vegan dining – Turkanz

Blossoming Lotus, Newtown

Your favourite vegan restaurant in Newtown may not be open for lunch on Easter Monday. Well, it happened to us. Green Gourmet is what I’m talking about. So, you take what you get. Blossoming Lotus was open and that’s where we had lunch just before we headed to IKEA to get me new bookcases.

Blossoming Lotus was the place where I had lunch while John was having his gallbladder taken out at RPA some years ago. Back then, it was called Green Palace Thai Vegetarian Cafe, I guess. Owned by the same family of Jackie Khan from Veggie Tree Delight Thai Vegetarian Restaurant right across from Taste Organic in Crows Nest. We loved that place, we loved the owner. They even did home delivery. Those were good days, unlike our Blossoming Lotus lunch during Easter.

On the day, we were lucky to get a park only a few steps away from Blossoming Lotus but that the only lucky thing.

The food situation works very much like Veggie Tree Delight and similar style Asian vegetarian places. You pick your rice or noodles and a number of other dishes from the buffet.

So, I picked these dishes: fried rice, crispy soy slices and roasted duck (below).

My husband on the other hand steamed rice, red curry and another similar style dish with Lamyong chunks in it (below). My roasted duck and crispy soy slices were delicious but fried rice tasted a little funny. So, I focused on the other ones and left the rice. My husband told me that his food tasted a little saltier than normal and even gave me a piece to try but I didn’t. In the end, he had funny tummy soon after the lunch.

The staff were not all that helpful or warm. The girl who was in charge with serving at the front went to toilet and left the front area unattended even though there were other people back in the kitchen who could have filled in for her. All in all, it was not a good experience.

So, if you really must go, Blossoming Lotus can be found at this address:
182 King Street
Newtown, NSW 2042

And perhaps check out their toilet before you have anything to eat there. It’ll tell you everything you need to know about their hygienic standards.

Viasko Vegan Restaurant, Berlin

My Viasko Vegan Restaurant review on VegFusion (my food blog).

I must admit, Viasko was close to fiasco. The area was bad; we didn’t feel safe there. We had to walk for quite some time to get to the restaurant after taking the bus.

Our waitress was very much like a walking catalog of a tattoo and piercing parlor and it wasn’t a good first impression. The décor was dull and pretty much everything had this “cheaply done” kind of look.

In my opinion, the only good thing going for the place is the book nook (below).

Viasko is a fully vegan restaurant so you expect some compromise in taste but it was more compromise than we would have like to have. Food was actually average.

As a starter we shared Antipasti (olives, hummus and sun-dried tomatoes) which came with a small basket of bread. €3.90

Hummus was thick, sun-dried tomatoes tasted like they came out of a jar and the olives weren’t even marinated.

As for the mains we had:

Breaded soy medallions with white asparagus, baked cherry tomatoes, arugula and steamed potatoes. €15.90

Breaded soy medallions were dry.

Cheese “spätzle” with onion rings and cucumber salad in dill cream dressing. €11.90

Onion rings were not covered with the batter properly, cheese “spätzle” was just okay and dill cream salad dressing had the taste of moisture.

If you really must go, Viasko can be found at this address below:

Viasko Vegan Restaurant
Erkelenzdamm 49,
10999 Berlin
Website

LoVeg Vegan Cuisine and Specialties, Prague

LoVeg Vegan Cuisine and Specialties, Prague

We were on our way to Prague Castle and surprised to see a sign saying “LoVeg Vegan Restaurant 222m” in an area called The Lesser Town (see the left corner of the photo below). It was lunch time and we decided to go and have a bite to eat without questioning the ingredients –although Prague has been really good with our kind of food.

After 222 metres, we found the place and started to climb the stairs. It was kind of eerie and dark but you get there.

When you do get there… this is what it looks like. There is another staircase (the iron one in the photo) to go upstairs, to the roof which we haven’t been.

Menu at LoVeg is bilingual and quite an international one too. From Asian to Czech specialties, everything is pretty much covered. There is nothing special about the food, I must say; it’s just vegan food. Since we stopped by for lunch, we didn’t want anything too big. So, John had Thai coconut curry (tofu, mushroom, sweet peas and spring onion) which is served with jasmine rice. I didn’t take a photo of it as I find curries not so photogenic. I, on the other hand, opted for LoVeg Burger which is made of beetroot, chickpeas, tempeh, “vegan bacon” and served with salad leaves, tomato, Dijon mustard and baked potato. And I do have a photo of it.

To drink we both had a glass of home-made lemonade with a citrus mix (orange, grapefruit, lime and lemon). The waitress made it fresh behind the bar where we could see it.