Eating Out: New Chinese Garden Seafood Restaurant

You wouldn't think that a place called New Chinese Garden Seafood Restaurant would be a place that vegans would run to, but here we are. With more and more restaurants in Brisbane catering to vegans, this restaurant launched a separate vegan menu earlier this year. I headed there with my best friend one lunchtime to try it out, and boy did we try things!

Chicken Corn Soup is one of my favourite soups, something I have always loved ordering. This one had lovely flavour, with chunks of 'chikn' and corn. Be careful not to burn your tongue!



The Steamed Dim Sims (uh, my baby!) were more like dumplings than dim sims, with a much more delicate wrapping. Not being the biggest fan of the food dim sim (but the biggest fan of the cat Dim Sim), I preferred this.



I love Char Kway Teow, and this Beef version did not disappoint. It was my favourite dish of the day. They use those Lamyong beef strips that I absolutely love! Not too oily, and full of flavour.



The Vegan Fried Rice was a bit of a letdown. I feel like so many places just serve steamed rice and vegetables mixed together, and it lacks any of that really great fried rice flavour.



The Duk In Plum Sauce took us a bit by surprise, being deep fried. We had skipped over some of the a=obviously deep fried chicken dishes, but other restaurants I have eaten at have not usually served the vegan duck deep fried. I just have a low tolerance for too much fried. But even this was really good, not too much batter, nice and crispy, in a tangy plum sauce.



Our final dish was the Eggplant and Fried Tofu, which says subject to availability but thankfully was available that day. Again, a surprise in that it was almost like a stew, rather than a stir-fry. But a delicious, super garlicky stew!



So that is what we ordered (and also took home, we didn't finish it all but we sure wanted to try a lot). There are heaps more things on the menu, including a fun feature where you can build your own stir-fry by choosing your base (a range of mock meats, tofu, or all veggie) and your sauce (eight to choose from!), and then adding extra vegetables or mushrooms or noodles depending on what you feel like, so the options are endless! Oh, there is also dessert, with my beloved So Good soy ice cream on it.

I am keen to get back to here! If you go, be sure to ask for the vegan menu. Another note, when we were there they had several large tanks, the sort you would normally see live aquatic animals in to be chosen for death and eating. But the tanks were all empty, and this was on a Saturday, so I hope that this is the norm.

New Chinese Garden Seafood Restaurant - 385 Gympie Rd, Kedron, Queensland - (07) 3359 2111

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



It's a sparse week of blogging this week, there won't be any midweek munchies as the week got away from me a bit. Partly because this baby girl has had more bladder issues. Urine results still show no infection, and yet she seems to respond well to antibiotics. So who knows. She's OK now, but Monday afternoon she was very distressed for a while until I got some drugs into her. Oh, my love.