Shop Ramen - Collingwood

Shop Ramen - 329 Smith Street, Collingwood - was a place I'd had my eye on for some time. East Asian noodle dishes - as most vegos will attest - are sort of a 'forbidden fruit' in the vegetarian world. Whenever I see someone hoe into a bowl of noodles, my salivary glands immediately kick into action. However, if you believe that most "vegetarian" options on offer at your local noodle house are kosher - so to speak - you are simply kidding yourself. Think about the stock people, think about the stock! At Shop Ramen, the biggest draw card is that the vegetarian option is spruiked as being made from a vegan, cashew nut stock. Boom! There it is, food's 'Berlin Wall' just got torn down!

To say "I went to Shop Ramen BEFORE it was cool" would be inaccurate, as the massive line out the door for a table at 7:30pm attested - not to mention the countless zines to have already posted about it. Yep, this place is already quite a local favourite. The set-up is simple: a few intimate short tables line the wall, with a long communal table down the middle. All are well serviced with condiments such as sesame, finely ground pepper, hot sauce, and shichimi. The long counter houses a few extra seats, as well as a pasta-maker used by the uber-friendly staff to churn out fresh noodles in front of you as you await your order.

Pasta maker and fresh bunched noodles

The menu is simple with minimal fuss. The vegetarian starter is a smoked tofu bun($4): a small, rectangular slab of smoked tofu covered with a drizzling of the tangy 'special sauce', sitting comfortably alongside some thinly sliced pickled carrot, coriander, and various seeds, all enveloped in a fluffy, warm bun. Very fresh-tasting, quite impressive. Not overly sizeable, but enough to whet the appetite. Next up is the main event: the vegetarian cashew milk ramen($13). The fresh noodles are served with a few of those rectangular slabs of tofu, shitake mushrooms, thinly chopped sticks of zucchini, and the odd arrowhead of an asparagus. I also went for the optional 'garlic bomb' - the addition of a roasted bulb of garlic for an extra $1. All of these ingredients are submerged amidst a healthy dosage of the milky broth.

So, the verdict? The best way I can think to describe it is inoffensive. The cashew milk stock adds an interesting creamy texture to the broth, but I found the dish to be lacking in liveliness. A bit of experimenting with the various condiments certainly helped matters - black sesame is a must for every kitchen table - however my feelings are that it should have had more of a stand-alone flavour to it. Given my lofty expectations, I was a bit underwhelmed.

To finish off, I treated myself to a dessert of the salted caramel and coconut shake($8). It comes served in a tall glass, the inside walls of which are coated generously with caramel syrup, and finished with a red and white candy-cane striped paper straw. Very kitschy/1950s diner-esque, cute. Quite tasty, very sweet. I actually got hints of cheesecake from it.

Shop Ramen has quickly established itself amongst the burgeoning group of popular eateries that have popped up on Smith Street in recent years, and it has done a lot right. An interesting, succinct menu; food made fresh to order in front of you; and helpful, friendly staff - yep, they even provided sympathy laughter to some apparently unfunny jokes delivered by yours truly - which creates an inviting atmosphere that draws you in. However, it needs to back up all these positives with what it delivers to the table. The highlight for me was the tofu bun. The shake is delicious, but pricey. And those straws are just impractical. They become soggy and useless within minutes. The ramen fails to reach the heights I'd hoped it would and, if you manage to finish the whole bowl, can be quite bloating. And, in spite of what they may say on Broadsheet or TimeOut, a bowl of ramen does NOT go well with a sweet, syrupy milkshake - personally, I found the mere suggestion that it would idiotic (take that bigger media!). Even with a healthy break in between the two, I was feeling the after-effects for the remainder of the evening.

A place with a lot of promise and an already huge following. But, in my opinion, not quite there yet.
*2/5

*Note: Score deducted one mark due to lingering ill-effects from the shake two days later

Grigons & Orr - North Melbourne

There are few cities around the world that rival Melbourne for sheer number of cafes, such is our obsession. With all this congestion, how do all these places survive? The quality of coffee is definitely a major factor...but I don't drink coffee, and this is a food review, so if you wanted to read about the coffee at Grigons and Orr, here's two words: JOG ON!

Yep, in my humble opinion, it's the food that sets all these places apart. However, it doesn't hurt when the place has a bit of fun with itself (cue immature giggles from some quarters). Grigons & Orr is a 'Corner Store' cafe - 445 Queensberry St North Melbourne - and it runs with the corner store milk bar/cafe motif. All sorts of creative sweet things decorate the menu - Tim Tam milkshakes?! - and the way it's decked out reminds you of those coffee houses your parents used to drive you to as a kid as you lay curled up in the back seat of the family lamborghini in blue suede shoes, wearing gold knuckle-dusters...okay, those last few things weren't real, but the cafes that doubled as a sweet-tooth's paradise were very much real, and only seem to exist in country towns nowadays. Cue Grigons & Orr, est. 2009. Downstairs you'll find the milk bar set up with a few small tables in the windows, but if you venture upstairs you'll find a couple of cute, cosy tea rooms in which to plant yourself.

The menu is fun, and very veg.-vegan friendly. Eggs done many ways with creative names, salads with which I would be MORE than happy to get a stew on, and the dish of choice for breakfast today: "The Gandhi" ($17.50), advertised as being a vegan avocado egg, potato rosti, bbq tofu, spinach - although they were out of spinach today - roasted tomato, and garnished with a sprinkling of chives. The first part of this perplexed me initially. The 'Vegan Avocado' is, in fact, a halved avocado, with a lightly herbed pumpkin puree forming the yolk. Very creative, and given my avocado obsession, very appreciated! The big question is, do all these various elements of this dish fit together? Or, to put it another way, are they at one with the others? In my opinion, they are very close, but not quite there. I'm the first to admit that breakfast is not my favourite meal of the day, but it kind of felt like there was a little bit too much happening on my plate. Perhaps the lack of an ingredient, the spinach, actually contributed to this, as the roast tomatoes felt a little surplus. The tofu was also quite a firm variety, and felt a bit stodgy going down. But let me stop myself right there, as this is me nit-picking and the truth is, I did enjoy this dish. The thing that held it together quite well was the delicious bbq marinade on the tofu, which complemented all of the other ingredients. And, naturally, I was quite taken with the avo-egg as well (ingenious!).

This place has a menu that MUST be explored. As such, I'll be leaving any numbered rating until after subsequent visits. But take it from me and Molly Meldrum: do yourself a favour and check it out!

The Gandhi