From Eden to Heaven

After a few blissful days on the coast, it was time to head back to Canberra. So on Saturday morning I got up before the sun (thanks to daylight savings) and headed northwest. After a day spent shopping with Andy’s parents I was hungry and glad that I made dinner plans with Anna (of the now-offline blog Veganista).

Now, Melbourne may be the vegan food mecca of Australia, but Canberra has a few gems of its own. Vegan Heaven in Canberra goes by the name of Au Lac.

Anna and I ate here once last time I was in Canberra, and it was just as good as I remembered. We ordered a lot of food, and ate nearly all of it (though I think we ate more last time).

For starters, we had the sweet and pickly Au Lac Special Salad. It comes with vegan prawn crackers, which are delicious.

Also as an appetiser (though it came after one of the mains) was two steamed Vegetable Dumplings. I’m not quite sure what is inside of these, but whatever it is, it’s good. And the light and fluffy dough made me wish we had ordered more.

We ordered two main meals and shared. One of the mains was Soy Beef Ginger. The soy beef was amazingly meat-like and was covered in ginger.

Our other main was the interestingly titled Au Lac Eight Special. The menu offered no more information than “Combination Hot Pot” so we didn’t really know what to expect. Lots of different kinds of veggies were simmered in a brown sauce with various mushrooms, tofu, and mock meats. It was hard to tell what was what, but the blend of textures was a nice change and the sauce was really rich and yummy.

All of that, plus steamed rice and jasmine tea left us with no room for dessert. But, we did get a free treat while we were in the restaurant.

Apparently Chinese New Year celebrations started early in Dickson. This dragon and his accompanying drummers visited all the restaurants and put on a show. Two men, one of them bent over at the waist, managed to dance around a semi-cramped restaurant without knocking anything over or tripping over themselves.

Happy year of the Ox everyone!