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.