Pure Vegetarian, Adelaide Central Market Food Court

Pure Vegetarian is one of the places I go when I feel as though my body needs veggie hit when the weather starts to cool down. By that I mean a warm, filling meal of vegetables. To be clearer - not salad. We all know that you don't make friends with salad - this is especially true when the weather is cold.

Today I ordered hokkien noodles with vegetarian fish, spicy eggplant and sweet and sour gluten.



Vegetarian fish - firm tofu wrapped in seaweed, crumbed and fried - may sound a little odd but is in fact one of the two menu items I keep coming for. The seaweed provides an authentic fishy flavour while the tofu mimics the flesh of a firm white fish and the fried crumb creates a wonderful layer of crunch.

The other dish I love to order from Pure Vegetarian is the spicy eggplant. It's got a salty, spicy, umami quality that coats the mouth and makes the gums throb with flavour.

Disappointingly, the sweet and sour gluten couldn't match it with the other two dishes. Probably because the eggplant actually benefits from sitting around in a bain marie and cooking longer while the vegetarian fish sells so quickly it doesn't have time to get old. Because that's what the sweet and sour gluten tasted like - old and stale. Imagine using a piece of cardboard to balance out one leg of coffee table for for 10 years and then coating that cardboard in batter, frying it and dousing it in a sweet sauce and serving it with pineapple chunks. No matter how you dress it up it's still a decade old piece of cardboard - dry, tasteless and utterly without gastronomic merit.

In summary - vegetarian fish and spicy eggplant = good. Sweet and sour gluten = bad.

In all seriousness, do check Pure Vegetarian out. You'll love most of the food - just avoid the sweet abd sour gluten.

Thea, Gawler Place

Thea Vegetarian Tea Garden is less of a garden and more of a modern iteration of a tea house. The girls at work love this place, and have been known to eat here a couple of times a week. Specialising in flavoured and textured soy protein dishes, if you're into well priced and interesting vegetarian food, Thea is the place go.


What is immediately noticeable about Thea is the striking decor. Bridging the gap between modern and traditional Asian furniture, the dark-wooded tables, arresting artwork and scattering of tea making implements in the store suggests a haven of peace. The atmosphere is anything but. Filled to the brim with office workers, this place is always pumping. I've been here a number of times before, and the food usually comes out pretty quickly.

Serving up dishes with names like Sweet and Sour Thing (breaded gluten and seaweed protien served with sweet and sour sauce) and Mushroom Nuggets with Black Pepper Sauce (which is exactly as it sounds) the menu could look quite daunting to the average anglo eater. So, while everything is pretty tasty, this is not a place for picky eaters.

I went with a couple of friends from work. Usually the soup is pretty popular, but I ordered the mushroom nuggets.

Though the nuggets didn't resemble anything like mushroom (the texture was like a rubbery cardboard), the black pepper sauce was perfectly peppery and nicely savoury. The rice was delicately flavoured and the salad was fresh and light (even if it had bloody corn in it... what is it with corn at the moment?).

A number of colleagues ordered the bbq rice, which if I remember correctly, was textured soy and rice protein made to resemble pork. This dish passed muster with the dedicated meat eaters of the group.


Thea also specialises in hot and cold tea. I ordered a hot lemon green tea, which was sweet and lemony. A fellow diner ordered a strawberry snow bubble tea, which was sculled without the offer of a taste. I'm told it was delicious.


Thea is open during the week for lunch, and Friday night for dinner. As a dedicated meat eater, it's the kind of place I'm happy to go to once every couple of months. It's also the place to go if you want to impress that hot, sophisticated vego.