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Friday, March 15, 2013

Eating out around Perth


After a six hour drive from Kalgoorlie, unpacking the car and driving out to the airport to pick up the young man (he spent six nights with us in Perth before heading back home to start University), a quick meal was in order. I envisaged we would be tired and hungry on our first night in Perth and had printed a menu from Sri Melaka's website so we could pick up some take away food on our way back from the airport to the rental house. Sri Melaka vegetarian restaurant was one of the recommendations Steph suggested when I mentioned my travel plans to Perth. Steph formerly lived in Perth and is now based in Melbourne, so I used her blog as one of my resources for seeking out vegan food.  


Sri Melaka’s menu is Malaysian styled Nyonya cuisine predominately based on mock meat. It was difficult to choose from a large number of dishes as they all sounded fantastic. We ordered Chicken Kapitan, Kangkong Belacan and two of our favourite dishes Mee Goreng noodles and Lamb Rendang. The Chicken Kapitan contained chunks of mock meat and potatoes in a very spicy coconut curry gravy, the Lamb Rendang was 100% mock meat in a thick spicy coconut paste. Mee Goreng had a combination of vegetables, mock prawns and possibly some other form of mock meat I couldn’t identify and the Kangkong was Asian water spinach stir fried with chillies and mock shrimp paste. Every single dish was very spicy and our noses were running by the end of the meal. No-one could pick a favourite as we thoroughly enjoyed them all. I’ve been to a few Asian mock meat restaurants around Melbourne but none of them have managed to serve up food as delicious as this! It cost a little over $50 and there were enough leftovers to provide the three of us with a light lunch so it was also very good value.   


After reading about the Thai Vegan stall located at the Fremantle markets on Happy Cow, I put it high on my must visit list. I’ve travelled to Thailand a couple of times and haven’t been able to enjoy Thai food in Melbourne restaurants since. A reviewer on Happy Cow piqued my interest by mentioning that the food was that best they had eaten outside of Thailand. The stall is open on market days (Friday to Sunday) and is managed by two lovely women who were run off their feet pounding fresh herbs and spices, stir-frying and preparing fresh salads in addition to taking many orders. There are only a couple of seats to eat at the stall but there is a park nearby as well as plenty of benches in the surrounding streets.


In addition to a few precooked deep fried snacks, the menu is largely based on Thai salads, soups and noodle dishes (priced between $7 - $11). The man had left me to organise our food while he waited outside with Ollie and the young man ventured off to eat whatever he pleased. Salads are usually not popular with the man yet I recalled that he enjoyed the ones we ate in Thailand and boldly ordered a Larb salad, two spicy tofu sticks and a Pad Se Ew noodles. Somehow I managed to order an extra noodle dish which may have been due to the noise level in the markets and my substandard hearing. The amount of heat can be varied to your personal taste so I ordered all of our meals to be spicy.


The spicy tofu sticks ($3 each) consisted of three triangular pieces of crispy tofu on skewers, they were slightly disappointing as they didn't live up to their name in the spice department yet they were tasty enough to enjoy as a starter. The Larb salad was made up of lettuce, spinach, carrot, green papaya and cucumber topped with soy mince and was bursting with fresh flavours of lemongrass, chilli, coriander, mint and lime. It reminded us of the fantastic salads we had eaten in Thailand and I was thrilled that my brave selection turned out to be a success. Pad Se Ew was full of an assortment of vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, carrot, cabbage and bean sprouts) as well as nicely seasoned tofu and lovely wide rice noodles. I think the extra noodle dish was called Rad Na, it had the same vegetables, tofu and noodles as Pad Se Ew yet it contained more sour flavours and it was spiciest dish of the lot. We loved both of the noodle dishes although the man said that the Rad Na was verging on being too spicy for him.    


Perth is fortunate to have a couple of Loving Hut restaurants which are located a suburb apart from each other. Loving Hut at Victoria Park is open for lunches (Wednesday to Sunday) and weekend breakfasts and East Victoria Park is open for dinners (Wednesday to Sunday). I had looked at both of their online menus and after mentioning to the man that there was an opportunity to eat pizza with vegan cheese he was super keen to drive across and get some take away food.


The menu begins with Asian entrees, mains are a combination of Asian meals, pasta dishes and pizza. They also offer a range of desserts and like all of the stores in the Loving Hut chain, everything on the menu is vegan. We were in the mood for pizza and pasta, the entrees also sounded great so we ordered way too much food! The spring rolls and samosas were both good but it was the crispy bites (above) that were the most popular starter. These pieces of mock meat coated in a slightly spicy batter and deep fried may not have been the healthiest choice but boy did they taste good! I've been requested to pull out the deep fryer and recreate this at home one day.


While the vegan pizza had been a draw card, it ended up to be slightly disappointing. The base wasn't great, it was thin but the edges were not rolled out evenly and it was unlike a base you would get from a pizza shop. The vegetable toppings of capsicum, mushrooms, spinach and pineapple were fine but there was a scant quantity of Notzarella cheese covering them. By the time we demolished this amount of food we were too full to tackle the pasta dishes and put them aside for next days lunch. We enjoyed ravioli with a tomato based sauce and I was less impressed with spaghetti carbonara with mushrooms as I thought the sauce had a weird flavour but the man seemed to enjoy it. Loving Hut's strengths may be in their Asian meals given the success we had with the entrees. We paid $64 for three entrees, a pizza and two pasta dishes which was pretty good value.

Beautiful dog beach at Swanbourne which had a clear blue sky every day

The Naked Fig in Swanbourne boasts a lovely view across the ocean and was on our daily walking route from our accommodation to the closest dog beach. It is one of three trendy restaurants in Perth, their other locations are in Swanbourne and Fremantle and each of them has a dedicated vego night. We ordered take away soy lattes (with extra shots of coffee) from The Naked Fig twice after early morning swims. We decided not to return as the wait times were 15 minutes one day, over 20 minutes the following day and the coffees were very weak and milky, apparently made with St Ali coffee beans from Melbourne. It was a shame as The Naked Fig had a vegan breakfast on their menu and veggie burgers with vegan options for lunch and dinner.

Ollie waiting for the ball to be thrown in the ocean (yet again)

There were several other eateries I had wanted to visit but was most disappointed that we didn't make it to Heavenly Plate in Applecross as Kari's pre-wedding high tea sounded amazing as did Steph's dining experience there. The man spent half of his childhood growing up in Perth and was astounded by the amount of vegan food that is on offer these days. Vegans who are planning a trip to Perth should check out the following blogs for heaps of food options around town: Vegan4Life, Bite Sized Thoughtsvegan about town and Vegan Sparkles as well as Happy Cow.

20 comments:

  1. Th beaches is Perth are amazing hey :-)
    Ollie is very cute!

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    1. Thanks Sandy, yes the Perth beaches are gorgeous and we think Ollie is a cutie too!

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  2. I am indeed learning from your eating experiences :-) I'm sorry you didn't make it to Heavenly Plate but I'm grateful for your reviews of the Thai stall and Loving Hut as both are still to be tried by me. I'll know to go with Asian at the latter, and may have to try that salad at the former.

    Ollie looks so happy in that last photo!

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    1. I'm really sorry we didn't make it to Heavenly Plate as their menu looks really good and there were a few other places I would have liked to try too. We still managed to get to a few places and enjoyed Thai Vegan and Sri Melaka as they seem to be unique to Perth.

      Ollie had a very happy holiday and every beach visit made him a happy boy!

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  3. Aw, look at Ollie on that gorgeous beach! The food all looks pretty good, too. That tofu larb salad - yum!

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    1. It was all pretty great food, the larb salad is on my to-do list to recreate now!

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  4. I need to get over to both Australia and Thailand SOON. Haha. That Thai Vegan Cuisine stand sounds delicious. I love Thai food over here, but would love to try real Thai food.

    I've been to Loving Hut, but the one that I went to didn't have pizza. Their Asian dishes are usually pretty on point though. Looks like your taste buds got their money's worth while you were in Perth. :)

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    1. Authentic Thai food is so amazing, the fresh herbs combined with spices are just incredible. Hope you get to try some in your travels one day.

      Loving Hut menus seem to fluctuate a lot between stores. The one in Melbourne makes some good Asian dishes too. The taste buds definitely got a good workout!

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  5. Love the beach photos - just what I need for a burst of sunshine now the weather has really cooled down. The thai stall sounds great though more spicy than I might cope with - esp if the Man thought the extra dish a bit spicy. And sounds like you were able to find lots of places serving vegan food which makes a town welcoming even if the quality is variable.

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    1. I've been looking over the travel photos so often and love looking at the beach photos to cheer me up on a gloomy day. One good thing about Thai Vegan was that you could request for the dishes to be mild, I just choose to make them spicy for us! Perth definitely has a lot to offer for vegans, there was plenty of variety and many more places we didn't get to visit too.

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  6. Ohhh, so glad you got to try some of the great new vegan food Perth has to offer! Glad to see Ollie loves the western beaches as much as we do. :-)

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    1. It was great to find so much vegan food on offer in Perth Bex. We loved our eating experiences and now I finally have an appreciation of why my husband isn't fond of the beaches in Melbourne. They are worlds apart, you are lucky to have them!

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  7. What a great line up! You looked like you ate well all the way through, and had gorgeous beaches for good measure. Crispy bites are now on my mind...

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    1. Yes, we definitely didn't starve over in Perth! We ate more mock meat than usual but hey what are holidays for? If I can recreate a half decent version of the crispy bites, I'll definitely post a recipe!

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  8. So glad you had a great time eating around Perth, you know how I love it, and I'm especially glad you got to make it to the beach! And also that my thoughts were helpful to you.

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    1. Thanks so much for your advice steph! And after all that talk about Laksa I didn't even end up trying it! Sri Melaka was one of our favourite meals, it was so delicious. Spending time at the beaches was one of the main things we set out to do, we had the most perfect beach weather which was fantastic.

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  9. Phew! Thanks for the tasty whirlwind vegan tour. :-)

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    1. No problem Cindy! Perhaps you will be inspired to head west for a food trip (not sure if you guys have been over that way yet).

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    2. We've both had brief visits for work, but not tried enough of the veg food!

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  10. Glad to see your beach photos and all food stuff appear yummy.Great that you had wonderful eating experience around Perth

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