By Daisy Dumas
WHO
Elise McCann, actor playing Miss Honey in Matilda the Musical; of Paddington
WHERE
Veggie Patch Diner, Paddington
The bright Veggie Patch Diner evolved from a food truck. Credit: Wolter Peeters
WHY
"I probably go there three or four times a week. It's a vegetarian restaurant and I'm a vegetarian. All the food there is really tasty and really awesome and every time I take a friend there who's not a vegetarian, they find something they love.
They used to have a truck, the Veggie Patch, and I loved it and was always trying to work out where it was. They had this awesome mushroom burger and kumera chips. I'd see the truck around and wherever I'd see it I'd go and get something, even if I had already eaten. And now it's opened just down the road.
Elise McCann is a vegetarian and a regular at Veggie Patch Diner.Credit: Richard McFarlane
It's really modest and simple, with chilled park benches and metal tables. They have fresh herbs hanging from the ceiling. I've seen them get up and chop the herbs that they need. That gives you good vibe."
WHAT
"I love going there for breakfast and they let you play around with it. They have a black quinoa cornbread with an egg on top, but they let me have potato rosti as well. I have it with avocado, which I love. Anyone who's a sweet tooth, they have an amazing banana bread with home-made almond butter and home-made jam, and the jam changes each week.
They have different salads every day and different dips – it's rocking. I can feel like I can eat something awesome and it's not going to kill me."
ABOUT
"We're doing previews for the show, which opens at the Lyric on August 20. We've being rehearsing six days a week. I prep my meals and cook a lot. I chop up vegies at the beginning of every week, then I just chuck them in and make a salad really easily. I make a pistachio and mint falafel. I chop up tofu and fry it and have it [with] vegies and hummus and salt and pepper and I'm a happy camper. And loads of fresh herbs. I also make a vegan cheesecake, which I put in the freezer.
A two-hands-full burger from the Veggie Patch food truck. Credit: Steven Siewert
It is so cliched but my role in Matilda is such a blessing. I feel so lucky right now, it is a joy to play Miss Honey and it's also incredibly challenging. She's complex but she has this inner strength that she's constantly trying to find. It's made easy because of my colleagues – I'm working with miracle children, these 9-, 10- and 11-year-olds stand in front of 2000 people and they make your heart melt. It's one of the most amazing jobs I've ever done, it's a dream."
VEGGIE PATCH DINER
239 Glenmore Road, Paddington, 9331 5992, veggiepatchdiner.com.au
Breakfast $7-$18; lunch $11-$15. Lunch for two, $40 plus drinks.
Outside at the veggie diner. Credit: Wolter Peeters
★★★★ (OUT OF FIVE STARS)
REVIEW
The burger. It is, of course, an art form. There are briochy ones and (at a misnomic push) lettuce-wrapped ones and Macca's ones and bulging, juicy, egg-and-beetroot-filled ones. There are mini ones (which never work) and there are tragic, pale, footy game/petrol station ones. But you all know that, and you all have your favourite.
I'm a big fan of the merguez one down at Out of the Blue in Clovelly and a top-notch newcomer to the scene is Macelleria in Bondi, which has a drafty fit-out but seriously excellent beef burgers. I'm yet to try Rockpool's. But how many really decent burgers are vegetarian?
At least five, I'd wager – and they're all on Veggie Patch's chalkboard. Two hands' full, dripping, packed with crunch, colour, warmth and coolness, soft bread, protein and sweetness: they have it all in spades.
Who can quibble over the non-meaty meatiness of soft, salty, charred slabs of melty halloumi, with pickled green beans, fresh pineapple, smoked chilli sauce and mesclun? Not me. I managed to share the weighty, drippy, messy critter with my boyfriend out of sheer generosity but it felt like a very big and slightly tortuous act of kindness.
We also swapped bites of the smoked mushroom version with big hunks of tempeh and a blob of lime mayo and chipotle barbecue sauce. There was a kale slaw in there, too, and the whole thing was one big thumbed nose at beef patties the world over. Next time, I'll put the feta and zucchini, Cajun tofu and olive and almond version through their paces, and I can't say I'm dreading it.
The place, with its efficient, smiling staff (every time I leave Australia, I'm reminded of how lucky we are to have such high standards of service) is a sun trap, for seconders, so the outdoor tables are a people watching, warm nook of semi-social engagement. (But how much lovelier would Five Ways be if it wasn't choked by traffic the whole time? Bring on the pedestrianisation of our main shopping villages.)
Inside there's blonde wood, and pickling jars – full of variously dimming and deepening autumnal colours of peppers, beans, root vegies and fruits – are doing their bit along the backlit walls.
Salads from the bar make up part of the big tasting plates – the small ($12) version is more than enough to share as part of lunch. The day we're there, a red chickpea and beetroot number sits beside an Asian noodles and edamame one and a cauliflower salad, plus a couple of weighty baked edamame falafel, some dips – smoky hummus is one – and a couple of pieces of roti-like flat bread. The day's special wrap is filled with the same falafels and lots of salad and yoghurty sauce. As Elise McCann, aka Miss Honey, put it, "I can eat something awesome and it's not going to kill me."
Have some diner-style sides – sweet potato crisps, shoestring fries, onion rings or crinkle cut chips – if things are feeling a little too righteous.
It's licensed, too, and its selection of small-brewery beers and ciders elevates it from a cafe with extras to a lunch place with bright grown-upness.
Like its mobile predecessor – Veggie Patch started life as a van, doing the rounds at festivals and inner-city lunch spots – this simple Paddington cafe is a really bright and on-the-pulse venture, giving people what they want in ways that challenge the burger norm … without charging an arm and a leg. I'll get my hands messy for that, any day.