South Island Vegan Road Trip - Part 2

This is part two of my South Island vegan road trip. if you haven't read part one yet you can catch up here.

After eating out quite a bit in Wanaka Nick and I cooked for ourselves most of the time in Queenstown. Accommodation was expensive and the hostel had a huge kitchen so it was a good way to even out our day to day costs. We made and ate veggie burgers, spaghetti with marinara sauce, tofu scrambles, and a lot of peanut butter toast. Simple easy meals that are perfect for busy hostel kitchens. We contemplated taking a trip to Doubtful Sound, most people use Queenstown as a jumping off point for that trip, but we'd heard so many stories about the mist making it impossible to see and it's not a cheap day trip so we decided to skip it. We'll head to Iceland one day to check out fjords when we're not travelling on a backpacking budget!

The one time we did eat out in Queenstown was when I spotted some pictures of Bespoke Kitchen's vegan breakfasts on Instagram. They looked amazing and I knew that we couldn't skip it so we went out for brunch on our last morning. We both ordered the pancakes and got a matcha latte and a green juice to share. We also couldn't resist grabbing a chocolate muffin topped with chia jam.

We'd read rave reviews of the pancakes online and they certainly didn't disappoint. These were some high end pancakes, thick and fluffy and topped with all sorts of deliciousness including poached spiced apples, coconut whipped cream, raspberry chia jam, seeds, and freeze dried berries with a mini jug of maple syrup on the side. I could have done without the seeds (I hate seeds!) but once I moved them to one side these tasted just as good as they looked. 

Vegan in Wellington

Wellington was our final stop on our North Island road trip and we made it there just in time for the Wellington Friday Night Market on Lower Cuba Street. It was a super busy and bustling market with a great atmosphere and I was more than a little surprised at just how many vegan options there were. Aside from In Bloom the 100% vegan stall selling burgers and raw cakes there were stalls slinging vegan dumplings, takoyaki, tacos, churros, and more. We started with dumplings from House of Dumplings and we chose two each because we knew we were going to do a lot of eating that evening.

We went for one Spinach, Tofu, and Bok Choy dumpling each and then I grabbed a Japanese Six Mushroom dumpling whilst Nick opted for the special which was an Indian Dhal Coconut Cashew dumpling. Vicky who started House of Dumplings is from Hong Kong so these were legit and they made an excellent starter. If you have cooking facilities you can find House of Dumplings dumplings in supermarkets all over NZ but I don't know which ones sell the vegan versions.

Next up was the Takoyaki stall, Gogo Takoyaki, and I don't mind admitting that we loved these so much that we got in line for them twice!

I tried Takoyaki for the first time when I was living and volunteering in Japan. I found a Takoyaki pan at the volunteer house and set about finding a recipe and the ingredients to make them ASAP. I can safely say that these ones were about a hundred times better than the ones I made! They had the same konnyaku filling but these were actually round and had just the right level of crispiness on the outside without being at all raw in the middle. Making Takoyaki is definitely something that takes a little practice.

Gogo seemed to be doing a roaring trade in their vegan option and the konnyaku filled balls were right up our street. I loved that they had vegan mayo and that they were keeping the vegan and non vegan things separate. This market should definitely be on your must visit list for NZ, if you're lucky and time your trip right you could even be there for the monthly vegan night market Vegan Vault which takes place on the first Saturday of every month. I won't lie, I was a bit gutted that we missed out on that, but you should go for me and tell me all about it!

Our next eating adventure took place at Sweet Release Cakes and Treats because I'd heard that they make epic baked goods have pies on the menu. Sold! I ordered a Chicken Pot Pie because faux chicken is 100% my jam and Nick ordered some kinda potato topped pie. I wasn't really paying attention to his pie because I was too focussed on my amazing pie and his was gone before I could request a taste.

The chicken pot pie was seriously so good, I'd been eating a lot of pies by this point in our Aus & NZ adventure and this was definitely one of the best. Far better than any vegan pie I've ever eaten in the UK. We couldn't skip dessert once we knew how good their food was so I stuck to the pie theme with a veganised version of a Hershey's pie whilst Nick opted for a PB Brownie.

These were also completely delicious. I hadn't heard of the pie that this one was meant to be imitating but apparently it's kind of a big deal in NZ right now and I can see why. This chocolatey cookie crusted mousse filled and cream topped delight was, well, delightful. I wish I'd had space for a second slice. It seems that Sweet Release also make something called a Doof Doof which looks like a huge doughnut muffin hybrid. I didn't see any of those when we were there but please swing by and eat one for me if you're in the area. They look uh-mazing!

The YHA hostel we were staying at was around the corner from Commonsense Organics which is packed full of vegan goodies including faux meats, cheeses, and my very favourite treat, Dandies marshmallows. I usually order these from iHerb (Use my code JOJ321 for a discount on your first order) for a very reasonable price but that's not an option when you're on the move all the time and don't have an address. I'm happy to pay import prices for something this delicious though!

Located a little way away from where we were staying Mara Restaurant in Newtown was another spot on my must-eat list. Thanks to Hitch Car Rentals we had a car to zoom around in so we headed there for dinner on our second night despite the fact that it was pouring with rain. The place was cute and I think that they're pretty new but unfortunately the menu wasn't great for me. The only thing that they could make me was the polenta dish topped with veggies but with no sauce, granted the eat in menu was small, around eight or nine dishes, but I didn't feel like they were really trying very hard to accommodate me and it wasn't exactly busy when we were there. The dish itself was okay, decent even, but it wasn't exactly exciting and I don't feel that I got to experience what their food is really like. Mara have some good reviews but I wasn't sold after this course.

Dessert was where I was able to sample their food as it's meant to be eaten and I tried the Black Doris Plum and Beetroot Custard Tart with house made rose ice cream whilst Nick went for the Reincarnated Chocolate Three Ways which consisted of a chocolate brownie, chocolate mousse, and cookie ice cream. We were none the wiser about the whole reincarnated thing as the waitress told us that it was an inside joke that even she wasn't in on.

This dessert was pretty good, I enjoyed the flavours of my dish when they were all together, the beetroot, rose, and plum compliment each other nicely but I would have liked more plums and the pastry definitely could have been better. Nick wasn't super impressed with his dessert but I enjoyed the mouthful I tried, the brownie was fudgey and the ice cream had a good flavour but I agreed with him that the texture of the ice cream was a little strange and that the mousse could have been airier. I can't decide whether I'd recommend this place or not, they're new and just getting on their feet so maybe they'll iron out some of the creases in time and for upscale food in NZ it was surprisingly affordable. It's definitely a date night kinda place and if you do try it out let me know what you think.

V1 Vegan Store is a Wellington must visit, the people running this place are so lovely so even if you don't need anything drop by and give them some love. You're sure to be impressed by their range of faux meats and cheeses, the line up of vegan pick 'n' mix, and their bulk nooch bin.

They also have a little bakery counter selling cakes and cookies including the amazing cookies from Moustache in Auckland that I wrote about here. I loved them so much that I couldn't resist picking up a couple more. I also picked up some of Savour's organic cultured nut cheese in Cheddar. I was tempted by the beer infused cheese but I was pretty sure that Nick would hate it so I played it safe and I definitely wasn't disappointed. We managed to make this last two meals but I desperately wanted to eat it all in one go.

Speaking of cheese Nick and I also grabbed pizza from a couple of spots around town, firstly from Cin Cin, a non vegan pizza place with vegan cheese and a vegan chocolatey dessert on the menu, and secondly a slice of veg covered pizza from Tommy Millions, a take out hut on Courtenay Place which we could see from the window of our Wakefield Street hostel. They're open until 4am and whilst they don't have vegan cheese yet their veggie toppings were very generous and the slices were huge.

I was definitely impressed with the wide range of vegan options on offer in Wellington, we just kept stumbling upon things, and I would definitely suggest that you spend a few nights here if you're road tripping through NZ. We were pretty food focussed during our time there and we spent one day hiding from some truly terrible weather but there are good museums and walks so there should be plenty to keep you occupied. If you missed parts one and two of our New Zealand adventure so far you can catch up here and here.

This post was sponsored in part by Hitch Car Rentals. As always all words and opinions are my own. Posts like these help me to keep bringing you travel content from around the globe.

Vegan Adventures in Shenzhen

When we were planning our travels from New Zealand to Thailand Nick and I certainly didn't intend to visit five countries in seven days but it happened. It was tiring and brilliant and I'd totally do it all over again. We flew from Christchurch to Sydney and spent 24 hours there. Next we flew from Sydney to Hong Kong where we spent one night before taking the metro over the border into China to check out Shenzhen. We were there for three nights before taking the metro back to Hong Kong, spending a night there, and then flying on to Phuket for Thailand's vegetarian festival. Phew. 

Shenzhen was on my original must-visit list for China but it didn't fit in with our plans as it's just too far south to be a sensible stop on a loop from Beijing to Shanghai. I couldn't stop thinking about how much I wanted to go though and when I realised that getting there from Hong Kong is really easy, you just take the metro, I was sold. Okay, I made that sound a little too simple, you take the Hong Kong MTR to Lo Wu, walk across the border, go through HK and Chinese immigration, before hopping onto the Shenzhen metro at Luohu on the other side. Still, pretty simple as far as border crossings go but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't tired of carrying my backpack when we arrived. We decided to stay by Laojie station in one of Shenzhen's major shopping destinations which is only two stops on the metro from Luohu so that final section was short and fast.

As soon as we arrived we decided to get metro cards and I was very pleased to see that Shenzhen has the best metro cards anywhere in the world! Hello Kitty surrounded by desserts?! Yes please. Me and Nick both chose this one despite the lady selling them trying to push some kinda Transformers card on Nick.

Our first stop in any new place usually involves food and this trip was no exception. We arrived hungry and went straight to the nearest veggie spot on the Happy Cow app. Windlucky is located on the 4th floor of a food mall and the easiest way to find it is to go in the door between McDonald's and Watson's and to go straight up those escalators.

Tart Bakery Auckland

Nick and I started our North Island adventure in Auckland and one place that was on my radar before the plane even touched down was Tart Bakery. I'd seen pic's of their delicious looking baked goods online and peeked at their five star Happy Cow reviews but there were a couple of things that I didn't know about them. I didn't know that they'd won the NZ Bakery of the year competition in 2016 - pretty epic for a vegan business! And I didn't know that they run on a business model that focusses on charitable giving. 

Tart's owners are very focussed on caring for animals and spreading the vegan message and one way that they do that is by working with someone who helps farmers convert grazing land into arable land for growing crops. With the majority of New Zealand's countryside being covered in farms this is so necessary for the future of the planet and unless we can find ways to convince farmers that they can make money in other ways animal agriculture is going to take a long time to grind to a halt.

Vegan Eats Sydney

This is probably going to be my final Sydney post and I've been putting off writing it because it means that my time in Australia is really over. No more wallabies, considerably less delicious vegan pies, and no more hanging out with my friend Amanda. Making friends online can be the absolute best because it's a really cool and easy way to connect with people who you have a bunch of stuff in common with (you also get close fast because people like to overshare online!) but the flip side is that sometimes your favourite people live in Sydney, or Austin, or Vienna, or somewhere else far away and you hardly ever get to see them in real life.

I try not to get too sad about it because it's so fun to be able to meet up with people whilst I'm travelling but my dream is to live somewhere and have a bunch of awesome vegan friends living nearby so that we can have potlucks, and brunches, and sleepovers, and pizza parties, and go for hikes, and get involved in activism, and eat my carefully crafted pick 'n mix together at the movies. One day! I'm also getting to the point in my travels where I can't wait to be settled somewhere so that my friends can actually come and visit me for a change. I miss that!

Amanda and I have one final dinner date planned during my layover before I fly to Hong Kong and I definitely will not cry when we part ways like I did in Portland that time! I spent about seven days in Sydney and as well as visiting MAKER, one of the best vegan businesses on the planet, a couple of times and exploring everything that Newtown, Glebe, and the CBD have to offer (blog post here) we managed to squeeze in visits to a bunch of other cool places including Pineana in Avalon Beach, The Hold in Manly, and Funky Pies in Bondi.

Pineana specialise in Asian inspired bowls and they have six options for you to choose from meaning that there's something for everyone. Even I was able to order without making any modifications which is a little unusual! 

Wagamama Launches Vegan Menu

Since I left the UK in January 2015 the vegan options at chain restaurants have blossomed, with chains like Zizzi's adding vegan menu items and Tofurky launching their range of vegan sandwiches I'm going to be coming back to a country that's a whole lot more vegan friendly. One of the few downsides of travelling is that I don't get to go and eat all of these delicious new things the very second they're launched but when Wagamama contacted me about trying their new vegan menu I decided to do the only sensible thing and pay it forward. After scouring Instagram for Brighton peep's who take excellent photos I found Stevie, @thebrightonvegan, who was more than happy to attend the event on my behalf. Hopefully I'll be bringing you more guest posts as I try to keep on top of the UK's growing vegan scene from a continent far, far away. Over to Stevie...

For some time, the word on the vegan grapevine has been that Wagamama was launching an all new vegan menu. Vague news articles and the occasional insta-story indicated that it was tantalisingly close.

Well friends, it's here. And, oh, it's good.

Vegan in Sydney

There's something about visiting cities with iconic buildings that really floats my boat. NYC, Paris, Barcelona, and now Sydney are all up there with my favourite cities in the world and that's what links them in my mind. The other thing they all have in common is amazing vegan food!

Sydney can be a challenging place for a traveller on a budget but the good news is that the centre of the city is very walkable. We walked from our hostel, YHA's Railway Square hostel, up George Street towards the Art Gallery of New South Wales, harbour bridge, Museum of Contemporary Art, botanical gardens, and the opera house almost every day during our stay. Their super central location means that you're literally inside the station surrounded by pricier accommodation options but paying a fraction of the price. It really is considerably cheaper than anywhere else in the area. As well as being by the train and bus depots which will whizz you to vegan destinations all over the city it's basically on top of a Lord Of The Fries (the chicken and chips is a total bargain by Aussie standards and I love their $5 mini chicken burger), in amongst multiple bubble tea spots (Coco forever!), and close to Brew Street for your breakfast muffin and coffee. 

MAKER Sydney

Sydney based coffee bar / bakery MAKER is one of the coolest vegan businesses in the world and I'm here to tell you why! Firstly, look a this sign. Self love and vegan treats are basically what I'm all about. I visited another popular vegan business in the city and they had a sign letting me know that their products are guilt free. Nope! Not cool. Eating isn't something that we should be made to feel guilty about and businesses buying into damaging rhetoric about guilt free foods and clean eating makes me super angry. Bring on the self love and vegan treats!

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Secondly Maker are a social enterprise. Annabelle who makes beautiful bespoke cakes at My Little Panda Kitchen, and Kate of The Vegan Teahouse who specialise in vegan cafe classics, got together to run a 100% vegan commercial kitchen where anyone can join in and make and sell epic baked goods. I mean really?! How perfect are these people? I want to move to Sydney and be a part of this.

Vegan in Hobart

After spending a little time in Melbourne after driving the Great Ocean Road Nick and I flew to Hobart to start our Tasmanian adventure. We saw the rest of the state first, check out that post here, before ending in the capital for a city break that involved a little walking, a spot of culture, some grade A eating, and a whole lot of relaxing. Our very first stop was the Salamanca Markets which we'd only heard good things about. Bury Me Standing Bagels was the place we were most stoked about trying, they have great Happy Cow reviews and they sell boiled bagels, otherwise known as proper bagels.

As well as decent bagels that you can buy to go they also sell baked goods like cookie sandwiches and brownies, some of which are gluten free. We opted to get our bagels sliced and filled to eat right away and I went for a potato bagel with a schmear of vegan cream cheese and pickles whilst Nick opted for a plain bagel with Nuttelex (Australia's Vitalite / Earth Balance), sugar, and cinnamon. They also had vegan lemon curd which I was sorely tempted by but a vegan cheese option will sway me every time.

Aussie Adventures with Quokkas and Ice Cream

My travel itinerary has been jam packed and almost totally wifi free for the last week or so so I'm just posting a short(ish) but pic heavy post today. When Nick and I were looking into flights from Bali to Australia we realised that we would be able to fly into Perth and then from Perth to Melbourne for far less than it would have cost to fly straight to Melbourne. It made sense to have a little Western Australia adventure! We stayed in Fremantle and the way that our cheap flights worked out meant that we were there during the week, unfortunately all of the vegan spots there are closed during the week! If you want a foodie adventure then try to visit from Friday to Monday when most of the cafes and the markets are open. We went into Perth to visit museums (I loved the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts), drink bubble tea, explore the Asian food stores, eat at Lord of the Fries, and to watch The Big Sick at the cinema on Cheap Tuesday. Have you seen The Big Sick yet? I loved it! I'm a huge rom com fan but as a feminist they definitely push my rage buttons. I don't think there were any moments that made me angry in The Big Sick though! There was even a decent joke about mansplaining and the whole movie was laugh out loud funny as well as cute.

Another of my very favourite thing about the Perth / Fremantle area was 100% vegan gelato spot Gelato 101.

This epic ice cream spot is located in Cottesloe which is right between Fremantle and Perth on the main train line and we were blown away by their ice creams.

Vegan in The Gili Islands

When Nick and I were planning our trip to Bali I knew that we had to visit the Gili Islands. These tiny islands seemed like the most amazing place to live out our dessert island fantasies so we blocked out ten days and got researching. We decided that Gili Trawangan wasn't for us, it's too loud and too much of a party hotspot and it definitely doesn't have the chilled out vibe we were looking for. We decided to split our time between Gili Air and Gili Meno spending a few nights on mellow backpacker hotspot Gili Air and then the majority of our time on the even smaller and quieter Gili Meno.

Our trip to the Gili Islands didn't start wonderfully as I started to feel unwell on our last morning at the resort we were staying at on Lombok. I wasn't sure if it was food poisoning, a stomach bug, or a colitis flare up at this point but it wasn't great. We managed to get to our Airbnb on Gili Air without too many dramas but because I wasn't feeling good we took a speedboat which cost far more than we were hoping to spend on the journey. It got us from A to B as quickly as possible though which was all I cared about.

Vegan Eats Ubud

If you read my last blog post you're probably already dreaming of a trip to Ubud and this post might just push you over the edge. The food in Ubud is excellent and even I managed to find enough to eat - no mean feat in a country where everyone loves chilli. One of the spots that Nick and I ended up visiting the most was Alchemy. It was located around 10 minutes from our gorgeous Penestenan Airbnb (seriously if you haven't already check out my previous post!) and we headed there for breakfast most days. They have a smoothie bowl bar which I was deeply suspicious of because I don't even enjoy smoothies let alone pretending that they're a meal. It turns out that smoothie bowls are actually amazing though! Who knew?!

The options were different every single day and you could mix and match your smoothie, fruit, and topping options to mix things up and keep breakfast exciting. My favourite days were the ones when they had strawberries in the fruit section and blueberry or turmeric whipped coconut cream in the topping area. I always went for chocolate granola because it's the best and I was wild about the bright purple dragonfruit soursop smoothie.

Vegan in Cairns and The Great Barrier Reef

After spending two weeks road tripping north up the Bruce Highway from Brisbane Nick and I arrived in Cairns and camped there, at the Cairns Coconut site, for two nights. We had a trip booked out to The Great Barrier Reef for the day after we arrived in town and the tour company we booked with were picking us up at 6:20am. Sadly unlike our amazing experience with Whitsunday Bullet the vegan options on Reef Experience were terrible. We started badly at breakfast time with a spinach, carrot, and cucumber roll with some balsamic drizzle (what the what?!) whilst everyone else ate bacon and egg rolls. Lunch was just more salad with some roasted pumpkin in place of all of the meaty things everyone else was eating. I was getting pretty irritated by this point especially as the woman in charge kept calling us her "little vegans" which felt super patronising. Ugh!

There were also snacks for after snorkelling, cheese and crackers I think, and they didn't even try to find us a vegan option for that. It was definitely one of the worst vegan catering experiences I've had in recent memory and I was pretty annoyed that they'd told me that they can cater for vegan guests. I brought emergency snacks with me, ate all of them, and was still starving when we got off of the boat at the end of the day. When you have hours of physical activity ahead of you you can't just eat salad! It's ridiculous that in 2017, in a country with plentiful vegan options, people still think vegans basically just eat vegetables.

Vegan Road Trip - Brisbane to Cairns Part I

If you've followed my blog for a while you'll know that I love a road trip, from spending a week driving from NYC to Chicago, to taking an epic journey around Europe for a whole summer, any time spent on the road is good with me. When I was researching how to travel around Australia, the answer to how to get around was obvious: ROAD TRIIIIP! Australia is freaking massive and wildly expensive so we haven't been able to road trip the whole country but Nick and I were able to take a road trip from Brisbane to Cairns in a rented camper van. We covered 2600 km's so I'm going to split this epic journey into two parts.

We chose Hippie Camper as our rental place as they had small vans, great rates, and their location made picking up the van in Brisbane pretty easy. 

Our van's name was Lily which cutely was also the name of one of the sheep we were caring for at Farm Animal Rescue! Rather than heading north towards Cairns straight away we decided to head south for two reasons, firstly I'm a ridiculous person and hadn't stopped thinking about the dim sum at Easy House since I visited for my birthday, and secondly we both thought that never seeing Byron Bay seemed a little silly as it's a popular destination and we didn't know when we'd be back in this corner of the globe.

Vegan Eats Brisbane

Brisbane has been on my radar for a while thanks to fellow MoFo participant and general all round wonderful human Susan and her blog Kittens Gone Lentil. I was lucky enough to get to spend a few days there before heading to Dayboro to volunteer at Farm Animal Rescue and then a few more nights there afterwards.

Brisbane doesn't have the same completely ridiculous vegan food scene as Melbourne but there are a lot of decent options and overall I really enjoyed the vibe of Brisbane. The area just south of the river has a super cool man made beach as well as a swimming pool that's free to use. They even have free wifi! The area around it is often used for markets, pop ups, and celebrations and on our first evening in the city they were holding a Buddah's Birthday festival which was 100% vegetarian and awash with vegan eats.

Vegan Travels in Guangxi, China

I found myself repeatedly putting off writing this post, the final post about my travels around China, and it's taken me a while to work out why. Despite it being one of the more challenging countries I've travelled in (Why are your national parks full of concrete?! Why is Mandarin so hard to learn?!) I did enjoy it, especially this part of the trip. The time I spent travelling around Guangxi province was probably the highlight of my time in China but I'm not sure if I'll ever end up back there again which makes writing about it a little more bittersweet. Guangxi is so different to the China I think most people imagine when they think of the bustling built up country with a population of over 1.37 billion, maybe this post will open your eyes to a different side of China or even inspire you to add another stop or two on to the classic trip to Beijing and Shanghai.

To get to Guilin, the first town on our mini tour of Guangxi, Nick and I took a sleeper train from Zhangjiajie to Liujiang arriving at 5am, we shared a compartment with a Canadian couple and the next morning we all took a walk to a bus stop and caught a local bus across town to a different train station, Liuzhou, to catch our trains to Guilin. The last train only took an hour which was nice after such long travels. We could have made our lives easier and grabbed a taxi from one station to the other but this worked out cheaper and it was more fun, I love watching cities wake up. It would have gone without a hitch if the roads around Liuzhou station weren't totally closed to traffic because of roadworks meaning that our bus took an unexpected detour. Apple Maps had a hard time finding us a route around them but thanks to some friendly locals we all made it there with over an hour to spare. Upon arrival in Guilin we hot footed it across town to Tian Fu Lou, a buffet style veg place that we spotted on Happy Cow, before my hanger kicked in.

This place is a bit of a wander from the centre of town but it's well worth it. After spending two days somewhere that we didn't love eating just steamed rice, fried greens, and Pringles for every meal we were beyond excited at the sight of the buffet and ecstatic when we were told that everything was vegan. We went around a few times trying new things as we went, I was most excited for the noodle soup bar and made myself something delicious after watching how it was done.

Vegan Fave's in Melbourne

This is the fourth and final part of my Vegan in Melbourne series. Check out parts one, two, and three by clicking the links and for more more tips on travelling, volunteering, and road tripping in Australia visit my dedicated Australia page here.

I followed the lead up to Red Sparrow Pizza's opening on Instagram and I was delighted to get to visit twice whilst I was in Melbourne. It's no secret that I'm a huge pizza fan (the fact that I don't have a pizza tattoo yet is ridiculous. Get it together Jojo!) and this place looked more than a little promising. Proper Italian style bases and multiple vegan cheese options along with a killer specials menu, what more could you want right? Well this place exceeded my expectations, the pizzas were seriously the best I've ever eaten - they had that combo of the perfect thin crust with plentiful tomato sauce and super fun toppings. We ordered from the specials board and I chose a pear and walnut pizza with aubergines and a balsamic glaze while Nick went for the Halal Snack Pack pizza.

For those of you who aren't Australian you may have never heard of a Halal Snack Pack (or HSP), I certainly hadn't. It's basically kebab style meat on chips with barbecue, chilli, and garlic sauces to top it all off. I'd have had to mess with it too much to make it a-ok for my allergies so I didn't try it but Nick gave it two thumbs up. I mean it's a pizza topped with chips, thinly sliced seitan, and a whole bunch of delicious sauces so of course he did!

An Aussie Birthday Extravaganza

It was my 34th birthday last week and my first ever birthday in the Southern Hemisphere. I was working on my actual birthday but as I'm always up for having a birthday week I started celebrating early by planning an epic day out with Susan from Kittens Gone Lentil. Me and Nick started the day at Petrie station and travelled into Brisbane to meet Susan near her place. We even got to pop to her house to meet Dim Sim, her gorgeous black cat who I've known online for many years!

We had our sights set on eating copious amounts of dim sum / yum cha so we drove south to Gold Coast to eat at Easy House, somewhere I'd been reading about and dreaming of eating at for a while. Easy House certainly didn't disappoint, the food was freaking amazing and I've eaten dim sum in both NYC and Hong Kong so you can trust me. You can order from the menu but the lovely people working there also bring around trays of dim sum so that you can choose what you want to eat that way. So fun!

Cheap Eats in Melbourne

There's no doubt about it, Australia is an expensive place to visit. It's not the most expensive country I've ever explored (I think Finland might take that crown) but it's far away from almost everywhere so getting here is going to cost you a fair chunk of change and neither accommodation nor food are cheap. Whilst Nick and I were in Melbourne we rented an Air B&B in Collingwood. Collingwood is situated right next to Fitzroy, the alternative area in Melbourne, where the majority of the cities vegan food spots are located. There are a lot of benefits to Air B&Bing but my favourite is that you have access to a kitchen. Being able to grab some crumpets, cereal, and soy milk from the local supermarket cuts down your breakfast expenditure to a few dollars a day and the Air B&B we chose was within walking distance of a Cole's and a Woolworths. Brunswick Street is like a vegan playground with multiple options on almost every menu; fully vegan spots are located just a few store fronts apart, there are many different cuisines to choose from, and the dessert options are ridiculous. You can even get a vegan friendly tattoo from a vegan artist!

Vietnamese food abounds in both Fitzroy and Collingwood but Trang Bakery and their signature Bahn Mi's stand out from the crowd.

Trang Bakery aren't 100% vegan but they have four exceptional vegan options; vegan chicken, vegan duck, vegan pork, and lemongrass marinated tofu.

Smith & Deli Melbourne

Vegans everywhere will have heard of Smith & Daughters, their cookbook is available at all good independent book retailers (Foyles and Herbivore are two of my faves), and their super instagrammable merch can be seen decorating vegan denim jackets across the globe. I'm more into quick, delicious, filling eats than fancy sit down dining so their sister spot Smith & Deli was my favoured stop during my visit to Melbourne. I'm not kidding when I say that I ate here almost every single day they were open during my 10 day visit so I was able to try a fair amount of their seriously epic menu.

Taking up two whole blackboards epic is really the only appropriate word to describe the sandwich menu here and they range from simple grilled cheeses all the way through to ridiculous seitan and cheese stuffed masterpieces. They have an impressive range of sides and snacks to choose from including pies and sausage rolls and their specials seem to change almost daily. The other rad thing about Smith & Deli is that it's also a store, whilst you're in line waiting to order you can browse fridges, freezers, and shelves full of vegan deliciousness from local vegan cheeses to imported faux fish.