Eating Out: Buddha's Birthday at South Bank

I have quite a bit of catching up on my Eating Out posts... this last weekend I had friends visiting and we ate our way around Brisbane for two and a half days! However, there are a few things to get through before we get to that. A while ago, I went to Buddha's birthday at South Bank. This is held every year, and includes a vegetarian food festival as well. It isn't all vegan, so you do need to ask around, but there are lots of vegan options. It was a horrible, cold and rainy day. And I was ready to bail on the whole thing, but my Mum was keen to go, so we went. Just for a little bit of food, trying to stay out of the rain (there really were no undercover areas for eating). On the plus side there were not many people there! Normally it is packed. Please excuse the bad photos, they were taken balancing an umbrella and the food and my phone.

I started with a steamed vegetable bun from a random stall, which was hot and yummy.



There was a stall selling cups of five skewers, so I got a random assortment of the vegan offerings. I wasn't the biggest fan, the mock meats were not the greatest quality, and one of them was seafood-like, which I don't enjoy.



I also got some yummy radish cakes from the Su Life stall.



Mum ordered a Satay Burger from the Vege Rama stall, which wasn't good. The sauce was just at thin curry sauce, no obvious peanut to it. And the patty was meh.



We also found a sweet potato chips stall, and ordered some. Though instead of being the proper chips/fries that we were expecting, and that other people had been walking around with, they were more like chips/crisps... OK briefly but then just very oily.



We decided to spread out through South Bank for some sweets. Normally I go to Beach House for vegan ice cream, but I decided to give Gelare a try. Unfortunately no vegan cones, so you have to get cups. Most of the flavours are fruit based sorbets, but they did have a chocolate and a green tea one as well. I got Strawberry Fields and Banana Caramel scoops. The strawberry one had that very strong, almost too sweet taste that I find sorbets often have, but mixed in with the banana one it was like a nice strawberry ice cream.



I also stopped by Doughnut Time to try their Matcha Made In Heaven vegan doughnut. The slight bitterness of the matcha actually helped bring down the sweetness of the glaze. It is my favourite glazed one I have had from there.



Gelare South Bank - 3 Grey Street, South Brisbane, Queensland - (07) 3255 1314

Doughnut Time South Bank - 186 Grey Street, South Bank, QLD

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Just another one in my series of 'Sahara on the blanket' photos. Don't worry, next post I shall start a series entitled 'Dim Sim on her back on my lap'... you don't want to miss it!