The King street vegan quarter acre: part IV
This is a long overdue review. As best we can figure out Basil Pizza in Newtown, has a separate and completely vegan (and pizza-free) breakfast menu on weekends. Best guess is down to some restaurant sharing scheme between the owner of the pizzeria and the operators of the cafe.
Since the close of McDonna’s (RIP), Newtown has been a desolate wasteland for vegan breakfast and brunch. Pretty much if you wanted something that wasn’t mock-meat and vegan in Newtown (or Thai) the pickings were slim. Along came Basil Pizza’s weekend vegan cafe (for lack of a better name) and filled a much needed void.
Expectations were high and initial impressions are good. Friendly staff, decent coffee and an all vegan breakfast menu goddamn it! That’s three out of five boxes ticked (your guess is as good as ours with what the other two are, we just make this up as we go along). The menu features a fry up (half eaten and pictured below), scrambled tofu and buckwheat pancakes, among other things. We here at VeganSydney like to sample a place at least twice–preferrably several times before throwing it out to our readers, but initial impressions were good enough the first time around. Stay tuned for a more comprehensive review once we’ve logged some more lazy Sunday hours here…
The weekend vegan cafe is called Naked Expresso and it has come about through the owner of Basil Pizza and Naked Espresso being business partners.
I’m glad you enjoyed it, the food and staff are great and it’s usually packed which is good for them. Now we just need more all-vegan cafes like this to pop up all over Sydney.
Well……
We enjoyed it, however it did lack that bit of imagination. We had the two different big breakfasts and it’s just like it is in the photo. It was very much like you would make at home (or even not as good actually) with nothing ‘special’. The day before we had had the tofu scramble at Brown Sugar in Bondi, and it was more interesting, with varied flavours and nuances.
I agree – I’m looking forward to more vegan cafes opening up.
Hello from Charles, the resident vegan from Basil/Naked.
I thought I should thank you for the review and comments, and to say that we’ll always welcome suggestions from fellow vegan travellers.
Some background here might be fair. I’ve lived immediately next door to the Basil Pizza location (literally, at 124 upstairs) for the last seven years, and I have been vegan since June 2003. My little vegan daughter was born in 2004, and together we have seen many businesses come and go downstairs and down the street.
How did I get involved with Basil?
In 2005, I was served non-vegan real-animal-secretion-cheese of some sort on a so-called “vegan pizza” by the “Little Gourmet Pizza Shop” at the now Basil/Naked location in 2005. After I had told them about their animal cheese, I was so angry at their response and stubborn and rude denial that I never returned. It turned out that the product was probably something called “mini-chol”, a largely animal product often dishonestly passed off as vegan. In fairness to many restaurants selling mini-chol, there are lying suppliers claiming that the product is vegan when it simply isn’t.
When the business was bought by Damon in November 2006 and revamped as “Basil” he continued with the mini-chol product in good faith – and wrongly. I discovered this when I went down a week or so after the opening of “Basil” to order a vegan pizza from the “new” place. You all know how it is – you give a new place a careful and somewhat suspicious vegan fair go.
This is how Damon and I first met, when I ordered a vegan pizza – and it wasn’t.
One bite of the pizza and follow up smell let me know instantly that it had “animal” all over it. Every vegan knows this feeling, yes? The realisation, the gag, and the the outrage at being stiffed, AGAIN! I calmly stood up, paid for the pizza at the counter and told the new owner that his cheese stuff was in fact… cheese. He asked me if I was sure, and I said yes, and he couldn’t believe it – he had been assured by the “mini-chol” supplier AND the previous business owners it was vegan. He was upset too and immediately offered me a refund, and promised to find out more about the mini-chol. His response was honest, immediate, and appropriate.
Rather than accept the refund, or make a scene, I undertook to help him find a solution and then let him make me a real vegan pizza. Or – if I was wrong – to ring me and call me names. Of course, I was right about the mini-chol as we all now know. He SMSd me that night apologising again, and asking for my help in finding a solution. We found “Cheezly” imported by Jeremy at Vegan Perfection, Damon made me the pizza he owed me, and because we had dealt with each other honestly we set the foundation for a friendship that continues today.
There’s more: (if you are still reading!)
Like many vegans, I became completely annoyed with being lied to by people at restaurants, served cow milk in my coffee by mistake, seeing the filthy, festy espresso machine steam wand being pushed into a jug of soy milk; pig-fat covered mushrooms; cow fat covered chips and hash browns, chicken’s eggs in pancakes (rant… Rant.. RANT!) I was also sick of wading through a greasy atmosphere of vaporised smoked dead pig to have breakfast, BYO Nuttelex, and having to carefully smell and taste test my daughter’s food.
So late last year I approached my friend Damon with an idea – instead of the premises being used only after 5:00pm (hey – the rent was already paid) – how about I invest in the business (I prefer perhaps the term “vegan infiltration”, haha) and serve ONLY real vegan breakfast and ONLY real vegan coffee, and help get the vegan menu growing.
…and that is how “Naked” (all ONLY vegan weekend breakfast, all ONLY vegan weekend lunch, all ONLY vegan coffee ALWAYS, all ONLY vegan “Primal Pies” etc.) came to be at Basil Pizza. I just wanted a decent breakfast for me and my daughter without the hassle, the disappointment, and to meet more vegan people, and to see if I could bring familiar but vegan food to a bigger audience – to kind of gently smash (!?) the idea that breakfast had to be carrion and secretions. Oh, and I wanted a pie with sauce sometimes, and a vanilla slice, so now we make our own.
I had to smile at StevenM’s comment – at myself really because from one angle I have to completely agree. But a lot of us can have fragile tummies when crawling in for brunch at midday, so we do keep things mostly simple. Steven, we hear you. Please make some suggestions – we’ll listen. I’m hoping more vegan cafes open up too, and I’d love to see an Iku Wholefoods very close by. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to show that 100% vegan cafes can be good business, and perhaps help other’s get started too.
Sarah and Leigh are busy with new menu ideas. Sarah Wade cooks breakfast with us on weekends, and has served a long time as secretary of the vegan society here. Leigh Drew wrote “Vegan Indulgence” and makes our desserts (all vegan too, ssshhhh!) Sunday afternoon “pie with sauce and a vanilla slice”, anyone?
We still have heaps of work to do; I have to get the web sites re-done, and I’m in the middle of moving to a new flat down the road that isn’t half falling down like this one.
I hope you’ll all join us again soon, and we’ve just started serving pizza, pasta and pies (all vegan ONLY) for lunch on weekends too.
Cheers.