Coffee: My Drug of Choice II

It's been more than one year since I blogged about coffee. Melbournians now have many more specialty cafes to choose from. 

St Ali has opened Sensory Lab in the heart of the city and Outpost on the wrong side of the river, both are open SEVEN days a week.   Seven Seeds also opened De Clieu on Gertrude St.  According to the review on The Age, they even have a gluten-free vegan option. 

Melbourne's best coffee chain Cafenatics also opened a specialty coffee joint called Eclipse in the city.  It is ONLY TWO MINUTES walk from my work.  I can now sleep in for  20 minutes because I don't need to detour to Brother Baba Budan on the way to work anymore.  They normally have three different types of beans in their grinders: different single origin coffee, guest blend and the house blend. They make great coffee most of the time and knock my socks off every now and then.  I had a Bonsoy long mac made with Market Lane Seasonal Blend there and it was the best espresso coffee I've ever had.  They also serve pour-over and cold drip coffee .  I tried one when they were testing the recipe and it was pretty awesome. 

(I normally use my Keepcup, don't hate me, Captain Planet.)

Eclipse

60/470 Flinders Ln, Melbourne

Awesome people at Eclipse told me they also have a little sister called Little Wish (See The Real Melbourne's review here).  What they offer are pretty much the same as the sister cafe but they have an awesome looking SLAYER espresso machine!

I had a very delicious Santa Babara and Kenya Gethumbwini (both single origin beans are from Market Lane) on pour-over there.

Little Wish 
530 Little Collins St, Melbourne
(It is very hard to find as they don't have any signs at all. Entry via Exchange Tower main entrance, walk pass all the fast food joints and news agency, look right.)

For the "Latte-Sipping Carbon-Neutral Bleeding Hearts", the one-year-old lacto vegetarian cafe Monk Bodhi Dharma in Balaclava is the best choice. They serve top-notch coffee and amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing vegan-friendly gluten-free food. (We blogged about it twice before our blog turned gluten-free and once afterward)  

I highly recommend their delicate hand crafted pour-over coffee. The beautiful aromas and flavours are very complex and change when it cooled down. The best pour-over I've ever had.

nice soy long mac

fantastic single origin pour over 

Monk Bodhi Dharma

202 Carlisle Street,Balaclava
Ph 9534 7250
 

Back to the northside, you can't really go past Proud Mary for some mind blowing specialty coffee action.  I have tried their flawless Soy Latte, syphon and cold drip. The cafe is pretty big but it is pretty hard to get a table as they are full of Hipsters and 4WDers from other side of the river.  

If you like a good syphon and cold drip, try them at Proud Mary.

Soy Latte

Syphon

Proud Mary

172 Oxford Street, Collingwood
Ph: 9417 593

Padre Coffee's East Brunswick Project is just a short bike ride from our house.  They are also one of the early proud owners of the Slayer espresso machine.  

 

yummy and pretty soy latte and soy hot choc

 nice soy long mac

The Brunswick East Project

438 Lygon St,Brunswick East
Ph: 03 9939 8422  

I really need to wrap it up here or I will never finish this post.  I might do another blog post about the Fantastic Market Lane after I try out the coffee from Cup Of Turth, Dancing Goat and Dead Man Espresso and other Melbourne specialty cafes.

On My Walkman  

Tron: Legacy OST - Daft Punk

Lord of the Fries Gluten Free Burger

Disclaimer: we recently received a lord of the fries VIP card which entitles us to one free small fries once a month for a year (except for March and November for some reason). However, I swear that this review is not influenced by that, particularly since I'm not even reviewing the fries.




It fills me a crazy amount of happiness that I can get vegan and gluten free onion rings, 'chicken' nuggets, burgers and fries in the CBD. Even more so because their LOTF city stores are in convenient locations and are open super late. Lord of the fries is particularly good at midnight when you want greasy food. Actually just quickly on the subject of fries, did you know that most fries are not gluten free? It's because they are generally cooked in the same oil as battered items or are frozen ones which have added wheat. So so so stupid!


It took me a while to try the gluten free burger because it wasn't available for a while while they changed buns but it's back and i've had it twice. Here is the large original burger. The g/f bun only comes in large and mega.




Now first of all, the bun isn't as good as the gluteny bun but I never really expect gluten free bread to be as good. It's got that weird gluten free texture which is almost cake like and kind of falls a part a little. It also seems bigger than the regular bun so both times I have ended up with a tiny but of bun leftover. But I actually don't care because it's a vegan and gluten free burger!!!! Also taste wise it's actually alright, it's just the texture that's weird. The patty and fillings are still the same, so that's the important thing.

We went on Saturday night to the Elizabeth st store and it felt so satisfying to have a burger while Toby ate his regular burger and my brother and his girlfriend had their McDonald's burgers. Yes, I know they are gross! It's just the feeling of not missing out, that's really nice.

I couldn't resist sharing some onion rings with Toby which still rock my socks:



It was really convienent dinner before my first soccer game at aami park otherwise known as bubble dome which is actually kind of cool looking, check out the pretty sky:



Lord of the fries has recently been reviewed by chit chat chomp,  vegan snorkeler and easy as vegan pie.

Lord of the Fries
Corner of Elizabeth and Flinders St
Melbourne

P.S: Does anyone know why the northland store closed down?

Lord of the Fries' vegan breakfast burger

Hi, readers!  Long time no see!

 

I have been using  twitter a lot (@brunswickvegan) and was pretty slack with blogging.  

We always go to Lord of the Fries and have blogged about it.  K, now a coeliac vegan, loves their gluten-free onion rings. and the Mega vegan "Chicken" burger is my favourite.

Just before X'Mas, I tried Lord of the Fries' "Tibet" breakfast burger at their Melbourne Central store.  I've never had Onion rings in burger before. It works really well with the sauce and "beef" patty.  It is sinfully delicious and I hope them sell it all day on the weekend! 

However, they are not doing Breakfast at the moment.  It will be back soon according to their Facebook page.

Talking about Lord of the fries, their Northland store, the only branch with a door, has closed until further notice.  I hope they re-open soon because they are my favourite LOTF.

Disclaimer: we recently received a lord of the fries VIP card but are determined to give true reviews despite this card.

.....................

On an unrelated but important note, particularly for the overseas readers: 75% of Queensland is now a national disaster area. That is about 2x size of Texas and 5x that of the UK. Please donate if you can to the flood relief appeal and/or Wildlife Rescue appeal.

High Tea at Langham Hotel

Warning: this post contain pics of some non-vegan food, a first for this blog but I wanted to demonstrate the differences between the options and ask how I can replicate the chocolate things. Also, these pics were taken by a camera phone so a bit small and blurry.

My brother got my mum, my sister and I vouchers to have high tea at langham last year for xmas, and with them about to expire we had to use them soon. We finally used them today since I had the day off work for my biopsy. So I had the biopsy at 9am and high tea at 2pm. What a mixed up day!

I was a little sceptial about whether I would be just given salad and fruit but was pleasantly suprised when this arrived.

On the bottom there was 3 different types of sandwiches, cucumber ones, avocado ones and one with eggplant, tomato and lettuce.

Then on the middle there was a range of expected fruit.

My fav layer though was the top was strawberries covered in drak chocolate and an amazing sago dessert. The sago dessert was unlike any other sago dessert I've had, it had a berry coulis, mango, and some sort of other flavour that reminded me of vanilla but was something else. I asked my mum who works in catering and she couldn't pinpoint it either. I suspected that the white substance was coocnut cream/milk but couldn't taste any coconut flavour so not sure what it was. There was so many flavours in my tiny dessert, it was truly great.

My mother and sister chose the langham classic high tea which comes with sandwiches, scones and a range of desserts. And my sister's friend chose the chocolate indulgence which was the same except all of the desserts included chocolate and it come with a chocolate brulee on the side.

This is the classic:

 

and this is the chocolate:

Mine lacked the outstanding level of detail on the desserts like this white and dark chocolate covered strawberry:

 

and this mini chocolate eclair:

I was in abosulte awe of the presentation of their desserts, which left me wondering where can I get vegan desserts that look so pretty or how can I make desserts that even closely resemble those?  Overall though I was pleasantly surprised and impressed that they could manage to do a vegan high tea even if it wasn't as pretty.

Aria Bar at Langham

1 Southgate Ave

Southbank

VIC 3006

Chan House Healthy Vegetarian Option - Vegan Mofo Day 15

I don't generally buy lunch when I go to work because there aren't much choices. I can either go downstairs to Satay Bar or do a quick Lord of the Fries run. Now I have the third option: Chan House Healthy Vegetarian Option.

They located in a mini food court on Little Collins st near Vue De Monde and RACV:


View Larger Map

Their lunch box is fast, delicious and cheap. The small box is $5.8 and the big box is $6.8. It includes two dishes and plain rice (fried rice $1 extra). There are 4 to 5 Chinese/South East Asian vegetarian dishes on the Bain-Marie to choose from and they change daily.

I have been there almost ten times and the food is always good. The staff are very helpful and know what is vegan. I asked them (in Cantonese) if there is any dairy and egg product in the food and they replied that all the Main-Marie food is vegan. (Last time I asked in Cantonese at Chatterbox they told me that there was milk in the laksa despite telling others in English that it was vegan.)




Both sweet and sour 'Pork' and mixed vegetable curry were pretty good. The curry wasn't too spicy.




I had sweet and sour 'pork' again the second time and tried the BBQ 'pork'. The BBQ 'pork' coated in sesame seeds was full of flavour and crispy.



Honey 'chicken' came with deep-fried rice noodles and the curry 'fish balls' were amazing. The curry, again, wasn't overly spicy. They don't use honey in the 'chicken'.


I had the sesame 'chicken' and satay 'fish' ball for lunch last week. Both dishes are fantastic. The satay was a bit spicy for me and I needed lots of water to wash it down. But I guess it is just me. Yes, I'm a wuss.

Apart form the lunch box, they also have steamed buns, generic Chinese deep fried stuff and one noodle soup dish on rotation on the weekdays. They also serve lunch banquet on Saturday.

You can also read Michael's write up.

Chan House Healthy Vegetarian Option
Address: Shop 10, 422 Little Collins Street
Ph: 0402798748


On my walkman:
Serena Maneesh 2: Abyss in B Minor by Serena Maneesh

Movida Aqui- Vegan Mofo Day 14

After many glowing reviews from Carla about Movida Aqui, Toby decided to go there for his birthday (back in September) and I think we got so caught up on all the Sydney posts that we forgot to go back and post about it. So better late than never right?

Movida Aqui is one of 4 Movida restaurants in Melbourne. Movida Aqui is an upmarket tapas style place. I think it's cheaper than Movida and easy to get into with shorter notice. When I called up and made the reservation I advised them that we were vegan and so the waiter gave us this copy of the menu. All of the green highlighted items were or could be made vegan and the yellow highlighted items were parts of the dish that would be removed to make it vegan. This made ordering much easier and we were really grateful which has why we have chose to share these pics despite their blurriness.

We were served some amazing bread, which I gobbled up way too quickly, I had just started eating gluten again and it was good bread. For some reason, I thought they would bring us more but they didn't and I felt silly for thinking that they would and guilty since I also ate some of Toby's.

Our definite favourite dish of the night was the Alacharas, crispy fried artichokes with lemon and roasted almonds. This was a perfect dish, great texture, taste and combination of flavours. I think we located this recipe in our friends Movida cookbook and discovered that it was deep fried, such a shame as we would love to recreate this at home but hate deep frying.

Next up was the Bravas, fried potatoes with a tomato sauce. I enjoyed this dish but didn't love it as much I expected to. I though it could have done with some more spices or something.

The setas consisted of fried mushrooms with garlic and sherry vinegar. I normally hate the texture of mushrooms these tasted great and the texture was better than usual.Toby thought they were a little too acidic if they are not eaten with bread.

And we had the Asadillo- roasted capscium and tomato salad. The tomatoes and capscium were both so tender that it was hard to distinguish one from the other, this was served with a subtle vinegar.

And finally, fruit sorbet for dessert, served with chocolate biscotti, which wasn't actually vegan so Toby took it home and gave it to his colleague. The three flavours of the sorbet were blood orange, mandarin and apple. They were delicious and richer than normal sorbets, we loved the mandarin flavour.

Overall, Toby and I were pretty impressed that they were able to cater for vegans. Our bill at the end of the night come to $80.50 which included one class of wine, I thought that was pretty reasonable. According to gluten savvy they have gluten free options too. Toby said it would be great for having drinks and snacks rather than a big dinner because there wasn't any protein in the dishes.
 

Movida Acqui
Levle 1, Bourke St (access via Lt Bourke St)
9663 3038

P.S: This post is my 14th post in a row, a record for me. It's not easy, last night Toby had to go outside to get phone reception so that we could click post at a wedding. Hopefully with the help of Toby we can keep it up for the rest of the month.

Our Top Top 5 Vegan Friendly Restaurants

Marieke Hardy recently shared her top 5 vegan restaurants in Melbourne which got Toby and I talking about our faves. I thought it might also be helpful for vegan visiting Melbourne.

My favourites in no particular order:

1. Ezard- for expensive fine dining degustation experience. You can read about our pre tasting menu experience here. Although I wonder what they serve me now in post coeliac days.
   
2. Shakahari- I've had my ups and downs with the place, but it's the only fine dining vegetarian restaurant here and they have some outstanding dishes like the avocado rolls.
   
3. Disco beans- yes it's new but I'm obsessed as you can probably tell, we went again last night and I had their gluten free and vegan okonomiyaki- genius!
4. Trippy Taco- simple, affordable but amazing Mexican dishes. really can't go past their tacos, by the way did you know that you could have both tofu and bean tacos instead of having to pick just one filling?
5. Coco Loco- So technically it's a chocolate place but it is delicious and so vegan and gluten free friendly. It's pricey but I don't mind paying more for organic, fair trade chocolately goodness with their specialty Kashew Mylk. Their crepes, mousse, gelato and hot chocolates are perfect! Also, it's just across the road from Disco Beans.
   

Toby's fave places and his comments:

1. White Lotus - R.I.P. Peter Li. The tamarind mock fish is the best mock meat dish EVER. Vicki said there was a new sign stating that they will reopen on august 26th!
   
2. Coco Loco - Super Awesome hot choc, chocolate mousse, gelato and crepes
   
3. Las Vegan - Give me a calzone and a cup of chai and I'll be a happy man.
   
4. Yong Green Food - Vegan Korean pancakes, grilled/stir fried mock meat, Korean BBQ burger with THREE different sauces, Thai/Indian curries and THREE different raw vegan cheesecakes. What more can you want?"
   
5. Mamasita - One word: Fresh. Another word: Controversial

What are your top 5?

White Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant

There are a few Chinese Vegetarian Restaurants in Melbourne. Enlightened Cuisine in the CBD is probably the most popular one. Vegie Hut in Boxhill is the only vegan Yum Cha place in town and their faux meat dishes draw vegans from different suburbs to the De Facto Chinatown of Melbourne. My favourite one, however, is White Lotus.

Their food is more home style, has much less (if any) MSG compared to other mock meat places and I like their friendly but laid back service. I have eaten there for my last few birthdays. I also ate there before my neck surgery in case I couldn't leave the hospital alive.

If the contestants of MasterChef Australia are cooking off with the chef of White Lotus, the signature dish would be:

Tamarind "Fish"!

I love the contrast of the soft rolled bean curd sheets and the crispiness of seaweed. The tamarind sauce is perfect, with the right amount of spiciness and sourness.

The cream corn soup is not bad neither

The gluten free options however are very limited. Kristy had the stir-fried tofu and vegies with satay sauce. It was pretty right-on and refreshing.

They also do really cool "drumsticks", roasted "duck" and lemon "chicken".

Steph went there recently and blogged about it. Cindy and Michael went there back in April, 2007. I don't know why I have never blogged about it.

White Lotus has been opened for four decades. Owner Peter Li is retiring so his children are running it on the weekend. My friend called up to book a table last week and was notified by the answering machine that they are closed till further notice due to family illness.

I wish the Li family well and I look forward to enjoying their awesome food again very soon.

Address: 185 Victoria St, West Melbourne
Ph: 9326 6040

On the walkman:
Live! At Meredith - The Dirty Three

Op shop tour

I won tickets to an op shop tour a couple of weekend ago. I was a little unsure about what to expect as I consider myself to be pretty familiar with op shops and when the first stop was in the inner north, I thought 'oh no I will know them all' but I had only been to two out of the five that we visited. It was seriously a great day, being on a bus with other keen op shoppers was great and since it was a diverse group it didn't seem like we had to compete over items. The shops were all spread out, which was great since I tend to be more familiar with op shops in the west and north, but not very familiar with those in the south and east and we had discounts at four out of the five op shops, there were even prices under some of the seats on the bus, so some lucky people had $10 vouchers to spend at one of the shops. I went when I was trying to save money but still managed to pick up 5 purchases for under $15: 2 skirts, 2 pillowcases and a dress.

I think this would especially great for someone who doesn't drive or was a keen op shopper and new to Melbourne, but was still lots of fun and well worth the price for a regular Melbourne op shopper. I went with a friend who is so crazy about op shopping that she keeps maps in her car of all of the op shop locations and has gone to more than anyone I have ever met and she still managed to come home learning about 2 new op shops and $50 lighter.

Jo runs the tours quite regularly in Melbourne and Adelaide and the shops change regularly. She also has a op shop blog with a list of op shop by suburb.

I wish that the cities that I am traveling to at the end of the year had op shop tours. If you know of any in Berlin, London or Hong Kong please let me know.

My guide to Melbourne for Vegan Tourists

Quite often I give out advice on must eats for vegans coming to Melbourne for a holiday. Sure there is a list over at www.vnv.org.au but there are over 40 veg restaurants in Melbourne and frankly some of them suck. So I decided to make a post that I can edit when I need to and people can make suggestions or disagree with me in the comments section! Ignore any typos, this took forever to type up and I cant be bothered to proof read it right now.

updated 4/11/2009- edited parts are in bold

Melbourne CBD(central part) itself is ok but I believe the inner city suburbs is where all the cool action is and the great food is but it's probably a good idea to stay in the city centre so you can travel to all the different inner city suburbs. While you are in the city centre I recommend:

• Lord of the Fries (at corner of Flinder st and Elizabeth st or at the Flinders St Train station) which sell vegan fries, burgers, and 'chicken nuggets'. The great thing about this place is it open from breakfast time til really late at night. For breaky they have a vegan burger called the New York burger which has a hash brown in it. The rest of the time I recommend the gravy and soy cheese on chips or the regular burger with soy chips or the nuggets or all of them together. Please note that you need to ask for the burger and the fries to be vegan otherwise they will put normal cheese on it. Lord of the Fries is also really great late at night after a night out, it's open til 4am on fri and sat nights and at least til 10 the rest of the week. It is however a take away place so I recommend getting them and walking just a short distance to federation square (opp flinders st station) and sitting on the steps and people watching, although forget the advice if it is late at night. No longer open for breakfast.
  
• Fo Guang Yuan Gallery (141 Queen st). This is a small buddhist gallery that serves lunches on weekdays, if you get one of the special lunches they come in super cute bento box with sides and fruit. In typical Chinese fashion you get mock meat dishes like ginger chicken, the specials menu varies depending on what day it is. I also recommend the sweet kumquat tea. Apparently this has changed completely and now sucks.
  
• Vegan food is also available at soul food, invita, organic food and wine deli, flinders organic, gopals and crossways and plenty of other non-veg restaurants but I don't really recommend those places.
  

As for non-food related places to check out, I recommend:

• the various laneways particularly degraves st because it has cool graffiti
• Missing link (basement at 405 Bourke st)- for all those hard to find indie cds and records at reasonable prices (well for Australian prices) as long as you don't mind the emo kids who like to hand on the couches. You can also pick up a free beat or impress music magazine (see below).
  

Ok surrounding suburbs, first up- Fitzroy/Collingwood.Collingwood are pretty alternative and cool in my opinion. Collingwood can be a little rough in that you can occasionally see people chroming or just hanging around on the street drunk and asking you for money and Fitzroy used to be like Collingwood but is now a little more yuppy-ish. But I recommend them both because well they are cool. I will break them down into parts:

Smith St-Collingwood

• Soul Food (273 Smith st)- I recommend going here for breakfast and ONLY for breakfast. For breakfast they sell a 'monster vegan' breakfast on sat mornings which is huge and great. The choc cake is pretty good too. The rest of the time, don't bother. They just opened a store in the CBD, but I'm not sure if they do the same breakfast and if it is as good.
  
• Friends of the Earth (312 smith st) I hesitate a little about recommending this place only because some people complain they don't feel hippy enough for it, but I feel fine. So I'm letting you decide, they sell all sorts of organic supplies, political t-shirts, books and they do a lunch which varies everyday. Basically they made a few hot dishes, a few salads and you get a little bit of all of them, make sure to ask for vegan because sometimes they have yogurt. They generally sell las vegan muffins too.
• Las Vegan Bakery (22 smith st)- only open tue-fri for lunch but well worth a visit. I recommend the cajun eggplant calzone, the lemon ginger muffin and pretty much anything on the menu. You might also want to pick up one of their cheap soup cookbooks while you are there. Now open Thu and Fri nights.
  
• Trippy Taco (48 smith st)- if you happen to find yourself wanting to go to Las Vegan and it is closed then Trippy Taco which is only a few doors down. Maybe you can try to fit two lunches in. I recommend anything with black beans which is pretty much the whole many especially the soft tacos with the homemade corn tortillas, make sure you ask for soy cheese.
  

I recommend these two neighbouring suburbs because there is lots of cafes/restaurants, bars, and interesting shops to look at. For example just near Trippy Taco and Las Vegan Bakery there is:

• Vegan wares (78 smith st) sells super expensive shoes and other vegan items which I can't afford but it's probably worth a look.
• Books for Cooks (225 Getrude St). If you are a cookbook nerd then wander into this bookshop that only sells cookbooks there is a huge section of veg and vegan cookbooks.
• Dr Java (Corner of Getrude and Smith st). This place sells all sorts of coffee and tea and my fav type of hot chocolate - coco loco, they also sell las vegan muffins. No longer selling vegan hot chocolate.
  
• there are also quite a few second hand/vintage stores in both areas
  

Ok now Brunswick st-Fitzroy which is parallel to smith st:

• Vegie Bar (378 Brunswick st) The food at Vegie Bar is just ok, they sell all sorts of things like burgers, stir frys, salads, and burritos. So why am I recommending it to you, if it just ok? Because while the food is ok, the place just has some sort of feel to it. It's always busy, it's an old warehouse converted into a restaurant and it's on brunswick st which you should visit anyway. The vegan chocolate cake is pretty good too. Maybe you can visit here for dinner after a day exploring smith and brunswick st.
  
• San Churro ( 277b Brunswick St). After you finished up at Vegie Bar, you should stop by this place for one thing- churros (spanish donuts) with the melted dark chocolate sauce which just happens to be vegan. It's opened til late at night.
• There is also Moroccan Soup Bar which has great food but unless you can have at lest 8 people and can book or can get there just before 6 when it opens you have pretty small chance of getting a table.
  

There are lots of different clothes and other stores and bars along Brunswick st to explore, but I don't really have any particular ones to recommend except for maybe the secondhand bookstores and maybe the green store (385 Brunswick Street) and if you are there on a sat the rose st market which sells lots of homemade cool things like my fav melb bag-matt bags.
-----------------

St Kilda is not really my type of place. But I guess it is touristy in a way, but it's also a mix of pretentious and dodgy (known for the illegal prostitutes). Anyway, if you want to see a beach with palm trees in Melb go check it out. If you are in town, I recommend:

• Lentil as anything (41 Blessington st)- pay what you think the meal is worth. I recommend the japanese pancake or the lentil burger.
• Veg out Time (63 Fitzroy St)- this places sells healthy-ish tasty dishes that are precooked. You can get rice and two dishes for about $8 which fills me up.
• There is also Soul Mama which has great views and is right on the beach but the food is bland and overpriced for precooked meals in my opinion. But i'm sure some people will disagree.
• The st kilda market is on sundays and is worth a look if you are in the area.
  

Other must eats:

• East Brunswick Club (280 lygon st, East Brunswick)- is an omni pub with amazing vegan options. If you are in Melbourne on a Monday night you must go here and try one of the vegan main meals for $12 I recommend the 'chicken' burger with avocado and lime mayo and the amazing desserts. Don't bother going here for lunch, other nights are fine too but you don't get the full variation of options or the cheap price of a Mon night. You might have to wait a while for the food because it is crazy busy on Monday nights but it's worth it. They also have lots of good bands playing here from time to time. Also recomend the philly cheese steak, nachos.
  
• Shakahari (201 faraday st, Carlton)- this is the only fine dining veg restaurant and serves great meals. It's not cheap, but it's worth it. It's located just around the corner from lygon st which is lined with is lined with mostly italian restaurants and two massive bookshops (borders and readings). It is also not that far from Melbourne uni :-)
• Coco Loco (219 High st, Northcote)- this place is opened from 7pm everyday except for Monday night. I recommend this place which sells both iced and hot chocolates with the option of cashew milk and in a array of flavours. They also sell vegan crepes, home made chocolates and other sweet things. The hot chocolates are not cheap but are organic and fairtrade and amazing!!!! (It's situated in Northcote which is a pretty cool area to go for alcoholic drinks too).
• Enlightened cuisine (113 queensbridge st southbank)- is not far from the CBD and is right near the casino (which is my opinion is crapola). There are many of these chinese mock meat types places but as far as ones closed to the city, this is probably the best. I recommend the five spice tofu, and any of the 'duck ' or 'chicken' dishes. The desserts are pretty good too, oh and remember to ask for vegan dishes.
• ****Also, see the comments section for more recommendations, because I am too lazy to add them in.
• Warning do not go to the tofu shop in Richmond and mention the word vegan unless you want the owner to harass you.
  

Other important stuff-
* Look out for free music magazines beat or impress for info about what bands are playing.
* Also there is always some sort of festival and exhibitions going on everywhere to see what is happening check out here or here. If you lucky to be here in October there is the world vegan day festival. Or just pick up a local paper in a cafe and read it over breakfast.
* All of the places I have discussed above can be reached by catching a tram or with a little bit of walking. In terms of catching public transport, you can purchase daily or 2 hour metcards (public transport cards) from 7-11, some news agencies, train stations and travel on all types of public transport with them. You can also buy them on the tram if you have enough change, they don't accept notes. A daily ticket is $6.80 on weekdays (unless you are travelling from outer suburbs) or if you are in Melb on a Sunday you can get a Sunday saver ticket for $3.10 from 7-11 and a few other shops. Check out metlink for more details.