place, but you won’t go wrong if you advance to the counter and point to a couple of the dishes behind the glass to have with rice. They include soft tofu with rehydrated mushroom, slightly chewy greens, and green beans in a spicy mix, a little less green than they sometimes are. Canned drinks come from a stall that seems separate from the main operation, among them two excellent ones from Thailand, young coconut juice with pulp and soursop juice. The food you carry to your table probably won’t be piping hot, and I’ve been to restaurants where the surroundings are more glamorous, but a meal with drink along the lines I’ve described will set you back $4…that’s Singaporean dollars, making this possibly the cheapest restaurant reviewed in these pages. For visitors to Singapore who want to fly under the tourist radar, a meal at this strictly vegetarian restaurant where the staff are full of good will offers interesting food and a lot of fun.

The nearest SMRT station is Chinatown.

For Vegan or Vegetarian Orthodox Christians based in Canberra (Australia), Vegans in the Nation’s Capital are finally following the example of their bigger capital city cousins and holding their own vegan festival. The first ever Canberra vegan festival – the ‘Living Green Festival’ – is being held on Sunday 16 October 2011 at the Albert Hall, a well-known heritage building right in the centre of Canberra. The Festival will focus on the relationship between climate change, the environment and animals. It will showcase ways people can reduce their carbon footprint and be more considerate of other animals we share this planet with. The theme of the Festival is ‘a kinder shade of green’.

The Living Green Festival will feature live entertainment, speakers, children’s and video zones plus many unique product and food stalls. It will be held on the last day of Canberra’s big flower festival – Floriade. The Festival venue is also close to nearby tourist attractions such as the National Museum, Questacon and the Parliament Houses. It is accessible by bus, bicycle and on foot.

More information about the Festival can be found at www.livinggreenfestival.org.au. If you’d like to participate in the Festival in any way you can get in touch with the organisers via the following email address contact@livinggreenfestival.org.au The Festival is being run with the assistance of ACT Government Climate Change Grants.

G316 Level 3, Wintergarden, Queen St Mall, Brisbane Qld

Japanese cuisine, in which fish can end up in just about anything, can be hard for vegetarians, and the format of taking likely-looking dishes from a moving sushi train is one that easily lends itself to mistakes…how could you have told that a dish of rice had finely chopped fish throughout it? Fortunately at the Hanaichi you can order the same dishes from a menu and ensure that they’re OK. We enjoyed three in particular: avocado rolls wrapped in seaweed, a seaweed salad, and vegetable tempura in which each of the individual parcels had a nice mix of taste and texture.  This is a popular restaurant, and while vegetarians may feel that they are eating side dishes rather than main meals, the freshness of the food and the stylishness of the Japanese aesthetic make it a great place for a light meal. The green Japanese tea is recommended!

The complex where this restaurant is located is being redeveloped; there’s a circuitous entrance via the mall.

124 Boundary St, West End, Qld

There’s a counter-cultural buzz and a youngish crowd at this informal  restaurant, where the menu is entirely vegan. They do a range of hot dishes that come with rice, of which we thoroughly enjoyed the ‘Thai yellow’ of carrots and other vegetables in a gentle sauce based on coconut milk and the potato and pea masala; not quite so pleasing was a slightly dull dahl, which we felt could have benefited from a few more shakes of the spice jar. There is also a range of salads, including a most attractive one of red cabbage, superior packaged and freshly squeezed juices, and cakes. Its inner suburban location makes the Forest handy to other places you might like to visit. A few steps towards the traffic lights is the Green Grocer; the Greek grocer, on the other hand, is a short stroll by the road running to the right at the lights.

198 Wickham St, Fortitude Valley Qld

What a pleasure to dine at an entirely vegetarian and substantially vegan Chinese restaurant! The wife of a friend read about it in an airline in-flight magazine, but I imagine that the people who find their way to the neighbourhood in which it’s located are more likely to be locals than visitors. We enjoyed bowls of miso tofu soup, mild and appetizing, and sour spicy soup, packed with mushrooms, sprouts, greens, strips of soft tofu and baby corn; this soup is a real winner. For main meals there are hearty dishes of fried dumplings that take the form of oddly shaped parcels and thick noodles.  Fans of imitation meat dishes are also catered for, making this an excellent place to take very timid non-vegetarian friends as well as a wonderful venue for committed veggies. The repertoire of Chinese cooks seems endless.

Today’s meeting was hosted by John.  We shared a lovely lunch of Winter Soup and some hearty dips with bread including home made hommus and carrot dip, followed by some fresh fruit.

1. Helen has successfully set up some new links with other vegetarian groups and will continue to look for more.

2. We talked about our current members Jacki andMelissa who are overseas and congratulate them on the good work they did while in Africa. We look forward to seeing them home again safely. We hope to hear about how Jacki and Melissa catered for their vegetarian diets both while on the ship and while travelling.

3. Tasks from previous meeting to be carried over includes updating WordPress, tidying up graphics and collating information about online traffic.

4. Next meeting will be the 1st of october 2011 at Vasilios and Helen’s house.

7/45 Cambridge Pde, Manly Qld

In the midst of so many styles of vegetarian food from different parts of the world, have you ever felt like eating something a bit more mainstream Anglo, or perhaps Celtic? This Corner has what you need! They do wonderful veggie burgers, in which the tasty patties come with bright and crunchy salad on Turkish or white bread. The burgers are enormous, and if your mouth doesn’t open wider than mine you’ll find one tricky to eat; you can use the knife and fork the management thoughtfully provide, or pull the sides apart and treat it as two open sandwiches. Either way, it’s a great burger. You can also order a dish of plump potato wedges that come with either aioli or a sweet chilli dip. If this is not enough, they pour a mean pint of Guinness that goes well with slightly oily food, and on the night we visited there was live Irish music! There’s a happy atmosphere at the Celtic Corner, which is thoroughly recommended to anyone who thinks of vegetarian food as something alien to the ethnic roots most of us have in the West.

194 Wickham St, Fortitude Valley Qld

A recommendation from friends brought a group of people together at this simply named restaurant, and what a good one it was. We enjoyed bean curd salad in rice paper, rolled by an expert (it turns out you are supposed to fashion the wraps into parcels, rather than the pipes I have vainly sought to manufacture in the past), vegetables in satay sauce, and steamed green vegetables with garlic (the cook kindly substituted this for the oyster sauce that is usually used; the combination of greens with garlic, which has parallels in Greek cooking, provides a simple yet utterly satisfying taste.) But the highlight of our meal was the wondrous vegetarian spicy noodle soup, in which many vegetables and thin noodles came swimming in a thick sea that was flavoured with flecks of chili and dried fried onions. Not only was the soup delicious, but it was served in an enormous bowl filled nearly to the top! The quality of the food was one of the ingredients of a very happy occasion.

Break The Cycle Africa – 3 Jul to 14 Aug 2011

I think most vegetarians (not a blanket statement) would agree that compassion for animals also equals compassion for our fellow human beings. (The shame about this is that often this is not necessarily vice versa.) I am fairly certain that within our membership we are in agreement that we love animals and people and hope for better for those of the human race who suffer.

Since I am currently in Africa, this month I’d like to continue with the African theme and highlight some Aussie cyclists who are doing their bit by riding mountain bikes 5668 km across Southern Africa. This event aims to raise money for child focused projects in Southern Africa.

You can learn more about this event and how it can be supported, follow their blog, leave messages of encouragement etc, at:

http://www.breakthecycle.org.au/africa/

Good work guys – we salute you!

3/224 Hawken Drive, St Lucia Qld

While the vegetarian options on the menu are scanty, and the complimentary prawn crackers did not find favour with my non-vegetarian companion, who pronounced that they tested like cardboard, there is a very good reason to eat at the Song, and its name is Gado Gado. At the centre of the plate is a mixture of sprouts, cucumber and, in place of the more widely used potato, pineapple, over which has been poured a lightly curried peanut sauce; on top sit the quarters of a boiled egg, and around the side are pieces of soft diced tofu. This is a luscious dish of contrasting tastes, colours and textures which it’s hard to imagine not liking, but here it is particularly well done. We also enjoyed salt and pepper tofu, in which the pieces of bean curd sit on crispy noodles and are accompanied by finely chopped red chilli and spring onion, rice sitting to the side. If you don’t relish singing for your supper, I recommend the Song for lunch.