Friday 4 January 2013

Vegan down under!



Well, over Christmas we visited Adelaide over in South Australia and got chance to sample some vegan cuisine down under!
Our first meal out was an evening visit to The Boatdeck Cafe in Mawson lakes. This is an omnivorous restaurant, but we were able to find a few vegan or veganisable options!
We had a very tasty vegetarian Pizza without cheese. We also visited one lunchtime and enjoyed a falafel and humous wrap. Very tasty.


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Our next visit was to the Port Noarlunga hotel in Port Noarlunga.

Here we discovered a fantastic salad and veg bar. For Aus$8.95 you can fill your plate from an amazing array of salads and vegetables. We sampled the chickpea salad, mixed bean salad, marinated  mushrooms, stuffed vine leaves, and various other salads. Definitely worth a visit!

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If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know by now that we can’t visit a new city without trying a local Mexican restaurant! Well this visit was no exception. A quick google search led us to Zapatas in North Adelaide.

The service was very disappointing (our starter never turned up!), but the main course was very tasty. We had vegetarian fajitas, which were delicious.  It wasn’t really a busy night, but no one waiter/waitress seemed to be assigned to our table, which seemed to lead to confusion.  We saw another table’s starter go all around the restaurant before finding the correct table! It’s a shame to see poor organisation mar an otherwise good dining experience.

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Having tried Italian and Mexican food, our next visit was to an Indian restaurant in North Adelaide, Beyond India.

Although omnivorous, there is an excellent vegetarian selection, with many dishes marked as vegan. (Gluten free dishes are also marked). The food was so good that we visited twice.
We sampled the following dishes;
Starters
Mixed Vegetable Pakora Flavour Profile: Ajwain and Coriander  (nb although the meal was marked vegan one of the sauces served on the side of this dish wasn’t vegan)
Aloo Tikki Flavour Profile: Ginger and Garam Masala (Again, watch the sauces served with this)

Mains
Aloo Chana Massala Flavour Profile: Cardamom and Ginger
Mushroom Baigan  masala Flavour Profile: Lemon and Tomato
Masoor Daal
And a dish that I can’t quite remember the name of, but it was something Manchinian and was delicious!!!!!

The food was very tasty and the service excellent. The air conditioning was very welcome on our second visit when the evening temperature was still in the late 30s!

So all in all, some very good dining experiences down under!!!!!