I grew up in Australia and I do miss some of my family members and friends, however I think I feel the distance mostly because I can’t eat at The Green Lion vegan pub bistro.
We all have those places that we admire from a distance, hoping and scheming to one day eat with them.
The Green Lion in Sydney is my ‘bucket list’ place.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8m2CV6gEvf/
I’ve just about stopped looking at their food photos because I can’t cope knowing that I’m missing out on all this great eating at this vegan pub eatery.
The Green Lion says this about themselves on their website:
The Green Lion is Australia’s only 100% plant- based pub bistro and was established in 2016 by co-founders Sacha Joannou and Bhavani Baumann. The concept is traditional Aussie Pub food done vegan. From Burgers and Chicken Schnitty’s to a seafood basket and lasagne, The Green Lion is excited to be able to offer your favourite foods veganised. Desserts are not forgotten including our vegan Pavlova and many different cheesecakes. Located on the first floor of an Old Australian Pub in Rozelle, The Green Lion is designed to feel like a lounge room where all are welcome. The wrap around balcony is very popular boasting a beautiful sunset. The Green Lion has spaces for all events from big parties to intimate dinners and prides itself on our in-house events such as all you can eat pizza pasta nights and 10 course tastings.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8C0YbBA07d/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8yKxsMHrMh/
If you find yourself in Sydney, visit as soon as possible. You can see the exact address of The Green Lion thanks to Google Maps.
You can also follow The Green Lion on Instagram and check out their gorgeous menu on their website.
With all the intense and feverish attention given to mainstream non-vegan restaurant chains serving vegan options, I wanted to take a step back and give some space to the true legends of the vegan food scene.
I’ve compiled a list of my top ten favourite vegan restaurants and eateries on the planet as a way to celebrate the people who put animals first.
This list is current as of February 2020 and is as accurate as I can recall. Some places would have made this list had they not sadly closed. I also am aware that I am missing a whole bunch of amazing vegan spots that I haven’t had a chance to visit, so please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.
Are you ready for FGV’s Ten Favourite Vegan Restaurants On The Planet?
Por Siempre Vegana Taqueria (Mexico City, Mexico)
Tacos are more than just food in Mexico. They are an inextricable part of the culture. Late night and early morning taco stands are on every corner, making this cuisine the most popular and most eaten in the city.
Por Siempre launched a vegan version of a traditional taco stand six years ago and it quickly became one of the absolute must visit locations for vegans. The business has recently expanded and now boasts a second spot featuring chairs and tables.
Temple of Seitan is more than just a place to get irresistible comfort food. It is a food company that has become world-famous and unquestionably legendary.
The first location of this fried vegan chicken powerhouse turned the world of plant-based eating upside down when it opened in Hackney, East London. With a second spot in Camden and more expansions soon to follow, Temple is set for world domination.
If you haven’t dined with Vedge, I promise you haven’t dined with the best vegan restaurant on the planet.
Until Kate Jacoby and Rich Landau launched their super swanky (yet still incredibly welcoming) Vedge restaurant, I wasn’t certain that I had ever truly eaten exceptional vegan cuisine. My multiple trips to the Philadelphia-based restaurant have forced me to reconsider everything I know about good food.
This restaurant located at Mermaid Beach on Australia’s Gold Coast means more to me than I can effectively express. Living in nearby Brisbane wasn’t always amazing for vegans (it has changed BIG time) so Tian Ran was my sanctuary.
Their menu is overflowing with some of my favourite dishes on the planet including olive fried rice, crispy bean curd, noodles, and drumsticks. I adore Tian Ran and I miss them deeply.
Veggie Grill (multiple locations, United States of America)
The first time I actually adored a salad instead of eating it out of duty was probably at a Veggie Grill location.
This chain of casual quick service restaurants is consistently high quality. They serve the perfect mix of comfort dishes (wings, burgers) with decadent salads packed with kale.
Veggie Grill is expanding rapidly around the USA. Eat with them when you can for pure happiness and satisfaction. Extra note: make drinking their strawberry lemonade a priority.
Plant Power Fast Food (multiple locations, United States of America)
Vegan junk food (junk is not a bad word!) is a reality thanks to Plant Power Fast Food. With seven locations and a food truck spread out across Southern California, the chain is fast becoming a force to be reckoned with in the fast food industry.
Plant Power recreate all your favourite foods of pre-vegan times without hurting any animals, including breakfast muffins, shakes, fries, and stacked burgers.
Not only are Carla and Marco dear friends of mine, they are also bloody talented food creators. Their pie and mash outlet in Camden, London is unquestionably one of the best places to eat on this planet.
Crispy pie shells, hot savoury fillings, creamy mash, and decadent gravy will be your reward if you make the effort to visit the shop. I would eat there every day if I could.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6fcYzjHbZi/
Napfényes Étterem (Budapest, Hungary)
During my first visit to this Hungarian restaurant and gourmet bakery, I almost started crying from the pure joy. Seriously. It was an intensely emotional experience for me.
Traditional Hungarian cuisine turned vegan by their impossibly talented chef makes this the finest vegan restaurant in Europe. The glass cases near the restaurant’s entrance are piled high with pastry items that cannot be bettered in my opinion.
Imagine traditional Italian food bursting with flavour. Imagine gnocchi. Imagine creamy tiramisu. Fried pasta. Ravioli. Now imagine this all done vegan.
So What? is the restaurant of your dreams if you adore Italian food. I was so shocked at how utterly delicious everything was during my visit, I kept pinching myself to make sure it wasn’t a dream.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo0_FhaiNme/
Doomie’s Home Cookin’ (Hollywood, United States of America)
Imagine being the happiest you can be. Imagine your happiest of happy places. Where do you see yourself?
When I close my eyes and think happy thoughts, I picture myself sitting at a table in Doomie’s with a vegan chicken basket in front of me and a jumbo soda off to the side.
Comfort food rarely comes more delicious than at Doomie’s.
My recent trip back to my home city of Brisbane, Australia left me shocked.
When I lived there, it was a vegan wasteland. There used to be only two vegan joints in town and it was a big deal to get along to them.
2019 is all different.
Brisbane is now overflowing with vegan eateries and is a plant eater’s paradise.
Heading up this vegan revolution is Grassfed in South Brisbane.
Grassfed is serving the best vegan fast food on the planet. The menu is stacked with burgers, cauliflower wings, curly fries, shakes, ice cream sundaes, and craft beers.
I could go on and on singing the praises of this place but maybe I’ll let my photos do the talking.
I really don’t think I’ve eaten tastier junk food in recent years.
How can you argue with soft serve ice cream topped with a battered and deep fried piece of Vego bar?
I recently flew out of Australia with QANTAS and the vegan food was on the correct side of acceptable.
First up was the main meal an even though the photo is atrocious, the meal itself was tasty and satisfying.
I enjoyed and pasta, vegetable, and tofu dish with a mini vegan bread. This main was also accompanied by a moist slice of chocolate cake and a pack of dried fruit pieces.
Once again, economy lighting and space restrictions mean I feel the need to apologise again for the terrible photography.
Next up was some sort of breakfast muffin sandwich that was so outrageously hot from overheating, I actually couldn’t hold it for fifteen minutes.
Once it cooled, I chomped my way through it and loved it. It was like a breakfast muffin filled with a bean patty.
Finally, I was served a breakfast dish consisting of vegetable and bean rissoles, mushrooms, and tomatoes.
This was accompanied by a bread roll and a packet of quinoa and apple crispy bites.
Of course this food wasn’t going to win awards, but it certainly kept me feeling well-fed and nourished during the 13-hour flight between Brisbane and Los Angeles.
As far as inflight meals go, QANTAS is up there with the best.
Some non-vegan stores are better for plant-based consumers than others, but I think I might have just been to THE BEST non-vegan store catering to vegans on the planet.
Seriously. This blog post is dozens and dozens of photos of vegan products all taken in one store.
Sam Coco in Brisbane, Australia is a 24-hour (that’s right, they never close!) fruit store and butchers that for some reason also has an amazing amount of vegan groceries.
I don’t know what else to say except please take your time to savour all my photos below.
These photos don’t represent even close to everything vegan available in the store.
The following is an excerpt from my first book Fat Gay Vegan: Eat, Drink and Live Like You Give a Sh!t.
While I am sometimes marginalised and oppressed with regards to my sexuality and weight, I understand that I also live with extreme privilege because I am a white, cis- gendered and able-bodied man. It’s the white man part of me that gets a lot of people to listen to the fat and gay parts of me.
The modern world is designed to reward me for simply being me at the expense of people who are not me.
We need to know our own place in the world in order to be the most positive force we can be. So, with that in mind, let me start by exploring my understanding of my privilege for a short while before we move on to a plan of action. (Apologies. Plan of action is included in the book but not here)
I grew up in a poor family with a lot of abuse and sadness in a town where gay kids like me were routinely harassed by law enforcement and local homophobes, but I survived when many people around me didn’t.
Inequitable systems of oppression were in place to benefit me as a white man even while I was being targeted for my perceived sexuality. People around me who didn’t present as white men had safety and opportunity taken away or denied to them.
I left school at age fifteen and moved out of my family home. Even though I didn’t complete the most basic high school requirements, I was never out of employment from the moment I left the school gates for the final time.
Of course, a lot of that employment was dreadful and underpaid, but the point is that even as an uneducated young person I was employed for any position for which I applied and nobody can tell me my appearance wasn’t responsible. I was able to earn a desperately needed income for food and accommodation when a lot of people my age were discriminated against because of institutionalised racism embedded in Australian society.
An adult close to me sexually abused women in my family and these women have lived with the ongoing trauma of that abuse. As a young man, I was statistically less likely to be abused by this person and I wasn’t.
My teenage friends and I were searched by the police with alarming regularity during our often drunken nights wandering the streets of our hometown, however, indigenous Australian young people in the same predicament didn’t get off with just a warning or even with their lives in a lot of instances.
The worst thing to happen to my group of white friends was watching our cheap sparkling wine being poured down the storm water drain while the police laughed at us and ridiculed our clothing. We were not arrested, detained or physically assaulted thanks to our white skin and we were afforded privilege, consideration and relative physical safety during these acts of police surveillance. This was not the case for young people who didn’t look like us.
There is a story I think of quite often involving a young man in my hometown. He lived with a physical disability that resulted in him walking with a limp. I would smile at him as he passed by my workplace maybe once a week. We were the same age and we both recognised the other as a queer teenager in a sad town where our kind was not celebrated. We both started going to the same gay bar as teenagers where we mixed with a lot of older people.
One terrible night, my hometown comrade was targeted by an older man who took him to a dark alley behind the gay bar and brutally bashed him until he was no longer alive. I found myself in countless compromised situations as a young gay man but I didn’t find myself targeted for living with a disability. To understand how people with disabilities are more often targets of violence, search for statistics in your local area and be prepared to be upset by what you find.
Following on from decades of dead end jobs, I secured a place at university to follow up on my interest and desire to become a schoolteacher. The four-year undergraduate degree culminated with a multi-month practical placement in a real classroom. I was the only person out of my group of friends offered a job by the school at the end of the practical teaching placement. I was also the only one of said group who was identifiable as a white man and I’m comfortable in saying that I was nowhere close to being the most accomplished or hard-working student teacher amongst my cohort.
I’m not reflecting on these memories to get a pat on the back for being progressively aware, I’m telling you because it is crucial for those of us living with and benefitting from privilege to understand that the animal rights movement is not separate to everything I’ve described above.
I have discovered that if I want to be a worthy activist for animals I must also learn to resist and challenge oppression in multiple forms within vegan circles. Vegan businesses, vegan activist groups, vegan socials, and vegan online spaces all operate within the same systemic framework of oppression that favours me in the ways I described above. If I am being rewarded, someone is being oppressed. That is how it works.
If you would like to read the follow up to this section, you can order my book from independent bookstores as well as online via WH Smith, Foyles, and Amazon. The book is also available via Audible for listening.
The Fry Family Food Co. has just launched two amazing-looking vegan pizzas featuring their legendary chicken-style strips.
Both the Smoky BBQ Woodfired Pizza and the Mediterranean Woodfired Pizza feature the chicken-style strips and are currently being sold by Coles supermarkets all around Australia.
The famous meat-free brand has suggested on social media that the pizzas will start to make their way into other stores soon and as they are made in Italy, it would make sense to find them in the UK before too long.
This is an exclusive excerpt from my book Fat Gay Vegan: Eat, Drink and Live Like You Give a Sh!t. Published by Nourish.
My auntie Jackie once took me to the circus and you had better believe me when I say the animals outnumbered the humans. I lost track of the number of creatures forced to jump through flaming hoops, walk on wires or drive tiny motor vehicles.
I had grown a lot taller than other children my age by the time my circus trip was foisted upon me and the donkey assigned to carry me around the ring did not look pleased with the prospect. My brown-corduroy adorned legs dragged in the dirt as the hot lights beat down and depraved-looking clowns smirked at the tall kid on the sad donkey. I’m fairly certain that was my final experience at any form of circus, but I think more due to the mortification and shame felt by me rather than concern for animal welfare.
Christmas in my hometown was always brutal. First of all, it was always sweltering hot and furthermore we had the joy of sitting around with relatives ranging from mildly to wildly racist. Animals featured heavily Christmas day, from the pig-now-called-ham wrapped in a water- soaked pillow case to keep it fresh to the family dog sitting under the table hoping for scraps. Prawns, crabs, chickens and turkeys who used to all be alive at some point were scattered around the buffet in order for me and the people I didn’t like all that much to experience festive cheer.
So, animals were absolutely everywhere in my life as a child in Australia, but I honestly didn’t give them much more thought than what I have described above. Not one adult explained to me the difference between prawns on the table and the dog under it. Understanding how animals lived and died was not my concern. I was socialised into thinking animals were available to eat, wear and prod with sticks unquestionably.
That’s what I think I have in common with a lot of you turning these pages right this moment.
Reflect for a moment on just how much animals were used in your young life, but how little thought was given to the how, what, when and why. Did adults and people responsible for your emotional growth explain the process of factory farm to dining table? The shark took a chunk from the turtle (another story from this chapter) just as I watched crabs being boiled alive in my kitchen at Christmas time, but they were all just ‘things’ in my mind. Objects. Just like the pine cones and the cliffs and the polished glass fragments at the seaside.
I didn’t understand that these animals were capable of fear and pain because nobody told me, and I would bet my last block of tofu they didn’t tell you either.
If you would like to get hold of a copy of this book, you can order online via Amazon.
If you are in the UK, you can order online via The Hive. This is a great way to support your local independent retailers as your order will be fulfilled by a high street store.
There has been some bad news this week out of Melbourne, Australia.
The Cruelty Free Shop in Fitzroy was severely damaged as a fire that started in the back alley behind the shop quickly spread to the shop, destroying stock and equipment in the process.
See a post made by the store owners below.
The store has asked for support in the form of people ordering stock through their online store. This will help them get back on their feet following on from the fire as quickly as possible.
The online store houses more than 3,500 products!
Of course they ship all over Australia, but unfortunately they do not send goods internationally.
If you don’t live in Australia but would like to support the Cruelty Free Shop in their efforts to rebuild the Fitzroy shop, now would be a great time to order a box of goodies for your Australia-based friends and family.
