Tenth Muse is deeply disappointing, or: I don't finish

I often leave meals languishing in my iPhoto for months before blogging them. This one's really fresh; just hours old and driven by my deep and desperate disappointment. 

The Tenth Muse boasts wide range of omni, vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options.  I love ordering a vegan meal directly off the menu without going through all the 'no dairy' specifics. This morning I ordered the big vegan fry-up with beans and avocados. 

Coffee (watery) came and went. I read the paper cover to cover. We were the only customers. The music alternated between ear-bleeding and silent. 

Breakfast came. It was big. 

It was the worst cooked breakfast I can recall.

The Turkish bread was doused in what must have been at least two tablespoons of Nuttelex. The tomatoes were barely cooked. The scrambled tofu was soggy and bland. Every single thing on my plate was drowning in oil.

The avocado was black and brown all the way through.  The picture above doesn't do it credit. I cannot believe anyone had the cheek to plate it, let alone charge money for it. 

If I want baked beans from a tin I'll go home and open one of the little tins I keep which cost $5 for 8 at Coles. If I want a McDonald's hash brown I'll go there (I won't. But if I want a hash brown like the one here I'll go to the supermarket and buy a plastic bag full of frozen ones). 

Not a single thing tasted of anything but oil. If I had ordered this at Fat Eddy's Route 66 Side-of-the-Highway Cafe on Wheels at 3 in the morning, I would have been pleased. In a cafe situated in the heart of Melbourne's coffee'n'cafe streets, which has obviously taken great care to create a menu to suit all dietary preferences, this was incredibly disappointing. 

This disappointing: this is what I ate. 

I have rarely not finished a meal, and I've never chosen not to continue one after a couple of bites.  Especially when I'm paying for it. I just couldn't bear to eat this one at all. 

And when our harried waiter collected my virtually-intact plate, there was no checking if the meal was ok. Clearly it wasn't. 

We didn't get charged for our coffees because of the wait. It was the small positive (along with all the same-sex marriage rally pictures on the wall. I liked them).

I left deeply disappointed and feeling ripped off. There was nothing special, nothing even passable, about this breakfast. Much as I want to support any cafe that offers vegan options, I won't be back. I went home and ate toast.

End KeepCup Prejudice Now, Snobaristas! or, Keep On Keeping Up, KeepCup!

Lisa Dempster has written an excellent article on I eat I drink I work exploring the intricacies of the coffee surcharge, from decaf to mocha to - the main interest of this writer - soy milk. I have always hated but accepted with grumpy surliness the soy surcharge imposed by almost every coffee shop, but Lisa's interviews with various coffee vendors has shown that soy really does cost extra, and despite the call that the extra cost should be averaged out over all beverages, the imperative of the business owner to, you know, make a proft from their business makes an end to the soycharge (ha!) unlikely.

But what really grabbed me was a comment on Lisa's blog that some Melbourne coffee shops have taken to placing a surcharge on, or even refusing to use, KeepCups.

I love KeepCups. They're well designed, they're environmentally loving, they're cute, they'r easy to clean, and they have really caught on with consumers. And what's more, they save the vendor money in not using a disposable cup and not costing them washing up resources. Big shout out here to my regular coffee vendors, Espresso Depot at 1 Collins Street, who after noticing my KeepCup got really excited and started selling the cups themselves. 

I was outraged to hear that some businesses aren't behind the BYO cup surge sweeping the city. But I was even more shocked to experience not hours later my own instance of KeepCup Prejudice!

I went to a team meeting at - name and shame! - City Wine Bar on Spring Street. I asked for my coffee to be put in my KeepCup so I could take it away in case I didn't finish it. I can only surmise that the City Wine Bar's cultivated European atmosphere would be offended by the interloping plastic of my KeepCup, as I was told that store policy was to not allow KeepCups on the table - but they would do takeaways. Quelle bloody horreur!

I kept my KeepCup on the table throughout the meeting - empty, but who was to know? - for over an hour. No staff member asked me to put it away. No uber-too-cool-for-school trendoids fainted. No coiffeured besuited ladies sniffed. No one spat. And then I left, having bought nothing, to go and get my coffee on my way back to the office from the place I like best.

In Grade 4 my teacher banned the phrase "I don't get it" from his classroom. But I don't. There's nothing particularly nice about 100-washes old glass tumblers (and if you Snobaristas think that my coffee will just taste better in one, then leave that to me to decide). There's certainly nothing nice about single use cardboard cups. If you want to impose an aesthetic standard, then start with banning skinny jeans that reveal circumcision status and faux-Rihanna mohawks.

So get on board. Bringing your own cup is sensible, less costly to the vendor, promoting environmentally sustainable choices, and just doing your bit. 

*Disclaimer: I have two KeepCups (Small: white with chocolate trim, light mushroom lid and matt chocolate plug. Medium: white with light green trim, dark mushroom lid and chocolate plug). My sister has two (One medium like mine. One medium: white with fuschia trim, chocolate lid and aqua plug). Buzz has one (Medium: black with chocolate trim, black lid, chocolate plug). Toby has Darth Vader (Black. Just black). Lots of people have them. Speed up.

Eating good things in a good place, or: The Moroccan Soup Bar.

To use a whole lot of non-vegan phrases, what really gets my goat; what really irritates the monkey on my back; and what puts a bee in my bonnet, is restaurant reviews who say something like: “Even though it was vegetarian, it was really good”; or: “Even meat lovers will agree this vegetable dish was tasty”; or “For a vegetarian restaurant, the food is great”; or “I’m a total idiot with no imagination and deadened tastebuds” .. oh, that was me translating what those kind of writers really mean.

It was with great annoyance that I read a couple of such reviews of the Moroccan Soup Bar, a vegetarian, alcohol-free venue on St Georges Road. Not only did the Moroccan Soup Bar’s hefty reputation precede it on my first ever visit, making me envious of the food which inspired the rave reviews I had read, but I like a restaurant with a bit of grunt. And by grunt I mean ethics.

The Moroccan Soup Bar is run with some down-to-earth principles about eating local food; employing women who can benefit from the experience and training; and not charging the bloody earth (or using plastic containers for the stream of take-away orders that file in and out. People bring their own, which can lead to the amusing sight of two large empty vodka bottles being carried in; for what, I’m not sure).

I was not entirely ready for the onslaught of patrons and queue-jumpers who alighted from the 112 tram and teleported themselves to outside the restaurant at 5:55pm. I had heard you had to be speedy to snare a table, and was able to stake my claim while I waited for the others to arrive. with some judicious application of the hip'n'shoulder.

The verbal menu at the Moroccan Soup Kitchen, delivered by staff while you sip sweet, gently minty tea, is designed to allow for discussion between waiter and eater. Buzz and my dining companions were old hands and wisely counselled us to forgo hearing the a la carte menu and just go for the $20 banquet.

I also like a restaurant where when I say that I am vegan, the response is “That’s fine”, and nothing else. We know what you want, we can make it, it will be delivered to you. Done!

The entrée plate (mine was separate and generous) contained a hummus base with smaller dips and similar pastes surrounding it, with pickled carrot and pita bread. It was a lovely cold plate for a hot day, with a soft and runny hummus and some excellent antipasto pieces.

My entree plate - bright and beautiful

The mains arrived in a flurry of bowls, five in total of which four were vegan. Score!

A potatoey curry with saffronny rice.

Vegetable chunks.

The rices were cooked with individual flavourings and the slightly baked, tomatoey one (with eggplants perched on top) was a little bit crunchy and a whole lotta good. My favourite rice was cooked with tumeric and saffron, and came with some simply cooked brown lentils.

Brown lentils and yellow rice.

Incredibly soft, sliding eggplant with fresh salad.

Desserts were a little oasis of hot nights in the desert. The vegan option was a beautifully soft and squidgy piece of Turkish Delight, which reminded me all over again of how much I like it.

Puffy powdery Turkish Delight.

... and with bite marks.

The sweets were accompanied by thick, goopy, sweetened black gold coffee poured from a brass coffee pot, which was more strong caffeine that I’m used to but which I shotted to get into the spirit of things.

Full and content, only $20 per person poorer, and with plans to return with our own plastic containers for takeaway soon, we enjoyed not only the simple, unpretentious and satisfying food, but we also felt like we had had ‘an experience’, and that we’d done something good.

The end.

The Commune coffee - Oh Soy Drinkers, How We Suffer! The Commune, East Melbourne.

Ah, such is the lot of a soy drinker. Used to being slugged a surcharge for our soy drinking at every turn, this earns grizzles and grumbles but we usually succumb to our caffeine cravings and ask for an extra-large cup anyway.

It is my understanding that a coffee loyalty card entitles the bearer to one free coffee after a certain number are purchased. Some restrictions may apply, if published on said card, but in general the coffee purveyor accepts that in exchange for the repeat business of their customers, a small loss may be incurred when the unscrupulous suddenly upgrade their freebie.

Not so the owners of The Commune – Basement 2-6 Parliament Place East Melbourne, www.thecommune.com.au – which services the captive audience of bureaucrats around St Andrews Place, Macarthur Street and Treasury Place. Their freebie comes with (unpublished) caveats – soy drinkers must pay for their soy as an ‘add-on’ even when a free coffee is reached, and even when they have purchased the requisite number of soy-filled coffees. Apparently this is because some customers would ‘suddenly’ upgrade to soy on their freebie (at the wallet-busting cost of up to 80 whole cents a pop)!

As a soy drinker I find this highly suspect. Non-soy drinkers hate soy. You do, you tell us all the time. I find it a stretch to think that hordes of devious caffeine addicts would consider the opportunity to sneakily add soy to their free coffee an irresistible temptation to commit fraud. Some might do it for an extra shot, maybe; or some vanilla syrup, likely. But I can’t for the life of me imagine a dairy-drinker gleefully whispering “Today I will get soy! For free! Oh mwahahaha!”.

So what other reason could there be? Arrogance, perhaps. This writer has already been on the receiving end of unsolicited public soy-bashing from staff at The Commune (written about in a blog piece when she was too discreet to name and shame), or perhaps it is simply the opportunity to express disdain of ‘not real coffee’. In that case, please add a $10 charge to every small weak skinny decaff and refuse to serve anything but a short black after 10am.

A step too far, Commune. Sort yourselves out.

RetRoWhat? Retro Cafe, Brunswick Street

You decide to spend your Sunday breakfast at Retro Cafe on Brunswick Street. You find a park right outside. Win a point.

Your coffee takes quite a while to arrive. Lose a point.

Your coffee tastes good. Win a point.

Your coffee is only a smidgen above lukewarm. Lose a point.

Your waiter seems friendly. Win a point.

Your waiter doesn't write anything down. Lose a point.

You explain that you are vegan, and immediately your waiter launches into a never-ending circular sentence while not looking at you and says that's perfectly fine but you should know that heaps of stuff is not like gluten free. Lose a point.

You tell her you are not gluten free. She looks a little confused. Lose a point.

She can tell you straight off that the mushrooms are soaked in butter before they are cooked. Win a point.

She goes to check if the hash browns are egg and dairy free and returns with a notepad. The hash browns are ok and she writes your order down, and everything seems cool. Win a point.

You wait and wait and wait. You finish your coffee and read the whole paper. Lose a point.

You ask another waiter if your breakfasts are on their way. Lose a point.

The second waiter takes a long time, but she does eventually bring your breakfast. Win a point.

With two poached eggs on top. Lose a point.

The first waiter returns, apologises, and says that the least they can do is not charge you for your coffees. Win a point.

She asks if you'd like new coffees. Win a point.

She says "Now both your coffees are regular milk, right?". Lose a point.

Your breakfast is actually pretty good. Homemade baked beans with cannellini beans and a light, fresh tomato sauce, hot and crispy hash browns, lots of fresh tasty spinach, a generous serve of avocado and seasoned tomatoes on (slightly under-toasted) muffins. You enjoy it. A lot. Win a point.

You forget to take photos because you're really darn hungry. Lose a point.

Your second coffees never arrive. Lose a point.


Lately I feel like may of my eatering out experiences have been marred by poor service, poor food or just general ickiness. Is anyone else getting the same?

Feeding to Fitzroyalty, or: Miss T goes live

I know you can't get enough of me. I can't get enough of me.

Fitzroyalty has kindly offered to stream some of my posts to hyperlocal pages, so vegan musings, eatering, shoppering and other ings are now also syndicated here:

http://indolentdandy.net/fitzroy/
http://indolentdandy.net/carlton/
http://indolentdandy.net/brunswick/
http://indolentdandy.net/collingwood/
http://indolentdandy.net/innernorth/

Or - you could just go straight to www.indolentdandy.net. Whatevs.

Step 1 of my plan to achieve total world domination is go.

PS the wonderful Cindy and Michael of Where's The Beef are also over there so it is most certainly a place of quality.

Graffiti Safari.

Has anyone seen these Vegan tags everywhere (I know Pip has! But I can't find the picture of her next to it ....)? They're all over the train line from Clifton Hill to the city, Victoria Parade/Street and surrounds.


I saw some more AR-ish work on a recent Graffiti Safari with Buzz and Cousin Zacman - whaddya think?

The Napier's Tofu Burger with Chilli Jam, Watercress and Tofu Mayo, or: I am deflated

Seeing as this was my first foray into public food photography, I was hoping it would be accompanied by a post raving about not only how brave I was to whip out the camera at the table, but that it was well worth it to bring you sensational photos of wildly outstanding food that made me weep with spiritual revelation. It will now come as no surprise to you that I did not like this meal.

A pub meal was planned for Saturday night as a low-key general catch up-slash-dinner before Buzz and I go overseas next week. I was suggested either The Napier or the East Brunswick Club, being bold enough to say that I was sneakily suggesting them for my own benefit. Everyone else kindly agreed to the Napier, so I feel somewhat abashed about now writing this post.

I ordered the vegan option - a tofu burger with chilli jam, watercress and tofu mayo (I suspect they meant soy mayo, but never mind).



Although all up it was an average, ho-hum, not-particularly-bad meal, I feel the only way to properly describe it is to list my disappointments. And so:

Numero Uno: Turkish Bread. It took me a few bites to register what this was. I promptly discarded the top as I was pretty sure that they hadn't scoured Melbourne to source Turkish bread without an egg glaze, and if they had, I figured they'd be advertising it.

Zwei: The Tofu. It was a slab of wobbly, squashy, unflavoured, lightly fried tofu, and that's it. It was a couple of centimetres thick and had nothing to recommend it except the very thin layer of crispy fattiness. It's tofu served like this that gives tofu everywhere a bad name.

The Third: The Salad. I know it's a pub meal. I know it, I know it. But for the love of all that is holy, a packet of mixed salad (mostly rocket), with two quarters of crystally, thawed-out tomato, a couple of slices of hardcore red onion and two measly pieces of cucumber, drizzled with some generic balsamic, is really poxy.

IV: The Chips. Blah. So average I almost couldn't be bothered eating them. And that's really saying something.



Now here's the bit that's making me screw up my face and go "ernghhhhhh". I love that they bothered to make a vegan burger. I love that they remembered to veganise the mayo. And I know that just cos it's specially vegan doesn't make it good, and I know that my meal wasn't particularly better or worse than anyone else's, and I know that it's a lot to ask for anything more, especially considering that there weren't even many vegetarian options on the menu.

But "ernghhhhhh!"

There was nothing beyond the unforgettable side of average here, and that's disappointing not just as a vegan but as a customer.

Many thanks to Buzz who gamely held up the top of the burger to help me photograph it, despite his embarrassment. There'll be many more.