Veggie Bites

This is an interesting place – very similar to a couple of places that we ate at in the US a couple of years ago. You pick your sauce, then your noodles, then your veggies and then meat (if that is your thing) or specify that you want it veggie, at which point they offer you tofu. That impressed me. The food tasted pretty good, it was quick and it was hot and it was tasty. I ordered sweet chilli rice noodles with all veggies except sprouts and snow peas. I realised later that I probably should not have ordered rice noodles, given my stomach’s sensitivity to the temperature of rice, and sadly later still, I knew I was right. Anyway – my stomach’s sensitivities aside, this is probably a good place to go if you are in the mood for fast, almost do-it-yourself noodles.

Once again, this is one of those places that you always hear a lot of things about, some good, some bad. And this place seems to be a bit of an icon when people talk about Asian restaurants in Canberra! I was assured that there was plenty of veggie food, however a quick perusal of the menu at the dishes under vegetables showed that they all had oyster sauce in them! There were other vegetable noodle dishes, which was a bit of a relief! I shared with a friend and we had veggie tempura to start – it was quite nice, but very oily! We shared a couple of mains – Pad Thai and Cha Kway Teow (something that I simply can’t pronounce!!) – both vegetarian. Unfortunately the Cha Kway Teow came as the pork variant so I sent it back. To their credit, the new dish arrived fairly quickly. Both were quite delicious and the Cha Kway Teow was nice and spicy. Definitely a good Pad Thai – one of the better ones that I have had recently.

We were going to a wine tasting with some friends and we decided that we really should have some dinner before tasting lots of wines! We ended up here, kind of by accident since it was pretty close to where we parked. I have heard various things about this place, but have never really thought to try it before. I am glad we did! We ordered the veggie sang choy bau which was delicious and reminded me that I have a good recipe for this but haven’t made it for ages! For our mains we ordered ma po tofu and steamed veggies in sesame soy sauce. They were both delicious too. I was a little wary of the steamed veggies, as I thought they might be boring, but as it turns out, they were delicious in their simplicity and I almost preferred them to the tofu. The ma po tofu was good, but contained a fair amount of eggplant – not my most favourite thing in the world! I am constantly surprised at how soupy ma po tofu is – I always expect something quite dry and it never is! I guess I should stop being surprised! One of my friends ordered duck laksa which (apart from the duck) looked quite nice! Anyway, the food was good, there was a good veggie range and we would definitely go back and try some more of it!

In some theory of the world, this was lunch, however, knowing our friends, we figured out that it was really brunch for them! And most of us ended up ordering breakfast anyway! I couldn’t really go past the potato fritters (which I am pretty sure were billed as ‘crispy’ on the menu, but weren’t when they arrived!) that came with feta, and tomato salsa, I also ordered a side of mushrooms. The fritters were ok, definitely not crispy, the salsa and the feta gave a nice touch and added some quite strong flavours! I was a little disappointed with the side of mushrooms, as there were only 3 of them, and they were not huge! Martin ordered some form of a giant breakfast which had eggs, toast and your choice of 4 sides – he took the veggie ones – feta, tomato, mushrooms and homemade baked beans. I had wanted to taste the baked beans, but didn’t want to order them myself, so of course I tasted Martin’s and they were pretty good! Our friends went for a foccacia and a risotto and I didn’t hear too many complaints. A couple of the others had dessert, but I opted for more hot chocolate, which was pretty good. All in all, a quite nice meal – as usual!

We have seen this place numerous times and even checked the menu a few times, but for some reason we never actually went in to eat. This time, we bit the bullet (so to speak) and decided to try it. Let me say this from the start – the food was fantastic – it is probably the best Turkish food I have ever eaten. However, it is a bit on the expensive side, and don’t bother with the house red – it really isn’t that good! There were so many entrees that we wanted to try, so we did as the waitress suggested and went for the mixed entree and ordered a couple of extras as well. We also ordered one pide. In the mixed entree you get two dips – we chose carrot and a walnut and capsicum dip that we had never heard of before and they were fantastic! The walnut one was spicy and had a fabulous flavour that was totally unexpected. The carrot one was also better than others that we have had before. Also on the mixed entree we got the green bean and tomato dish (one of my favourites), potato salad, borek (feta and spinach pastry rolls) and zucchini balls. I must say that all of this food was amazing – the zucchini balls were obviously fresh – the were crispy on the outside and perfect on the inside. The potato salad was divine and the green beans were delicious! All in all, we were already impressed! We also ordered stuffed mushrooms and potato patties as our extra entrees and these were also great. The potato patties could have used a yoghurty type dressing, but they were delicious anyway. And just when I thought I was almost full, the pide arrived. It was a Mantarli (mushrooms, olives etc) – one we have had many times previously at other Turkish places, but there was a couple of differences. This one was ‘open’ which means it was more like a ‘normal’ pizza and it also had egg in it, so it made it kind of pie-like as well. It was fantastic. I would love to go back and try more of their pides, as well as getting into that walnut dip again!

The breakfast that we had here was pretty good, so we decided to try it for lunch when we were in Manuka for other reasons on this particular day. I have to admit I was a little disappointed with the variety of veggie food on the ‘lunch’ menu, so I opted for a breakfast dish – eggs florentine without the ham – I always thought the point of ‘florentine’ was that there was no meat – obviously I was wrong!! Anyway, it was ok. We also both had hot chocolates – they are very good here! Martin ordered the veggie risotto and thought it was ok too. I think I would go back for breakfast, but I wouldn’t bother for lunch!