Tag: vegan

Plant Blazed – I’m Flipping Amazed.

Since becoming a pescatarian, I find myself obsessing over the taste of tempeh, the savour of seitan, and the sheer variety of meals you can make from plant-based meat alternatives – don’t even get me started on the power of the humble pea. But I find that a lot of restaurants and cafes don’t experiment with these incredible ingredients, are still stuck in the ‘oh we’ll chuck a mushroom risotto on the menu for the vegetarians’ mindset. But thank god that in Wellington, we have an abundance of vegans and vegetarians who have entered the food scene themselves and made it their goal to feed us plant-based people some seriously tasty vegetarian food. The forerunner in this operation? Plant Blazed, of course.

For those of you who don’t know about Plant Blazed, it’s a little pop-up caravan parked behind the famous Recycle Boutique, which serves up some big boy burgers, hefty hotdogs, and succulent salads. The catch? It’s all vegetarian. They say never to judge a book by its cover – and this saying is way too accurate when you arrive at plant blazed. The boys at Plant Blazed are beard-bearing, heavy metal blaring burger addicts, who love to create flamin’ hot sauces. When you imagine this, you’d think they whip up classic American BBQ beef burgers and fat Chicago dogs right? Wrong. These boys are here to break the stereotype and bring only delicious plant-based burgers to the streets of Wellington. So now we know who Plant Blazed is and what they do, let’s sink our teeth into the burger breakdown.

Luckily, I had just smashed out a 2 hour walk before coming here, so eating a carbalicious burger was no issue to me. After glazing at their menu, I thought to myself “f**k, this all looks delicious” (shout out to my man Action Bronson for that quote). It’s true though, all the combinations of their burgers sounded too sensational – who knew a veggie burger could have somebody in such a conundrum?? At last, I ordered their Laverne Cox, whilst my partner went for their Crying Nut burger. We also ordered a few chips, because whats a burger without a side of chips?

When my burger hit the table, it was quite literally bulging out of its little box (which was compostable – woop!), and I could JUST about get my mouth around it (get your mind OUT of the gutter, please). I’ve never tried seitan before, but holy sh**, it kicks southern fried chicken’s ass! This seitan patty combined with layers of slaw, corn, and pineapple, all smothered in a peri peri sauce made for a burger that slays all other burgers of Wellington. I’m lowkey gutted I gave half to my partner, because I could’ve smashed the whole thing. However, that being said, I tried half of the Crying Nut burger – a tower of fried tofu, kimchi, gherkins, toasted sesame seeds, and dragon mayo – which tasted like a flipping boss bao bun, but in burger form. I cannot express just how incredible the tofu tasted, and how perfectly it was cooked. At last, the chips. Honestly, pretty average – I reckon they could’ve been fried just a little bit crispier – but one of the lads let us try his homemade hot sauce with our fries, and ho-damn that sauce saved the day. It was spicy, sweet, sour, salty, and deffo lit a little fire in your throat.

If you’ve made it past my ramble – well done – it’s not judgement time. This burger feast is up there with one of the best I’ve ever had, and I can’t express my sheer happiness that it’s all vegetarian and vegan! The burgers were absolutely faultless, and I now see why they have so many raving reviews – I reckon they’ve even converted some meat eaters out there! The chips were a little average, but hey, they’re not famous for their fries, are they? The lads were super social, and you could just feel their passion when they yarned about their craft. The location is perfect being tucked away behind one of Wellington’s busiest streets, and I love how they don’t boast about themselves – they rely on word of mouth, and the words that are being said about these burgers are nothing but positive! Plant Blazed, you really exceeded my expectations, and I’m gonna have to award you a 9.5/10. The chips could be better, but don’t ever change anything to your burgers. I’ll be back.

Krishna – Converted by The Curry

What do you think when you hear Krishna? During university – whenever I heard that name I just thought of weird yoga with free food, people on the street silently ushering me to sign up to a new religion, and the heckin’ crazy loud & busy cafeteria at Vic Uni’s Pipitea campus – if you don’t know what I’m talking about, think of the Mean Girls wild animals cafeteria scene, but with Law Students involved. These kinda thoughts and feelings towards these food providers made me avoid their unbelievably cheap student eats – which after Monday’s trip to Kelburn Kampus Krishna (I had to Kardashian the ‘Campus’ – not even sorry) – I knew was a BIG mistake.

A few weeks ago, Krishna hit me up on the ‘gram and asked if I would like to try their new Kelburn campus eatery’s menu, and pushing aside any student-me speculations, I channeled my inner foodie and excitedly accepted – then I channeled the inner stalked and conducted a hardcore Insta stalk. Honestly – their old food truck must’ve been holding them back, because 3 years ago all I saw was cheap curry and rice, and now I’m seeing people eat raw slices, vegan sausage rolls, lasagna – you name it, they’ve made it vegan and are serving it up HOT!

Have you ever been back to your High School once you’re well graduated and felt like a parent? That’s how it felt walking right back into the Kelburn Campus – even though I’ve only finished Uni 6 months ago, but that weird too-old-for-this-kinda-Kirk-lecture didn’t stop me from skipping up to the brand-spanking new Krishna Café for a true vegan banquet.

Like I mentioned before, I thought Krishna only made curry, but since their menu had now tripled in size – Krishna treated me to the works! I was super lucky in being able to try their signature curry rice salad & dessert, their vegan sausage roll, a raw snickers bar, and both their soda and lassi drinks – so you can damn sure say I was more stuffed than a turkey on Christmas after that lot!

Let’s start with their customer-fave curry. This dish is the literal EPITOME of student deal – it’s cheap ($6), its massive (the whole plate was overflowing), and its bloody delicious. I’ve never seen lettuce served with curry before, but boy does it work well together! 1/3 of the dish was salad, so whilst getting a massive tasty portion you’re also getting some good nutrients from the greens. For those who don’t know Krishna, they also serve this little dessert/pudding ball thing alongside the curry – which I have a new hack for that you students out there will want to hear. I found this pudding a little stodgy and flavourless (which I understand because its hard and costly to make things healthy & vegan) and thought to myself, “this pudding NEEDS sauce”. So, you bet it – I poured that mango lassi all over that bad boy, and it worked flavour wonders!

Next, we have their vegan sausage roll. Sausage rolls are my true love in life – so I set the bar pretty high, especially for a vegan one. After one bite of that blisteringly hot roll, I was pretty much sold on their vegan diet. I don’t know how they did it, but they made that sausage roll taste more hearty, spicy, and delicious than most sausage rolls I’ve ever tasted. Mad kudos to you Krishna.

Last but DEFINITELY not least, I tried their raw snickers slice. I’m not a mad fan of snickers in the first place, as I’m not much of a fan of peanuts, and expected a stodgy, pea-nutty kinda thing – but instead I was met with a chocolatey, not pea-nutty but other nutty, texture-packed slice, that I easily finished off (and nearly licked the plate along with it).

Vic Uni students, I’m jealous of you. Every day you have the opportunity to get filled up with fresh vegan food for as little as $6 – how good is that?? Being a super poor Uni student myself who struggled to make ends meet, and only ate out once in a blue moon – Krishna is a true legend for allowing people who struggle with cash flow like I did, to actually get their forks stuck into hearty food, that’s hearty, vegan, nutritious, and WON’T set you back into the negatives. An 8/10 for the food – but I think fellow alumni and current students can agree 11/10 on the price and incentives.

Boquita – Wellington’s Plant-Based Mexican Maverick

I’ve been walking up and down the Kent Terrace laneway for months on end, only ever soaking up the sights of car dealership after car dealership – until one day, and petite little precinct popped up out of nowhere which instantly caught my attention. When I approached this new establishment, the smells instantly warmed up my body and made me crave whatever was cookin’ up inside there. Being the nosy parker, I am, I had a glance through the window to see what could possibly be creating such a serendipitous smell, and that’s when I found Boquita.

From that moment onwards, I would risk looking like an Olympic power walker marching down Kent Terrace just get another sneak peek into Boquita to see what marvelous Mexican meals they were concocting. This restaurant quickly became known as the pioneer of Mexican cuisine within Wellington central, with their parent restaurant, La Boca Loca, equally taking the outer suburbs of Miramar and beyond by storm. After near-criminally stalking their Insta feed, I decided that enough was enough – I needed to ditch the supermarket shop and instead blow my paycheck on a proper authentic feast. So, a few weekends ago, that’s what I did. And it was mind-blowing.

Me and the boyf. Arrived at Boquita with our tummies empty and my wallet ready to drop some fat cash on tacos. This place is pretty snug and always heaving with hungry peeps, so we had a little wait on our hands for seats and food – but believe me when I say the wait was totally worth it. So now that we’ve set the scene for the night, let’s talk taco.

To kick off our feast and tease our appetites, we ordered their daily special which was a Mexican take on thick and crunchy loaded fries, with 2 variations of creamy hummus and a dollop of refried beans taking the place of your average T-sauce. This was the perfect little starter to snack on whilst we were hungrily waiting for the main event – but it also teased our tummies as the combination of flavours in those little fried patatas were immense, and they disappeared in minutes, leaving us even thirstier for tacos. After what felt like hours (we literally didn’t eat all day just to appreciate the meal more and eat double our weight in tacos) – the plates hit our tables, revealing 3 of the most beautiful tacos I’ve ever seen. After ravishing the plate with our eyes, we tucked on in.

I started off with their spicy scrambled tofu taco, whose fiery heat warmed my body in the right places and got my taste-buds craving more. The next I devoured was their chipotle tempeh taco, whose combination of flavours danced the salsa on my tongue and took the meaning of taste to a new level. I was filling up at this point, but I had one more to go and I wasn’t about to go and commit a food felony – so I ignored the slight overeating tummy cramps and hit that last taco, which was a beautiful combo of rich refried beans and lentils that was perfectly complimented by the fresh slaw and tangy tomatoes. If you asked what my fav taco was, I couldn’t tell you. Each one brought a different and foreign flavour to my palette and took me on a new flavour journey that I never wanted to end.

This place exceeded all expectations I had for it, and I can’t thank the owners and chefs enough for bringing us something so authentic, communal, and special to the Wellingtons Mexican food scene. Sitting and dining in this place felt like you were eating at somebody’s house, the long sharing tables and open kitchen creates a vibrant social atmosphere where strangers became firm friends over the course of meal. If Boquita is the start of Wellington’s new food scene, Imma need to get a bigger scale because this place absolute smashed it! I can’t award anything lower than a 10/10 for this place, but I know they definitely deserve higher. Everything was perfect, and it goes to show that even the humblest of places that don’t stay with the grain or follow those nasty food fads, really do make waves in the food scene and provide us with innovative dishes that quickly become all-time favorites.

If you’re reading this and haven’t yet been to Boquita – what are you waiting for?? Whether you have cash in the bank or deep in the reds, the extra splashing out to get a taste of the food here is worth every penny.

Life-Saving Brunch at Wellington’s Maranui Life-Saving Club

This year’s Jim Beam Homegrown was a wild day of booze, bands, bar-spitting and banter. I think everybody, even people who didn’t attend, felt the forceful brunt of a full ‘11 hours’ worth of drinking’ hangover the next day. Which is where I have to send my blessing and thanks to whomever invented the delicious and astoundingly convenient weekend meal, brunch (turns out brunch originated in the 19th century to bring relief to ‘Saturday party-goers’ – and we are still VERY relieved to this day). Enough about this history of brunch (just Wikipedia it) – and onto my very own brunch adventure, at wellington’s own Maranui Café.

When I say the words Maranui Café, I would say about 10 people in earshot would perk up and say ‘Brunch?!?!’. Yes. It’s really that famous in Wellington for their impeccable brunch fare, and after dragging myself there last Sunday – I’m now tummy-triggered for brunch when somebody mentions Maranui too (Damn – I’m hungry now). The last time I came here, was about 8 years ago, which was waaay too young to appreciate the fantastic flavours and sensational skill. So, waking up Sunday morning, tired, hungry and decaffeinated – Maranui was my beckoning call.

We arrived there, and to my surprise the place was jam-packed and there were still 2 parties eagerly waiting their turn at a table in front of us – luckily, this gave us time to choose our meals – unluckily, this just made the wait for food long (what can they say, Maranui is what the people WANT!). At long last we got seated inside the bustling abode, and to avoid adding any extra time onto the 40-minute-food-wait, ordered INSTANTLY. 2 white coffees on the rocks (with a little sugar *wink face*), a portion of their finest buttermilk stacked pancakes, and a victory breakfast – with the real victory being able to get a seat in this place amirite!

Let’s just say they weren’t lying about the 40-minute wait, as I think my stomach had actually started to eat itself by the time the food came. But also, let’s just say people are not lying when they say that Maranui has the best lunch food FULL STOP. When I got that stack of thiccc buttermilk pancakes placed in front of me, my stomach filled with butterflies – the good kind of course!

Imagine this: a 3-stack of fluffy buttermilk pancakes with a big dollop of tangy mascarpone cream, berry compote drizzled all over each stack with fresh bananas sandwiched between the layers, and some of their house-made muesli to add a little crunch to the dish. Never have I ever thought I could apply the lyric ‘Drippin’ with Finesse’ to a dish, but I’ll be damned, because this one was it. I can’t apply this lyric to the taste though, because literally NO song lyric could sum up just how incredible these sour, sweet, fruity, savoury, and spiced flavours burst on my palette. The victory breakfast was also a victorious affair, with literally every good part of a classic fry-up being made vegetarian, with some added sides including fresh guacamole, tangy pesto, and a mexicano take on the classic baked bean – a bite of these all together with the poached eggs, grilled tomato and shroomies was a flavour-match made in heaven!

Let’s sum this all up into one easy equation; Fabulous location with spectacular views + super kind & attentive staff + food that I could dream about forever = an unquestionable 9/10 on the CCL scale. I know I’ve been awarding some big numbers out recently, but since starting up 2 years ago – Wellington has really upped their brunch business into something quite exciting for us foodies, you never know when the next eggs bene is going to pop up!

The question is – where should I go next? Let me know in the comments, flick me an email, or hit me up on my gram to let me know where I should crawl to next.