Chat for Tea Vegetarian Tea Garden

Dan and I embarked on an op shopping tour of Ballarat a few weeks ago and Toby tagged along just so that he could go to Chat for Tea, because we have been talking about checking it out for a few years now. Chat for Tea is as the name suggests a vegetarian cafe which sells lots of tea, just without a garden part. Most of the menu items can be made vegan and they were quite gluten free friendly which is kind of rare for asian vegetarian places. Toby and I shared the laksa which was very mild which suited us fine, however Dan wanted more chilli in hers. To make it gluten free they left out the mock meat, I enjoyed this but there was only a small amount of tofu-perhaps 3 small squares for this large bowl which was a tad disappointing.



We also got the nutty rice and tofu, I was expecting a satay dish so was surprised by this coconuty almost sweet sauce with very little peanut flavour. However, we still enjoyed it, Toby said it reminded him of  'Portuguese sauce' dishes he would get in Hong Kong.



And of course we had to sample tea, I got some mango sencha which had a mild mango flavour but a lovely scent and Toby got some oolong tea which he enjoyed.  They had plenty of flavours to choose from, next time I am going to try the peach sencha as I love sencha!



Overall, it's a cute little place and definitely worth a visit if you are in the area, the food was good but not amazing. I do wonder if the gluteny dishes are a tad more exciting. Ballarat had some great op shops, however be warned that they most of them close super early on Saturdays like 12-1!


 

Chat for Tea Vegetarian Tea Garden
25 Armstrong Street
Ballarat

Read other reviews by vegan about town , bites and travels and Jess cookbook.