Get snap happy with beautiful vegan brunch dishes at Flora and Fauna, Northbridge

Flora and Fauna, Northbridge

If I was perfectly honest with you, I hate places that are hidden off the street out of sight - the so often quoted 'little gem of a restaurant tucked away in a back alleyway'...that is just so hard to find! I love the idea of a hideaway place being in some unknown nook and cranny, but hate spending a year and a half on an empty stomach driving up and down with my brake lights flashing like a disco ball trying to find it.

Yup, I guess I do get a little hangry!

Fortunately we only drove all the way up Aberdeen Street and back down again just ONCE whilst trying to find Flora and Fauna. It's not easily visible from the main street, as it is in the laneway just next to Via Torre Lane. Situated right next to Varsity Burgers, these two polar opposites could not be more strikingly contrasted neighbours. As a tiny boutique cafe, Flora and Fauna has built itself quite a loyal and vocal fan base touting about all of their beautifully artistic vegan, healthy brunch dishes and raw treats. And it is true, the bright pops of colour and arrangement of the food make delicious camera candy.

Goji Superfood Muesli - $14

As a firm believer of strictly no ordering of muesli bowls when eating out, I couldn't help but be lured in helplessly by the endless photographs of their muesli bowl I was exposed to. Because I don't think I would ever a). get full on a bowl of measly muesli; b). fancy ordering something I could smash together at home (just a less fancy version); and c). eat something so healthy, this is an entirely different story. Everyone's a sucker for pretty looking food and in this instance, all my anti-muesli values flew out the window. Gone are the days of healthy food looking and tasting like cardboard!

The prettiest breakfast muesli bowl

The combination of different fruits, nuts, flowers and vibrant colours would see this take out the title in a muesli bowl pageant. It is much like eating out of a flower garden with the presence of flower buds scattered over the bowl. I love the look of the dish with the addition of flowers, but I left a few buds uneaten as I wasn't a big fan of the slightly hard and gritty texture from the multiple layers of petals.

Digging up the treasure

The look of the muesli bowl is everchanging, as it constantly changes with the seasonal fruits available. Yay for the strawberries being sweet, because I have developed a slow dislike for strawberries over the years as the sour ones always have a fond attraction towards me. The passionfruit pulp added a nice and sharp zesty flavour burst to a few mouthfuls, and I would have loved a few blueberries too!

My eyes widened at first sight, mostly because the size of the bowl is ridiculously big and so loaded with fresh ingredients that it would overflow if you go heavy on the milk to muesli ratio (which I tend to do at home). I proved my 'I don't get full on muesli bowls' theory so wrong and ended up being pretty stuffed when I reached the bottom of the bowl.

The all important First Pour

I have always eaten goji berries in Chinese herbal soups all my life, so I'm not fazed by the sudden crowning of them as superfoods. I do like their sweetness and enjoyed them alongside all the pecans, almonds, coconut flakes and seeds in my muesli. The muesli itself is sweetened with real maple syrup, and is served with a choice out of dairy, almond, rice or soy milk or yoghurt. My only gripe is not having enough milk to pour into that deep bowl, so some mouthfuls were rather dry for me (sometimes greediness may get the better of me) :P

Herbed Smashed Avo on organic Turkish Toast (plus a side of free ranged scrambled eggs +$4) - $13

My hungry friend decided on the smashed avocado on toast, adding a dainty pot of scrambled eggs on the side as an extra. Even without it, the portion of the avocado was pretty generous and there has never been a time when a pile of green mush looked more delicious. I sneaked a spoonful or two of the smashed avocado and my tastebuds swooned in delight - the avocado is slightly tangy and bursting with flavour from the lemon, basil and whatever other seasonings were added to give it that full flavour punch. On the other hand, it was a slight punch in my face that I didn't order this for myself!

Happiness comes in so many forms

My ignorance meant that it came as a surprise that Flora and Fauna served only vegan fare. The food is so real and unpretentious, so it is refreshing for a change that I can read their menu and understand absolutely everything written on it instead of trying to guess or consulting Google what on earth my dish even is.

There is very limited seating inside the cafe - you are able to prop yourself up against the 3 or so bench seats and watch other diners eat outside the cafe at the few mismatched tables and chairs. It is a very quiet laneway and the passers-by are mostly patrons of the cafe, making it a quiet breakaway right in the middle of, yet calmly shielded away from the hustle and bustle of Northbridge.

Fauna and Flora, Northbridge

Fauna and Flora

Tuesday - Friday: 7:30am - 4:00pm

Saturday - Sunday: 8:30am - 3:00pm

Closed Mondays

0468 948 281

4/70 Aberdeen Street, Northbridge WA 6003

Healthy, guiltless herbivore eating at The Raw Kitchen, Fremantle

The Raw Kitchen

It is somewhat out of character for me to make a trek to Fremantle for dinner (although this mindset must change to make way for the bustling dining scene of Freo!), it made sense to find a feed here after some frolicking around at the beautiful Cottesloe Beach for Sculptures by the Sea. It was about time I visited The Raw Kitchen, a place that ticks all my boxes - having a menu in which I would be able to eat any dish that I could close my eyes and point my finger at. More so, I was interested in how much it would take to get our meat-loving bellies full and remain that way.

Summer Green - $9.50

Like a meal on its own, we started with this green smoothie - cool, refreshing and quenches your thirst for healthiness. Its combination of greens including organic spinach and cucumber blended with mango, lemon and dates results in a summery drink with a natural tinge of sweetness. I did notice the sky high price but hey, I've just gotta get used to Perth doing this to its people.
What I also found intriguing was the metal straw. An inflexible straw = mind blown.

Pad Thai - $24

Andy was very excited to eye out the words Pad Thai and other greasy, protein-heavy dishes on the menu like curries, but I gently let him down by reminding him of where we were dining - hello RAW KITCHEN! No signs, smells or sights of any woks here that even the mention of Pad Thai seems a little taboo.

A different kind of noodles

Looking deceptively noodley, there are long, stringy strands of zucchini noodles with an almond 'satay' sauce mixed through the dish, amongst a medley of vegetables such as capsicum, baby corn, snow peas, mung bean sprouts with fresh herbs, tamarind and kaffir lime.

Zucchini almost looking like real noodles!

The 'Pad Thai' available here is of course, a far and healthy cry from the kind we are accustomed to. This is a fresh and very clean edition of the greasy favourite kind I adore and to be honest it was somewhat difficult to fall in love with eating raw zucchini. This is the first time I tried zucchini noodles, the latest destination of the health-craze train. I must give credit to how long and thin the zucchini strands are sliced to mimic the appearance and nearly even texture of normal noodles - we spent a good 5 minutes studying a single noodle strand to try to deduce whether these were noodles with zucchini added in or actually made from zucchini itself.
Ooh aren't we just so silly!

Refreshing, but I finished this dish craving actual Pad Thai and a serious carb fix. Oh carbs, I could never leave 'em!

Yellow Coconut Curry - $27

In hindsight, I am not surprised that we ended up choosing the Asian-style dishes to try from the vegan menu. It is interesting to see the creative elements of how to rework these types of dishes into something healthy that you don't feel the slightest pang of guilt for eating.

I actually really enjoyed the yellow coconut curry dish, a shallow dish of creamy 'curry' sauce with lupin tempeh, broccoli, sweet potato chunks, lime and chilli, complete with the finishing touch of  crispy shallots scattered on top for fragrance and flavour. Not forgetting about curry's best friend - rice - the substitution is a small dish of quinoa on the side.

The heavenly raw dessert cabinet!

Strategically placed where the counter to pay is, the multi-tiered cabinet of desserts features a whole range of guilt-free (how many times have I said that right!) treats that you can't help but check out from top to bottom when lining up to pay. There are chocolates, then there are raw balls, then just out of the corner of your eye are more tempting caramel slices and a selection of raw cheesecakes just to test out your ability to resist.

Needless to say, we left with some balls. Meh, what does resisting temptation even mean!

Just like its menu and philosophy to real, natural food, the interior of The Raw Kitchen is very much simplistic and exposed. The warehouse style restaurant is big and spacious, where the extra space houses a retail store and is also used for other purposes such as yoga classes and workshops on the premises.

The most beautiful bottles of poison

Clever use of a shipping container

The Raw Kitchen is a haven for those who have food intolerances, as the kitchen is very accommodating and have taken care to design a very thoughtful and creative menu free of dairy, gluten and refined sugar. As my friend once said to me when suggesting a place for dinner, that this was a restaurant where I could "actually eat everything on the menu!"

Carnivores might resent places like this and probably won't willingly find themselves eating from a plant-based menu, but with such an interesting menu, they just might realise that not eating meat for a meal is not such a big missed-steak after all ;)

The Raw Kitchen, Fremantle

The Raw Kitchen
Monday - Thursday: 11am-4pm
Friday - Sunday: 11am-9pm
Closed public holidays

181A High Street, Fremantle WA 6160
(08)9433 4647

Menu

Eden Delicacy

I'm not sure to what extent this applies to people, but for me, hitting the books always means hitting the food even more.
Sure, studying is connotated with stress, but even more sure, stress is connotated with CONSTANT PIGGING OUT!

The worrying, the lack of sleep, the procrastination, the post-procrastination guilt, the consequential cramming because of that guilt, the i'll-study-tomorrow urges, amazingly still means I don't eat any less.
It is a miracle I haven't really gained any extra kilos since high school days.

So what can I say? The journey to study meant a journey to a new restaurant :)
Who knew the pursuit for knowledge meant a new blog post ;)
I think I may have found a new interest!

(Trying out new restaurants, of course) =p

Udon Noodles

Took me a while to decide on breakfast. Not because I was in a carnivore in a vegetarian restaurant and feel so lost (ok, maybe*) but because I needed to make a choice out of the options available, and that's always a difficult task for me. And then, I'd have to sieve through those choices to a relatively healthy, low fat, less oily dish, EVEN IN a vegetarian haven.

I repeat, it seriously sucks. It gives people the wrong impression, perhaps the most WRONGEST, most MISLEADING impression ever, that I'm on a diet. Eww.

Because even with no meat involved, the way stuff is prepared might still screw around with my stomach. I can never risk it. So the owner was kind enough to offer to make something that specifically catered for my needs, like a MYO kind of thing. She asked me, soup or stir fried? What type of noodles?
And in the end, I realised what I'd chosen had come straight off the menu anyway. I am suchhh a bright kid!!!

So this bowl of udon came with capsicum strips, seaweed, "prawns" and "fishballs", both in quotation marks because not including the quotation marks would be a lie, as much as it would be a lie and maybe even a sin to serve in a vegetarian restaurant =p Fake meat always tastes pretty good to me, but it's not so real that you'd mistaken it for the real thing. That being said, real fishballs tastes pretty fake to me anyway.

Decent serving size, perhaps maybe even on the smaller side. My dining friend even said something about being surprised if I were able to finish it all. Baa haa haarrr what a joke, guess just didn't know me well enough! That impression is now long gone *sob*, after witnessing my very timid 5 plates + soup + dessert streak at buffet.
+1 for disbelief but +1 for respect as well. I hell earnt that respect well.

*Nah I'm kidding, I'm not a food snob. I'm happy and grateful with anything as long as I get food and not deprived of it :)

Eden Noodles

Ok, so from the epically VAGUE and pretty fail descriptions I've collected for this dish, this is what I got:

It tasted nice =)

BLOG RUINERRR! Since I didn't taste this myself it's hard to judge. So apparently the highlight of this was "uberrr good soup", enhanced by ... mustard?! Yep, you're probably like me: EW, mustard soup?! Like, mustard-that-goes-on-hot-dogs soup?! Lol, but no, mustard as in pickled mustard, somewhat like the preserved vegetables you can find in packets from Asian supermarkets.

This would probably remind me of my dad's homemade version, a sour-ish based, vinegary tasting soup and ever so addicting. Daw, I miss his cooking =( He's quite the chef in my life =)

Seaweed Omlette

So when a restaurant promotes one of its dishes as its signature specialties, it would be dumb to not order it right? So even though we were on the verge of being very full, what the heck. One more dish wouldn't hurt too much, and the name of this thing sounded all the more intruiging.
What on earth did a seaweed omlette look like? Would it be green? Would it taste like ... the beach? For a while my brain didn't realise that I ate seaweed all the time in Japanese cuisine.

I pretty much imagined collective seaweed bunches washed up on the shore of sandy beaches, gathered together, washed, chopped and slapped into an omlette.
Gosh, these vegetarians eat anything! =p (Initial stupid thought)

Alas, thank God, this was not the case OF COURSE! It came out looking very pretty and attractive, and this was when my brain started functioning again: OHHHHHHH, seaweeeeeed, I see. #8904580954892835479834543562512th dumbest moment ever.

It came served with a bowl of red, slightly thick, slightly spicy, slightly sweet dipping sauce (not pictured), which was meant to enhance the taste of it in an unbelievable way, apparently. I reckon it did fine without. Ingredients were seaweed, mushrooms, bok choy plus some kind of mysterious melon I couldn't recognise (yeah, fail, sorry). All held together with eggy mixture as well as a slightly interesting but even more slightly sickening clear, gluggy, sticky textured ... GOO. It was somewhat offputting but I'm a disgusting person so I ate it anyway =D LOL

Tasted prettayyy good. The omlette. Not the goo.
Well, the goo as well, since it was an inclusion inside the omlette.
Actually now that I think about it, without that liquid adhesive, the dish just wouldn't be as unique.

...Think I'll let you insert your own caption here ;)

This is a picture from a series a friend sent me, which I have enough of to compile a picture book of the food adventures experienced daily of his business trip. I thought I'd include this one here as it's a pretty damn accurate depiction of the GOO that was used inside that omlette. I think this is where creativity comes to play, where looking at this picture may stimulate widelyyy different thoughts inside different people's brains...

I won't hesitate to say, one of the most obvious descriptions that came about was something like,
Man, I just ate a bowl of sperm for lunch today!
But that was a guy talking, so...........yeah.
I'll stop there and leave the rest up to your vivid imaginations ;)

...

I'd never really known of this little simple eats restaurant that caters for those who have a meat aversion or just want to eat healthy for a meal, once in a blue moon =) I mean, you feel good about yourself because not only have you done your health good but you've done the world good, by letting one little animal free. Sort of. Not really.
But you know, eating here meant I'd done my little good deed for the day :D TEE HEE

It's a great concept, a purely vegetarian eatery serving up a variety of meals, snacks and desserts, which shows you still have a large variety to choose from if you love your animals too much to eat them. There's not many of these around Perth, I'm guessing because Perth is a largely animal-consuming nation (with the iconic Aussie BBQ and all) so if you see these pop up, it's worth a try.

There's not much seating available inside, but they've got a constant trickling stream of customers during lunch time, which is good to see. I love seeing family owned and run businesses be successful, because it shows anyone can be, if you put your heart to it :)
It's nice to see others' accomplishments when I don't see myself having too many achievements. Maybe that's because my heart wanders around too much.

Or, MAYBE, because I don't even have a heart. Apparently.