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351 Beams Rd, Taigum Qld

The VVOC inspection team of three  persons found just this number of vegetarian dishes on the menu of the Lanna, so our choices were straightforward. Our favourite was the vegetable curry, in which potato, thin strips of tofu, greens and zucchini come in a beautiful, slightly sweet sauce based on coconut milk that just cries out to be poured over the rice and enjoyed for its own sake. We also enjoyed the stir fry of cauliflower, green beans, broccoli and carrot, while thinking that it could perhaps have used a little more salt, and a dish of tofu and greens, which came with many pieces of tender baby corn. The staff, always on hand to offer more rice, are elegant and graciously attired, and an air of peace and tranquility which we like to associate with the people of Thailand hovers about the restaurant.  May it also be present in their homeland!

170 Hardgrave Rd, West End Qld

A visit from some old friends at a very happy time of their lives prompted an outdoors Greek lunch. We began with two dips, homous and skordalia, the latter consisting of mashed potatoes flavoured with garlic and olive oil and looking for all the world like something omnivores would eat with sausages, but much more flavoursome; pitta bread and a bowl of beautiful dark olives were also on the table. Then we moved on to lemon potatoes, cooked with a hint of oregano, Lefkas salad (a typical Greek salad of tomatoes, cucumber, red onion and a few leaves of rocket), and delicious moist dolmathis (vegans beware, the sauce poured over these is based on yoghurt; in the Middle East tahini would be used.)  Greek cuisine is one of assertive flavours and some oiliness, two characteristics that a glass of retsina would complement nicely. Some people find its tastes a bit strong, but this was true of no-one at our table, as we shared our meal with great contentment.

65 Hardgrave Rd, West End Qld

A restaurant presenting itself as being ‘Modern and Traditional’ may seem to be making a fairly meaningless claim, but this is just what the food at the Dakbla turns out to be. You may wonder about a dish described as Lemongrass Tofu Salad Style. Well, the large piece of tofu comes nicely marinated with seasoning (lots of lime), but the salad is one of finely shredded cabbage with a small amount of carrot, so the effect is something like cole slaw. Oddly enough the dish works very well, the contrast between the strong tastes and different textures being very satisfying, so the rice sitting on the table before us goes largely untouched. The deep fried chilli tofu is also recommended. Among the entrees, the vegetables and tofu in the soup of that name are plentiful and work well together (the crunchy celery provides a good contrast in texture), but it’s been cooked in what tastes like salty water, so seems a bit bland; the spring rolls with dip are a better bet. The young and edgy crowd of diners at the Dakbla is perfectly in tune with the cuisine.

There must be worse gigs than reviewing restaurants for the VVOC site! In case any readers of these pages have been wondering, every review is based on at least one meal in the restaurant, and if there’s a generally affirming tone this reflects a desire to be positive rather than negative and a decision not to comment on places where I’ve been disappointed; there are a few such places, but why share gloomy experiences? There is no restaurant reviewed on this site at which I wouldn’t be happy to eat tonight.

Naturally I hope that the curiosity of readers will be piqued and that some will decide to try the places I’ve recommended. But a deeper motive lies behind these reviews, which I hope will make them relevant to readers far from where they’re being written. Every veg*n has been confronted with the question from omnivores, often asked with friendly exasperation, ‘Well, what do you eat?’ It’s a sensible question if they assume that we eat what’s left on the plate after the animals have been removed, the empty spaces being filled with double helpings of, say, carrots and spinach. But its implications are false. There is a vast range of veg*n main meals in existence, most of them of non-Western origin, that are extremely tasty, nutritious, and cheap. I hope that these reviews indicate something of the limitless possibilities of such food and will encourage people, whatever their current dietary practice, to widen the range of what they eat. And while it’s true that we cannot eat out every night, the restaurants reviewed here are not particularly up-market, and many of the dishes they serve aren’t all that difficult to prepare at home from easily available ingredients.

This site is maintained by members of the Orthodox Church. Of course you can be a better Orthodox than we are without being veggie, just as you can be a morally informed veggie without being Orthodox. But in our experience the two areas of practice sit well together and reinforce each other: an Orthodox attitude to the world (or perhaps better the Creation) easily finds expression in veg*nism. The early pages of the Bible describe an initial injunction for a vegan diet and its replacement by one for an omnivorous diet (Gen 1:29, 9:3), a change associated with a move from humans exercising dominion over animals (Gen 1:28) to their having dread and fear of us (Gen 9:2, strong language!). The examples of the Saints encourage us to think of a restitution of the former state, as does the language of Hebrew prophecy, which envisages peaceful relations among creatures (Is 65:25), and a time when the gentiles beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Is 2:4), their weapons being turned into tools for the production of veg*n foods.

58 High St, Toowong Qld

This is a restaurant where you have to stand outside waiting for a table to become available, but I doubt whether anyone has ever begrudged the delay. The starters at the China Kitchen include peanuts in vinegar, floppy dark fungus with mustard sauce, and an old favourite, cucumber with garlic…I’m always surprised how in this dish, one of the few uncooked ones in the Chinese repertoire, the sharpness of the garlic doesn’t overpower the blandness of the cucumber; here it comes in a slightly sweet sauce. Our main courses emerged after some discussion with the waiter, for not all the vegetable dishes on the menu are vegetarian, but we ended up enjoying tofu in chilli sauce, bak choi with garlic (but without the mushrooms we had thought were coming; perhaps the cook prepares them in a non-veggie manner) , and a dish of shredded potatoes with green capsicum and chillies. The food here, beautifully presented, is innovative rather than traditional, and fully realises its ambitions. While more expensive than most of the restaurants reviewed on this site, the China Kitchen is very strongly recommended.

158 Musgrave Rd, Red Hill, Qld

One of the world’s great cuisines is that of Western Asia, and the vegetarian platter for two served at No No’s succeeds in touching the main bases with aplomb. It compises two of the standard dips, hummus and baba ghanoush, both of them beautifully textured, a dish of green beans, chick peas in a garlicky tomato sauce, tabouli, vine leaves stuffed with a rice mixture, and slices of omelette. If anything the portions we were served were too generous, and and left us unable to tackle the array of dairy-free pastries which would round off such a meal perfectly. This is a flavoursome and very healthy cuisine of  strong tastes that leaves the mouth feeling clean; a Lebanese cook is said to have commented that when she finished cooking a dish she always squeezed an extra lemon over it. While the surroundings at No No’s are not elegant, for food of such quality it is amazingly cheap, and the friendly staff, who obviously enjoy what they do, are happy to  serve the food as takeaways.

282 Given Terr, Paddington Qld

It may seem odd for a Turkish restaurant to be reviewed on an Orthodox site, but the cuisine has similarities with those of Greece and the ancient Orthodox lands of the Middle East. For starters the Harem offers a platter of dips, comprising baba ghanoush, homous and, the most tasty, vegetable with chillie. These are less moist than they would be in an Arab restaurant, the homous in particular needing a knife to be loaded onto the beautiful thick leavened bread that the Turks serve so lavishly.  For the main course there is an old favourite, imam bayildi, in which the skin of half an aubergine is stuffed with an oily mix of vegetables. This is delicious, and the side servings of grated red cabbage and salad which come with a wedge of lemon are just the thing to offset its oiliness. You can also order borek, in which pastry comes stuffed with spinach and cheese; people have been known to find this dish a wee bit heavy and bland. There is much enjoyment in this cuisine, and endless fascination in placing it within the types of cooking originating in that part of the world.

357 Zhong Zheng Rd, Taipei, Taiwan

The highlight at this comparatively up-market self-service place are the savoury parcels of a mixture based on finely chopped mushrooms encased in tofu skin, themselves wrapped in strips of processed seaweed lightly sprinkled with sesame seeds. You can also enjoy wonderfully succulent mushrooms, small pinkish aubergines, okra, peas in their pods, finely shredded green capsicum and slices of slightly sweet tomatoes…the ability of Chinese cuisine to incorporate foodstuffs that cannot be traditional is something I’d like to know more about.

Of course visitors to a country like Taiwan may well decide to aim for more adventurous dining experiences than those offered by self-service establishments, but in an environment where one cannot speak the local language (indeed, you probably won’t be able to tell the name of the restaurant from the sign outside), it is a relief to find places where you know that all the food will be veggie, and the quality of their offerings is an added bonus. This restaurant is out of the city centre, handy to the Shi Lin MRT station.

Lane 117, #6, Shida Rd, Da-An district, Taipei, Taiwan

One of the mainstays of Sichuan cuisine is ma po tofu, in which the tofu comes with a topping of meat, and it comes as a surprise to find it listed on the menu of a veggie restaurant. Even more surprising is the form it takes: the tofu comes in a chilli sauce into which has been mixed shredded lettuce and…sultanas! The resulting dish is a study in contrasting colours, textures, tastes (think sweet and sour) and, as it cools, degrees of heat, for it turns out that sultanas are very good at retaining their heat. It is accompanied by a serve of a mixture of different kinds of rice and a small bowl of salty miso soup, which contains a small amount of tofu. An unusual meal, but one that reminds you of the limitless possibilities of Chinese cuisine, and is both satisfying and remarkably cheap. The small restraurant also functions as a health food store, where various Chinese preparations can be obtained.

15 Wu Chang St, section1, Taipei, Taiwan

It’s every child’s dream of paradise: you choose what to eat and have as much as you like. When you walk into the Vegetarian Heaven you pick up a tray and pair of tongs, and are confronted by a vast array of dishes. There is tofu prepared in various styles, mushrooms with a flavour so intense they must have been dried and rehydrated (I’d like to know how this works), the greens the Chinese do so well, broccoli, various other vegetables, a dark dish based on sea vegetables, a satisfyingly not-too-sweet black bean desert and (how far can the borders of Chinese cuisine be extended?) potatoes. You pay by weight; rice and soup are complimentary. This restaurant gives a wonderful insight into a traditional and entirely vegetarian way of eating. The only danger is that, as you work your way through the vast amount of food you piled onto your tray, you will hear a distant voice from your childhood: ‘Someone’s eyes were bigger than his stomach.’