Northcote

Loving Hut Northcote

November 18, 2015All Vegan, Baked Goods, Desserts, Dinner, Gluten Free, North, Inner North, Northcote, Onion/Garlic Free, RawThe Good HeartedComment

Loving Hut
377-379 High St
Northcote
VIC 3070
(03) 9077 1335

website
menu
order online

Opening Hours

Tue-Sat: 11am-10pm
Sun: 4.30pm-10pm

Loving Hut is an all vegan restaurant chain with over 200 stores worldwide, each offering different menus and qualities of service, but all united in the goal of bringing affordable vegan meals to the public.

Behind the sect-like glowing signage, yellow walls, plastic bamboo, and tv screen illuminating Batman cartoons (on mute thankfully), Northcote Loving Hut is a damn good place for a consistently delicious meal, and it's huge interior makes it an easy choice for last minute dining if you have a big group to feed.

The menu offers a boundless array of everything that seems non-vegan at a glance. We're talking about dishes such as 'Southern fried chicken' ($16) (or 'The volcano' ($17) if your partial to smothering said dish in hot sauce), 'Lemon chicken' ($14), 'Katsu duck with plum sauce' ($14), 'Pan fried tuna fillet' ($13) and the list goes on and it's all vegan.

My favourite dish of the moment is 'Bambam' ($15), which is deep fried eggplant or prawns with creamy sriracha infused mayo on top, and puffed tofu. Loving Hut also do an authentic vegan 'Silken tofu pad thai' ($13), a classic 'Curry laksa' ($12) and various rice, noodle and vegetable dishes. There are almost 50 items on the menu, so I won't even attempt to list them all, but I will let you know that many can be ordered as gluten free, onion free and garlic free.

Desserts are also an option, with Z ebra dream organic coconut ice-cream scoops, banana fritters, and an array of cakes and La Panella Bakery style baked goods, such as lemon tarts and caramel slice.

Head to the big freezer to secure a bulk pack of vegan hot dogs or bacon (these ones aren't classified by the World Health Organisation as being group 1 carcinogens - yay!), and there's usually a good supply of veganpet and v-dog (which is hard to find) pet food to snap up for your fur kids.

Also visited by: the lentil institution, where's the beef?, veganopoulous

Shokuiku

April 10, 2013All Vegan, Gluten Free, Northcote, Organic, Raw, Restaurant, Desserts, Inner NorthThe Good HeartedComment

Shoku Iku:

Curried crepes with julienned apple and zucchini with a plant based yoghurt ($12)

Shoku Iku:

Poached strawberries with lucuma and cupuacu sabayon and orange cream ($10)

Shoku Iku:

Kelp noodle and vegetable pad thai with sweet and spicy almond sauce and activated teriyaki nuts and seeds

Shoku Iku:

Whole tomato, stuffed with sunflower pate, served with walnut pesto ($12)

Shoku Iku:

Vegetable ravioli, filled with plant based cream cheese, served with chunky tomato sauce

Shoku iku
120 High Street
Northcote VIC 3070
0403 569 019

website

Lunch served Wed to Sun 11:30am – 4pm

Dinner Sat only 6pm – 8pm

Cash Only

Shokuiku is a new raw, organic, macrobiotic, vegan eatery in Northcote that's created a flurry of curiosity amongst Melbourne's vegan community. Raw dining, where food is not heated above 48 degrees so that enzymes, vitamins and minerals are not destroyed, is a new experience for us, so we thought we'd better check out the April dinner menu in it's entirety in order to report back to you good (hearted) people.

Shoku iku is open for dinner only on Saturday nights at this stage and you must book a table if you want to partake. There are two choices available for each course (first courses $12, second courses $20, desserts $10 and side salads $9). We opted for the three course meal with side salad ($46) and were off to a great start with their 'Curried crepes w/ julienned apple and zucchini and plant-based yoghurt'. The vegan yoghurt made this dish something special.

A 'Whole tomato, stuffed w/ sunflower pate and served w/ walnut pesto' also arrived to compete with the crepes and it definitely held its own! The incredibly moreish walnut pesto (complete with garlic hit) gave the vegan yoghurt sauce a real run for it's money.

After a little wait, our main courses arrived complete with a side salad on each plate. The 'Vegetable ravioli, filled w/ plant based cream cheese and served w/ chunky tomato sauce' was accompanied by a huge serving of a 'green leafy salad w/ vegetable cous cous and red grapes w/ a fig and balsamic dressing'. The raw raviolis saw vegan cream cheese sandwiched between sliced radish and apple and it went down a treat, however the salad had copious amounts of a grated root vegetable (perhaps celeriac) masquerading as cous cous and while it was super vitamin hit, we couldn't quite stomach eating all of it.

The other main of 'Kelp noodle and vegetable pad thai w/ sweet and spicy almond sauce and activated teriyaki nuts and seeds' was more salty than sweet and spicy and I felt healthier just looking at all that kelp! On the side was a 'Marinated carrot ribbon salad w/ creamy curry spiced dressing' but again, there was rather a lot of it and there's only so much ‘carrot ribbon’ one can eat in a single sitting!

The evening peaked again when dessert arrived, delivering us an extraordinarily rich and creamy 'Peppermint and chocolate layer cake' along with 'Poached strawberries w/ lucuma (a subtropical fruit from Peru) and cupuacu (an Amazonian 'super fruit') sabayon and orange cream' which despite the extravagant description was a simple and refreshing dessert which was also garnished with strawberry leather (aka fruit rollup).

There are plenty of herbal teas ($3-3.50) on offer (warmed only) along with teeccino which is a herbal coffee served with freshly made almond milk or warmed cacao ($5). The teeccino and cocao is rather creatively warmed in a vitamix.