Dear The Retreat, or: no peskytarian sauce

Dear The Retreat, Sydney Road, Brunswick,

I would email this to you directly, but Google tells me that the only way to contact you is by the tellingphone or MySpace. I don't do MySpace.

I ate at the Retreat on Sunday afternoon and wanted to tell you how great it is that there are a number of vegan options on the menu. It certainly makes pub meals a lot easier!

I also wanted to mention that I was surprised to learn that the 'Vego Curry' has fish sauce in it. Given that the title of the dish makes it appear that it's a vegetarian meal, putting fish sauce in it is definitely not! If you stopped using fish sauce, not only would the curry actually be vegetarian, but vegan too. Can I suggest that you make this small modification and add the Vego Curry to the impressive list of veg options at the Retreat?

Cheers,
Miss T

*peksytarian = pescetarian. I can spell, losers.

$10 parma at the EBC, or: we all get together to meet a vegan blogger from the hot humid north

At the magnificent $10 Monday Pasta’n’Parma at the EBC last week, fellow bloggers (is there an appropriate contraction for veg*n bloggers? Obviously not vloggers; maybe ve-logging, like spelunking? Or vegging, something I do quite a bit on the couch? …anyways…) Cindy and Lidia and I were talking about our particular blogging habits. I hate typos but was under the impression that if I went back in to edit them my entries would be re-posted as a brand new one (I now know better so please expect multiple edits shortly). Lidia is the same but as she has not written in a while (please? Pleeease?) I will simply beg her to resume. Cindy’s ‘thing’ was that she couldn’t bear to be a week out of date with her entries.

This is made a little easier by the duo-blogging with Michael, but I have to admire her commitment to timeliness. And admire it I must, because I cannot emulate it. Snaps Cindy! In fact she already wrote about it here (and has even been and written again since! I am put to shame).

So here, definitely more than a week later, is my post about our dinner at EBC to meet the lovely Theresa of Tropical Vegan who was visiting the south. At the table were the newly-married and newly-returned from O/S Caroline and Tim, Kristy and Toby (who arrived ravenous after a very frustrating evening), Lidia, guest of honour Theresa, and fortuitously-at-the-right-place-at-the-right-time Cindy and Michael.

My first visit to EBC, on my birthday this year, was a little disappointing as I had spent all day stuffing myself with La Panella. At my second meal, a couple of months ago with Lisa, I braved the parma again and was happy to review my opinion, especially with the peanut butter cheesecake at the end. And this time – a big dirty yum.

I had the bacon and cheese burger, and boy was it a big ol’ hunk-a hunk-a burnin’ love. It really was massive; with a 2.5-3cm pattie, bacon, mustard, lettuce, cheese, pickles etc etc in a huge doughy bun. I really was very impressed with myself that I finished it.

The pattie was very dark and well-textured, and I just loved the pickles. The fries on the side were a little underdone but still, fries are fries and it’s not like I refused to eat them! The burger was big, filling, chunky and full of straight-at-you-ma’am flavours. Mmm I likey. Grunt.

I wasn’t going to get dessert until I saw the choc-cherry cheesecake. I am neither a berry nor a cheesecake fan, but now that I am unable to eat cheesecake whenever, something in my lizardbrain sees the cheesecake, desires the cheesecake, and buys the cheesecake in case of imminent famine.

The cheesecake was really cheesecakey, and by that I mean it had the thick squishy texture, slight wobbliness, and the almost savoury aftertaste at the back of your tongue that dairy cheesecake does. I was glad that I shared with Kristy as after slaying the dragon of the enormous burger, I think that backing it up might have undone me (or at least my jeans button anyway). The cheesecake also came with a vegan cream, which we tasted like pros and declared it to taste like … soy? Rice? Agave? Ah, but it was good.

My only gripe is illustrated below: I got two fresh cherries but the others got lots and lots of lovely dripping cherries on top!

You gotta love the EBC’s deal. Big serves, big pub food plates, knockout desserts, good prices even not on a Monday, and vegan-cool. I do wish they’d stop advertising $12 jugs of Carlton with the vegan menu though … Cooper’s anyone?

EDIT: this is me practicing uploading from blogger, and I am more than getting by with a little help from my friends - with advice from Lisa and Mandee amongst others, I present to you my first Flickr upload, a rare and valuable shot of a vegger vegging in the wild: Cindy hard at work! Thanks guys :)

The East Brunswick Club, or: a cheap'n'cheerful Monday night on Lygon Street

Aaah, the serenity. A Coopers Red, a vegan pub meal, and a good solid gasbag.

Lisa and I availed ourselves of the East Brunswick Club's $10 Monday specials tonight, polishing off our meals along with a full conversation ranging from work to puppies to crusty vegans to food politics.

My first visit to the East was on my last birthday, where I was unable to enjoy the meal because I had already consumed: a full cooked breakfast at Delish; a sausage roll from La Panella; various donuts, slices and tarts also from La Panella; some crisps I think; and a couple of beers. By the time I got to dinner, nothing was going to fit in easily and nothing was going to set my tastebuds on fire. So it was some self-induced disappointment that I ate that night, even though (bless!) Buzz, my parents and Miss T Junior had all ordered vegan in solidarity.

Tonight I was thrilled and relived to discover how wrong I was. Mea culpa, mea culpa.


My parma was chewily textured with a soft mouthfeel, topped with very creditable cheese (Cheezly perhaps?) and red sauce (now that's accurate food writing!).


In the style of all genuine northern suburbs pub grub, it was plonked atop a serving of chips with a balsamic-wetted garden salad which included two whole quarters of tomato and three slices of cucumber. Don't get me wrong here - that's exactly what I wanted, what I went for and that's what I damn well got!

I ate it all, to the point of insisting that the waiter return my empty plate to our table so that I could snap it as proof - I'm sure by now that the staff at the East have made the broad conjectural point that vegan = food mania.* *(photograph not available. Read: it turned out quite badly).

Lisa's chicken burger was, I think, made of a similar mock-meat but it was more heavily encrusted and had not-too-little, not-too-much herbed mayo on the bun.


It was even in a chicken-breasty kind of shape, as was my parma, which was a little disconcerting but quite authentic-looking in its own odd way. She kindly let me dig in fingers fist ... all in the name of blogging of course.


I've said before that I'm a savoury girl, but who am I to walk on by when chocolate and peanut butter cheesecake is on offer? I am no-one, Master Cheesecake, just the wind amongst the trees. On my first visit I did in fact display the idiocy to do just that (remembering the breakfast, La Panella etc etc), so this time here it came. Frustratingly, the lights were turned down from perfectly normal Monday night-ish to ooh-la-la-ish just as I spooned off the end to snap the inside, so we will have to make do with an external shot only.


The cheesecake was more than I thought a silken tofu creation could be (I mean, c'mon. Silken tofu into a sweet dessert tart? I pity the fool!). It was firm, silky, moist and full of real peanut buttery flavour. Lisa would have preferred a more crumbly base, so I leave that judgment with the connoisseur. I just want to have a crack at making it now!

I am pretty gosh-darned impressed now, and am salivating in a none-too-attractive manner at the thought of the new Asian 'duck' and salad dish.

So what's the greatest about the East? No, it's not the most cutting edge, healthiest, most inventive vegan food. But sometimes, or even quite a lot if you're like me, you just want a big, hearty, straightforward pub meal with chips and sauce and you want it to take up most of a big plate and you want a beer to go with it and you want to eat it in a real pub and you want it right now and thanks to the East, these simple pleasures are back on the menu for vegans.


The East Brunswick Club: 280 Lygon Street, East Brunswick. Ph 9482 7033. www.eastbrunswickclub.com

Lisa's blog: www.lisadempster.com.au (Has anyone noticed that I can't do that cool linkage where you just go "here" or the person's name to link to them? Probably you have. Probably you have assumed that I am an involuntary Luddite and have the intellectual capacity of a cat. Probably you are right. Probably, or even definitely, I will find out how to do it tomorrow and actually be able to properly link and credit all the people I talk about).

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.