The Chocolate Bean Cafe is a gorgeous space - a little bit bohemian, warm and welcoming, intimate yet with space for sitting alone and for looking outside for some street-gazing. And the food...They have yummy vegan cakes (so hard to find!) like the little chai cake piled with icing, or their choc and walnut cakes. Unfortunately, they don't have vegan savouries - though the vegetarian wrap will be vegan without the pesto. I don't often eat lunch here, I used to when I was a non-vego and worked on Grenfell Street at the East Terrace end, but these days I go mainly for the cakes and hot chocolates - all available with soy milk. However, I had lunch there last week with my friend Leanne, who is going through culture shock after moving to Adelaide from travelling for a long time, so I knew this would be a good way to introduce her to some of the lovelier parts of Adelaide. She had a toastie with the lot, I had the vegetarian wrap. The menu also has vego quiche and an avocado, tomato and cheese toastie (status of cheese unknown!).
Unfortunately the day we were there, there was a problem with the fire alarm going off. As we were sitting downstairs, rather than up, we were in amongst the noise and the traffic of new customers and the smells of toasting. If you go, get a table upstairs, it's more conducive to chatting and sipping. The vegie wrap is good - a little bit different from the usual fare with tomato, avocado, mushrooms, spanish onion, pesto and capsicum. But go there for the cakes and chocolate with a friend or by yourself with a good book for a space where you can sip and indulge as long as you like.
Chocolate Bean is on 18 Union Street Adelaide, ph: 8359 3399. You can excite your chocolate senses with their menu, which can be found at: http://www.chocolatebean.com/about.htm
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Parisis at Magill
As a vegetarian, one is constantly called upon to account for this decision, particularly the boundaries of what one does and doesn’t eat. At a work lunch recently I had this conversation again. I told the story about how, when I first became a vegetarian, I borrowed another vegetarian’s pithy statement of what they will and won’t eat: ‘I don’t eat anything with a face’. But then someone gleefully, clearly thinking they’d ‘caught me out’ (I’ve discovered that lots of non-vegetarians love to do this, for example, by checking whether your shoes are leather, pointed out that this statement didn’t include shellfish, which I didn’t eat. So I changed my motto to ‘I don’t eat anything with a butt’. But, I’ve recently decided that what actually defines a vegetarian is someone engaged in continuous suspicious questioning of confused wait staff about whether their cheese is vegetarian. Yes, the perennial cheese issue arose again at Parisis, where I eat a lot given I live and work nearby.
Parisis has a fantastic Pasta Verde - spaghetti with peas, zucchini, broccoli, baby spinach, white wine, garlic and parmesan - it's aromatic and satisfying, beautifully green and garlicky. But the parmesan...I rang to order Pasta Verde takeaway for lunch for me and my friend Sarah (who loves this dish as much as I do), and asked the waitress whether the cheese contained animal rennet. She replied 'no', but, and this is perhaps a new measure of my cheese paranoia, it just didn't seem right. She quickly said that she'd just confirm that with the chef, yelled out to him, and Iheard the reply 'no'. Okay, it's pretty hard to get parmesan without animal rennet (if you're looking, try the sheep's milk pecorino at Say Cheese in the Central Market - they v. helpfully put a green sticker on all non-animal rennet cheeses). Unless I actually demand to go into the kitchen and look at the cheese myself, I fear I may never get a definitive answer to this question. And I'm getting increasingly tired of explaining animal rennet to people who work with food. Not that I did at Parisis, I just took the easy option and ordered it without cheese. And this is my new solution - no cheese. Lactose and I have always had a love/hate relationship anyway.
Do try the Pasta Verde - it's a green-vegetable lover's delight. And the Pizza Zucca (tomato, fetta, roast pumpkin, olives, mushrooms and pistachio nuts) is a refreshingly different vego pizza that tastes fantastic, though they also have the more traditional Vegetarian as well (tomato, bocconcini, artichoke, zucchini, eggplant, capsicum, spanish onion and olives). The status of the cheese is anyone's guess!
Parisis is at 613 Magill Road, Magill, ph: 8331884.
Parisis has a fantastic Pasta Verde - spaghetti with peas, zucchini, broccoli, baby spinach, white wine, garlic and parmesan - it's aromatic and satisfying, beautifully green and garlicky. But the parmesan...I rang to order Pasta Verde takeaway for lunch for me and my friend Sarah (who loves this dish as much as I do), and asked the waitress whether the cheese contained animal rennet. She replied 'no', but, and this is perhaps a new measure of my cheese paranoia, it just didn't seem right. She quickly said that she'd just confirm that with the chef, yelled out to him, and Iheard the reply 'no'. Okay, it's pretty hard to get parmesan without animal rennet (if you're looking, try the sheep's milk pecorino at Say Cheese in the Central Market - they v. helpfully put a green sticker on all non-animal rennet cheeses). Unless I actually demand to go into the kitchen and look at the cheese myself, I fear I may never get a definitive answer to this question. And I'm getting increasingly tired of explaining animal rennet to people who work with food. Not that I did at Parisis, I just took the easy option and ordered it without cheese. And this is my new solution - no cheese. Lactose and I have always had a love/hate relationship anyway.
Do try the Pasta Verde - it's a green-vegetable lover's delight. And the Pizza Zucca (tomato, fetta, roast pumpkin, olives, mushrooms and pistachio nuts) is a refreshingly different vego pizza that tastes fantastic, though they also have the more traditional Vegetarian as well (tomato, bocconcini, artichoke, zucchini, eggplant, capsicum, spanish onion and olives). The status of the cheese is anyone's guess!
Parisis is at 613 Magill Road, Magill, ph: 8331884.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Nikitas Ouzeri
Well, I was a bit reluctant when I put up the 'T Chow' and 'Not Coffee' posts, because these were my first lukewarm review. However, it seems I've quickly come round to the idea of brutal honesty, justified in the name of good vego food (and good food generally) because this post is less than lukewarm! Dining at Nikitas starkly highlighted the vast difference between meat-eaters' and vegos' dining experiences. The people I was with enjoyed their meals and I know other people who've been here and had good things to say about it.
However, my meal was actually inedible.
First things first, the dips platter. This was good, though the fact that the dips were fridge temperature was offputting and blunted the flavour, particularly of the eggplant salad. There were five dips, and as I'd told the waiter I was vegetarian, he pointed out that 4 of the 5 choices were okay for me to eat, which is a pretty good vego ratio, one is often our lot. The stand outs were the feta cheese and olive dip, which was salty and creamy, and the garlic dip, which was beautifully garlicky.
There wasn't a single vegetarian main dish offered. Greek food can be heavily meat-oriented, but there are also divine Greek vego dishes (I know, I love Greek food and eat it often, see post on Argo's below), so I don't think it's inauthentic to include vego dishes on a Greek menu. As an alternative, I asked for the spanakopita entree to come as a main meal, and the waiter was very accommodating. However, it had clearly been re-heated in the microwave, and then put under a grill or in an oven for a few minutes, because only the top thin layer of pastry was slightly crisp, the rest soggy and claggy. The spinach was overcooked until it was dark and tasteless, even before its stint in the microwave, and the bottom was nauseatingly oily. This type of cooking is how spinach gets such a bad name, I took a few bites and left the rest - thankfully I ate a lot of dip beforehand. The sides were chips (yes, seriously) and 'salad', of the shredded-lettuce-and-chunk-of-tasteless-tomato genre.
There were only three tea choices, and only one non-caffeinated (not even peppermint) - I chose chamomile to try and settle my stomach.
Unfortunately, I can't even say good things about the ambience and decor. The restaurant was cold and the cake cabinet dark, creating a sense of emptiness, though there were four tables full of people. As well as the clearly refridgerated dips and tomatoes, from my table I could see a freezer stuffed full of frozen seafood, further compounding my sense that the food at this restaurant lacks freshness and the chefs are not passionate about good ingredients. The space lacked a sense of warmth and conviviality, and clearly there was little joy in the food or cooking.
If you're eating on Henley Beach Road, there are much better options (like the Abyssinian, for example) so do avoid this one.
However, my meal was actually inedible.
First things first, the dips platter. This was good, though the fact that the dips were fridge temperature was offputting and blunted the flavour, particularly of the eggplant salad. There were five dips, and as I'd told the waiter I was vegetarian, he pointed out that 4 of the 5 choices were okay for me to eat, which is a pretty good vego ratio, one is often our lot. The stand outs were the feta cheese and olive dip, which was salty and creamy, and the garlic dip, which was beautifully garlicky.
There wasn't a single vegetarian main dish offered. Greek food can be heavily meat-oriented, but there are also divine Greek vego dishes (I know, I love Greek food and eat it often, see post on Argo's below), so I don't think it's inauthentic to include vego dishes on a Greek menu. As an alternative, I asked for the spanakopita entree to come as a main meal, and the waiter was very accommodating. However, it had clearly been re-heated in the microwave, and then put under a grill or in an oven for a few minutes, because only the top thin layer of pastry was slightly crisp, the rest soggy and claggy. The spinach was overcooked until it was dark and tasteless, even before its stint in the microwave, and the bottom was nauseatingly oily. This type of cooking is how spinach gets such a bad name, I took a few bites and left the rest - thankfully I ate a lot of dip beforehand. The sides were chips (yes, seriously) and 'salad', of the shredded-lettuce-and-chunk-of-tasteless-tomato genre.
There were only three tea choices, and only one non-caffeinated (not even peppermint) - I chose chamomile to try and settle my stomach.
Unfortunately, I can't even say good things about the ambience and decor. The restaurant was cold and the cake cabinet dark, creating a sense of emptiness, though there were four tables full of people. As well as the clearly refridgerated dips and tomatoes, from my table I could see a freezer stuffed full of frozen seafood, further compounding my sense that the food at this restaurant lacks freshness and the chefs are not passionate about good ingredients. The space lacked a sense of warmth and conviviality, and clearly there was little joy in the food or cooking.
If you're eating on Henley Beach Road, there are much better options (like the Abyssinian, for example) so do avoid this one.
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