vegansydney.com

 Vans vegan waffles + Turtle Mountain ice cream + blueberries + maple syrup = bliss

Hot off the press from our on the street corespondent is confirmation of a new strictly vegan restaurant in our favourite neighbourhood. Located behind the Oxford on Taylor’s Square Foley St. is Salt Rocks/Pod Cuisine is Sydney’s newest vegan establishment serving up delicious and creative food and wine. Saltrocks is part of the Salt Cinic beauty clinic.  Entrees from $8.50 and mains from $12.50.

Stay tuned for photos and full review….

We are happy to announce that there is a new vegetarian Chinese restaurant in the Hills district. The suburb formerly known as Baulkham Hills but now referred to as ‘Bella Vista’ (darling is that pronounced with a French or Italian accent?) hosts Fountain Vegetarian in Norwest business park. Open Tuesday to Saturday (closed on the holiest of holy days..and Monday) it will be sure to be a refreshing change for Sydney’s Bible belt. VeganSydney haven’t eaten there but if we’re ever in the neighbourhood we’ll be sure to check it out. Feel free to post reviews.

This Sunday the 14th of June the third annual vegan festival: cool the planet will be held in Sydney. The address is Wharf 8 Arrivals Hall, Gate D8, 53 Hickson Road, Sydney (opposite Napoleon Street). The event promises to big the biggest one so far, with food, entertainment and vegan and eco-friendly stalls–and dare we say it again–more sandals, sarongs, beards, shouting speakers and new age dogma than you can shake a soy sausage at! We here at VeganSydney love to support these events and rarely miss the opportunity to try new food, however with all our reviews there is an element of cynicism and we can’t help but feel that elements of this festival will be little more than preaching to the choir or a even a self-righteous, self-indulgent new-age circle jerk. Anyway most of VeganSydney will be in attendance, probably lurking around the food stalls, apart from one key contributor who will be rapidly expanding the hole in the ozone layer with his passion for vintage 2-stroke motorcycles at a conflicting event.

Photo of the month: vegan moon cake. Sorry kids not in Sydney this time. Part of the amazing desert menu @ Real Foods Daily (RFD) in Los Angeles.

The combination of the closure of Purple Lotus and Pitt St. Vegetarian (RIP) and some strong encouragement from friends, led us down to Bodhi at Cook and Phillip Park recently for some yum-cha. Before we go any further we’d like to preface this with the statement that we still stand by original review from 5 years ago: “overpriced yuppie bullshit riding the Buddhist bandwagon”. Contrary to popular opinion the food didn’t all taste like deep-fried breakfast cereal, it was fresh, tasty and prompt. The benefit of yum-cha is being to choose your menu based on appearance. This combined with turning up 20 minutes prior to the lunch rush made it a reasonably enjoyable meal. It cost $78 for 2 people including one coffee and a jug of tea. Overpriced for breakfast/brunch, considering the same at Purple Lotus or Pitt St. Vegetarian would have been less than half the price. I guess the additional surcharge is for the location because we’re sure the staff aren’t getting rich. We’re very curious actually how much the staff are getting paid. At the time of the last review it was more than $2 p/h below minimum wage, leading to the question what’s the point of veganism if you screw over humans in the process? We pride ourselves on honest reviews here so in a nutshell Bodhi’s yum cha is overpriced, set in faux-Buddhist atmosphere, catering to a predominately yuppie clientele, that can actually be quite tasty and even sometimes dare we say delicious.

After a short hiatus we’re back. We like to thank to all those who people who email us regularly and post comments here on the site, your input is invaluable. We have some big changes planned for the new year including more regular input, a larger number of local contributers, recipes and of course more reviews including Tetsuyas, more vegan pizza, more burritos and a few other surprises.

If you haven’t got your vegan fill for the year then head over to Petersham Town Hall on Sunday 4th of November for another vegan festival. If the last one is anything to go on there will be amazing food and wine tasting and more sandals, sarongs, beards, shouting speakers and new age dogma than you can shake a soy sausage at.

Waking on less than 4 hours sleep on Sunday morning for an early airport rendezvous, a couple of us here at VeganSydney were well over due for some scrambled tofu. After a shaky scoot down Southern Cross Drive with a loose exhaust (loud enough to wake the dead) we decided on Fair Trade Café on Glebe Point Rd, Glebe. As our brains were left at home under the pillow we’ll keep the review short. On the downside the portions are small, have too much cabbage (cabbage in scrambled tofu?) and the beans are of the tinned variety, albeit organic. Yet the staff are friendly, if a little vague (and that’s coming from us on 4 hours sleep!) food is fresh, reasonably tasty and the service prompt.

Last week we stopped into the original Bourke Street Bakery (on Bourke St., Surry Hills) to see what the hype is over. Don’t believe the hype (unless you want to be eating a dry bread stick) as everything on their (reasonably sized) vegetarian menu had feta in it. If your after a decent bakery we suggest you head north to Infinity Sourdough Bakery on Victoria St, Darlinghurst.