For 34 years, Green Cuisine has been one of Victoria’s go-to vegan restaurants. Popular acceptance of vegetarian/vegan cuisine has improved a lot since Green Cuisine was founded in 1990.
Consider its location tucked away, half underground in the bottom corner of Market Square. The other vegetarian restaurant from that time, Rebar, is likewise tucked away in a backroad basement. In the ‘90s, finding such places meant leaving behind the beaten path to explore on foot and with a keen nose, or if lucky, receiving a friend’s hot tip.
Today, Victoria’s culinary community is brimming with vegetarian/vegan option: 275 by the last count I’ve come across, which doesn’t include all places offering vegetarian and/or vegan options in addition to meat options. Today vegan/vegetarian cuisine is just about everywhere, and yet these two originals remain.
Green Cuisine claims to “…strive to be as green as possible – committed to environmental sustainability, transparency and inclusion.”
In pursuit of that goal, everything on the menu, including the condiments, is made in-house from locally sourced ingredients, as much as possible – a dedication enforced by the need to ensure that no trace of meat by products soils the food.
Green Cuisine offers a buffet service, so, with sanitized hands, I take a tray, a plastic bowl and plate. First up are soups and bread, then salads and other cold dishes, followed by an array of sauces and condiments, and finally the hot stuff.
I choose the Carrot Ginger Coconut Soup, Quinoa Tabouli and Pineapple Coleslaw. I help myself to some short black strings of Arame Seaweed and a dollop of olive tapenade. From the hot bar, I choose the Sunseed Burrito, pour some Dahl over brown rice, and help myself to a spoonful of Wild Mushroom Stew. Soup is $3.75, everything else is weighed and priced at $29.50/kg.
Finding a seat is challenging. The place is big enough, but all the indoor booths and tables are taken, and the few tables-for-two out front lack shelter on a rain-drenched day. I find my seat in the café section of the restaurant, at a long high-top table among strangers. Conversation is not hard to initiate. Many customers are regulars and proudly so.
My soup is less than hot, but the flavours are incredibly fresh, like right out of the garden fresh. Likewise with the Tabouli, which is more quinoa than parsley, and yet that parsley flavour is full on. Pineapple, and dried cranberries, are a great addition to coleslaw, offering a tartly sweet flavour, to which my pinch of Arame Seaweed adds texture and an earthy touch.
The tapenade is rich with olives contrasted against the sting of vinegar and a satisfying dash of salt. From the hot bar, nutty brown rice is the perfect foil for the creamy dahl.
But I am most impressed by the Wild Mushroom Stew and the Sunseed Burrito, both of which are so umami intense, a carnivore like me will never miss the meat. An assortment of local wild mushrooms, hand-picked on forest foraging escapades, make for a rich and earthy stew. Of the varieties, the chanterelles particularly offer a meaty flavour, and present the soft, stringy texture of moist cooked chicken.
Likewise the burrito: stuffed full with beans – refried and integral – along with vegan cheese and shredded carrot and cabbage. The array of flavours across my ad hoc meal have my taste buds singing with joy, my stomach supremely satisfied, and I am certainly not regretting the price. Great food, great value, environmentally smart.
To your health, and the planet’s.
Green Cuisine
