A. Bongiovanni and KFL: Supermarkets in the West

Sure when you move to a different area you need to do things like find a new doctor, dentist etc but one of the most annoying but also kind of exciting thing is exploring new supermarkets. I'm the type of person who loves to stroll around supermarkets in new countries etc just exploring what sorts of products they have. I'm sure i'm in the minority here and other people have lives or something but if your like me then continue reading if not perhaps this can serve as some sort of boring night time reading to put you to sleep. 

I wanted to tell you about two quite different supermarkets they we frequent in our new hood. The first is in seddon. Seddon is a tiny slightly yuppish suburb with several cafes, at least two dog accessory shops and lots of seddon puns: seddonia, seddon deadly sins, seddon hand etc. They are also home o A. Bongiovanni a fancy grocery store.

Otherwise known as a 'organic and gluten free specialist'!

Which is around the corner from one of my favourite pieces of street art, I love this series in general you can see similar ones in footscray, brunswick etc but this is my fave.

They do have lots of gluten free flours, cereal and one of the best gf breads- black ruby bread

They also have some mexican things like black beans and all sorts of peppers:

And one of the biggest arlington tapioca dessert range I have seen, if you haven't tried them yet, you should! Also coyo yogurt and funky pies.

One warning about A. Bioniovanni though, its pricey. I was so excited to see their big range of special products whereas Toby was just a tad outraged about how expensive it is was. Also they close early like at 7pm on weeknights.

A. Bongiovanni and Son Grocery Store
176 Victoria Street
Seddon
9689 8669


The second supermarket they were frequent a little more is almost the opposite. It's an Asian supermarket in Footscray:



It has one of the biggest tofu ranges I have seen. I refuse to buy non asian tofu from places like coles (except for the occasional smoked tofu). Asian tofu like yensons have much more variety, better quality and much cheaper (like more than half the price).

I also saw stuff I have never seen before like jelly tofu:

And tofu and sauce to make the chinese style dessert which I love called douha

They also a had a big range of dried mockmeat-tvp style, plus lots of noodles and coriander for 69 cents!

KFL Supermarket-Footscray

176 Barkly Street

Footscray

9687 4855

Reverence Hotel - Footscray

Toby and I finally started to explore the bike paths in the west, we road to the docklands and back, it was quite quick with hardly any traffic lights to stop at. Afterwards we rode to reverence hotel which is right next to the bike path. Reverence is an omni pub with vegan options, it is owned by the ex arthouse owners. Every tuesday night they have trivia, $3 tacos and $3 tecate's (mexican beer), but this week they had it today-boxing day.  Tuesday never seems to work time wise but a public holiday was perfect timing. We went along with Cindy and Michael, see their blog in a few days for better pics!

There was a mixture of hipsters and some older locals but unfortunately there was no inside tables left so we sat outside in the beer garden. Looks like they take bookings since a few tables were reserved. I notice they also had pizzas on their regular menu with vegan and gf options from Thursday-Sunday.

There was 4 taco options (all gf), two meat options and two vegan options: beans and tofu. Toby ordered one of each for me and him:



The tofu was my favourite and reminded me of our tofu tacos, it was crumbled and flavoured with smoked paprika and other spices. It was served with a creamy mayo type sauce with home made salsa and lime on the side. Two wasn't enough for either of us, toby needed four to get full, and I needed 3 in total. I was pretty pleased with my $9 dinner, I really had low expectations but they were both great. The bean taco was tobys favourite, it has mushrooms and avocado and corn in it. Toby was pleased with cheap but good beer. We will be back to try the pizza another night but pleased to have another westside vegan option.
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It has been blogged about the good hearted.

Reverence Hotel
28 Napier Street
Footscray

White Guy Cooks Thai Food Cart

We have recently moved to the west so pleased to see there is at least one food van around here and it sells more gluten free and vegan options than most of the ones in the west side.

We went tonight to Footscray park where it was parked:

They had three vegan and gluten free menu items, or four if you include edamame which is pretty awesome given a small changing asian menu:

 I couldn't resist the crunchy corn cakes with chilli jam,avocado relish and asian coleslaw and sushi rice ($11.50). These were crunchy and amazing. I seriously regret having to share them with Toby. Next time I'm not sharing them with anyone.

I also got the tofu noodle salad ($10.50) with citrus sesame dressing this was a tad on the small size but the fried tofu bits were perfect and it was full of flavour. Next time we might get three dishes to share between the two of us or just eat dessert later.

I will definitely be eating more from there soon, I look forward to sitting on the grass and eating it at yarraville or footscray park on warm summer night.  My brother and his girlfriend loved their omni dishes particularly their bahm mi sliders.

You can follow them on twitter or facebook to find where they are parked each night.

It has been blogged about by consider the source and footscray food blog.

Brisbane Gluten Free and Vegan Eating

Last time we went to Brisbane, it was a great gluteny filled mockmeat adventure. This time around I was a tad nervous about what I would eat. Thankfully I had the incredibly kind Susan to pick us up, drive around  do a lot of the research and even let us stay with her. She also assisted me with a green ant issue which is much too embarrassing to list her. Lets just say that I discovered that green ant bites hurt and the pain lasts for ages and they can bite all sorts of places! One morning she made us some xgfx cherry vanilla pancakes, served with leftover chocolate peanut butter ice cream. That was certainly worth the plane trip!

First stop was Green Edge-vegan supermarket and cafe. I was surprised to see lots of new products that we don't have in Melbourne like the so delicious ice cream range with ice cream made from almond milk or coconut milk.

When everyone (translation: susan, matt and james) recommended having a burger minus a bun, I really thought blah. But I loved the tofu satay burger so much that I had it twice and when on to recreate it back home I didn't miss the bun at all, in fact I think I even prefer it (since I tried it at home with gf bread). The tofu is covered in a chickpea flour, fried and the satay sauce is awesome. The salad has traditional mayo on it.. Sadly, I can't find the picture though, blogger fail!!!

I also got to have a raspberry spider, haven't had one for years!

I got to try lots of ice cream from there and all three of matt and james desserts, they have vegan dessert place called delicious regardless with vegan and mostly gluten free desserts, you have to check them out when you are in Brisbane. I do have a disclaimer though: they are twitter friends who we also met up with but I hope you believe me when I say that their chocolate cheesecake was seriously like a piece of heaven, rich sweet heaven:

The chocolate mousse was similarly rich and had a very slight nutty flavour. I struggled to finish it but got some help when we met up with Theresa, Amy and Susan.

The lemon cheesecake was refreshing on a hot summer day and meant that I had room for more desserts.

Toby had a list of speciality coffee places to try. He said cupcoffee was his favorite.  I went along to one of the cafes- bunker  and discovered that they had iced chocolate made with melted chocolate and bonsoy and sold in bottles. It was smooth, no lumps at all and rich and awesome on a hot brisbane day. I want to recreate this at home!

with Tobys cold press coffee.

We went to a nepalese restaurant on our last night called Himalayan cafe on the last night. Susan wasn't joking when she said we better book, even on a sunday night, it was pretty full. We started with an entree called 'mask ko bara' which was a gf patty made with black lentil flour. The tetxure was kind of bready and tasty.

We ordered three different curries. I think we all had different favourites, I think mine was the chickpea curry, toby enjoyed the lemongrass silken tofu one and I think susan's was the potato one. But that might be wrong, they all had similar yet flavours but slightly different heat.

Afterwards we spotted a gelato place called re del gelato and went into enquiry and discovered several vegan flavours. I loved the lychee and the mango but Toby was more daring and went for the carrot, orange and lemon gelato (featured centre back) which tasted exactly like the vitamin c tablets that we had as a child, no obvious carrot taste at all but I don't think I could eat a lot of it.

We also went to loving hut but I wasn't a big fan of my gf dishes, while toby enjoyed some mock meat.

I'm not a big fan of salads (particularly lettuce types) so when Susan and Matt suggested for a last meal that we got to a leabanese place for salads called NoNos I was again hesitant but it was awesome.

I had a plate with a lentil caramelized onion rice salad, a potato salad made with tahini which was awesome and I hate tahini, a chickpea salad and a green bean salad with one piece of fried eggplant. My faves were definitely the lentil and the potato salad.The fried eggplant was so good that I got a second piece and made Toby share it with me. Toby said his falafel was a bit bland though but then he had a lot of falafel.

We also enjoyed some good food at a relatives gorgeous wedding. All in all ways a great trip to brisbane! I know I haven't researched who has blogged about where, such bad blogger etiquette but it one long post.