FGY Art Gallery Temple takes a dive, or: Where is my laksa?

It is with a heart heavy with sorrow that I write these words. When a restaurant that I hold deep, warm affection and mushiness for makes schtoopid, schtoopid changes, I weep.

Dear old FGY Temple, your mock meat dishes were outshone only by the warm glow of your kumquat tea. Although previous visits left room for improvement, there was much to be encouraged about and I really did love your little bento boxes with their pumpkin cakes. On a later, unreported visit with Buzz, he had a very commendable laksa while I had mockporky noodles. You were doin’ ok, kid.

So why did you do it? Why did you take a scythe to your menu and remove anything that didn’t fit the following algorithm:

Noodles (flat rice, Hokkien / otherwise unspecified) + vegetables (stewed veg / bean shoot / carrot and bean shoot) + [(mock pork) / (Tom Yum)] = total boredom.

To the unmathematical, this means that FGY now offers dishes that are Hokkien or flat rice noodle (or just noodle) – there is only one rice dish and no laksa or bento – and all the noodle dishes are stewed veg, or mock pork (no more the mock Haikkenese chicken) and beanshoots and carrot if you’re lucky.


Buzz and I, maddened by hunger, ordered the same noodle dish in the hope that it would be speedier. By the time our entrée arrived – a very creditable and fresh vegetable dumpling platter with a tasty light soy and sesame oil dipping sauce – we had already drawn all over the (tri-fold, paper – no longer vivid pictures on durable laminate) menu to distract ourselves.


By the time the mains arrived, thankfully on the larger side, we were so hungry that we didn’t even notice that they had brought us the wrong thing … or did they? So hard to tell with a menu of infinitesimal difference (we could tell though, because we ordered flat rice noodle and got plain round rice).


And then we were charged $5 more than what we ordered. $34.80 for two plates of noodles, one juice and one entree is absurd.

So here is the mystery. If you were going to reduce your menu as it was too large, would you reduce it to items that are statistically insignificant from each other? Would you remove all items that couldn’t be scooped out of a pre-prepared stockpot? And would you continue to run such a drastically reduced level of staffing that you had one floor waiter, one seating/bar waiter, and one order-taking waiter? During lunch rush hour? Or would you self-destruct in thirty seconds?

I love the idea of FGY. I love the art gallery, the spiritual space, the kumquat tea, the nuns, and I really loved the Lazy Susans. But until such time as they restore their menu to at least a semblance of something worth reading, I won’t be trekking up to Queen Street. Even for kumquat tea.

FGY Art Gallery, or: I explore some mock-meat and reminisce over pumpkin cakes

Miss Natalie kindly suggested lunch at Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery as my leaving-the-team lunch, so we hauled ass all the way down to Queen Street from our office at the Paris End of Collins (no less!), and entered the world of kumquat tea.

FGY (sounds a bit gynaecological, doesn’t it?) is a purely vegetarian restaurant/art gallery/meditation space housed in what I think is an old bank. The menu is a choice of lunch special, chef’s special or a la carte, but the highlight is, was, and always will be the kumquat tea. Sweet, syrypy, like hot cordial but nasty when cold, the tea comes served with whole kumquats in a glass tea pot and is a golden, Cottees cordial orange.


Things got off to a hysterical start when I asked what dishes were vegan, and the waiter replied that there was no vegan as it was a vegetarian restaurant.

He thought I said bacon.

We ordered twice as the first time (our waiter being a ring-in because the first waiter’s electronic notepad wasn’t working) didn’t write anything down, came back, repeated the order quite incorrectly, and had to record it all over again. Our mains arrived, then one half of our entrée, and then a little later the other half. Friendly as the service was, I don’t need to be asked three times if I have ordered; not be able to make myself understood to my waiter even in the most basic terms; then have my order taken again; and then have my meal arrive in dribs and drabs. Luckily the kumquat tea arrived with little cookies and I was able to sate my annoyance with sugar.

The menu is pretty heavy on the mock-meats, which as a rule I avoid but when faced with such a selection, was suspiciously keen to order something that I wouldn’t normally get to eat. Natalie and I ordered a Hainan “chicken” bento-type box which arrived with two types of salad, a frighteningly realistic pork-like mock-meat, and a pumpkin cake.


Check out the top left corner: I haven’t had pumpkin cake since high school, when we would troop down to the Snappy Happer on Canterbury Road … and yes, that’s Snappy Happer. No-one could ever say Happy Snapper properly and after a while no-one even noticed. The Snappy Happer was a fish’n’chip shop that served both potato and pumpkin cakes (…we have both kinds … country and western!) and I haven’t seen pumpkin cakes since. For those overseas readers not familiar with the humble potato cake, it’s a round thin potato patty deep fried in batter, salted and eaten with fish’n’chips (or just chips if you’re me). A bad potato cake is thin, soggy, yellowy-white and evenly battered. A good potato cake is golden with fat, has grotesque battery bubbles poking out of it like some kind of disease, and is piping hot and extra salty. Sadly the Snappy Happer is now closed, but the memory of those pumpkin cakes still makes me misty-eyed (and hungry).

So my FGY pumpkin cake brought back fond teenage memories, although it was extra fatty and oily and somewhat of a surprise in my bento box. The “chicken”-that-looked-like-“pork” was grey and textured and also on the oily side, and to be quite honest I ate it with some trepidation. It tasted … like … mock-meat. That said, I have no idea what chicken really tastes like so it could have tasted like human flesh for all I know. It wasn’t highly flavoured; it was a little bland, and the dominant sensation was the chewy texture smoothed out in oil. It arrived with some very orange ginger rice, which was patchily flavoured but interesting nonetheless. I’m not sure what Hainan-style is meant to taste like, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t taste it.


The vegetable dumplings were cute little things; not overly spiced and recently steamed. I really liked the mushroom buns suggested by miss Caitlin although I had initially wanted to try out the “pork” ones just to see; they were steamed well and hadn’t yet begun to harden post-heat, and I suspect that these two dishes were the only things only our table made freshly.



Trying to be just a little polite, I didn’t take photos of my companions’ meals, so also didn’t ask what they thought (although Miss Susan enjoyed her Korean-style sauce). Miss Susan, Miss Natalie and Mr David are all omnis, so it was generous and thoughtful of them to suggest FGY so that I and Miss Caitlin, a pescetarian, could eat with some choice. Although I thought improvements could be made in the service (vast improvements!) and some of the flavourings, I really did enjoy the meal, ate heartily, and commend FGY for its vision.

The real joy of FGY is the breadth of selection, if you choose well; the old-school Lazy Susan on the plastic-tablecloths; the company you go with; and without a doubt, above all, the kumquat tea.


Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery: 141 Queen Street, Melbourne. Ph. 9642 2388.