Monk Bodhi Dharma 2 Featuring Vegan French Toast

I'm eating gluten at the moment, while I wait to have a second biopsy. As a result I have a list of gluteny eating out that I want to do while I can. If are g/f you might want to look away from this blog for about a fortnight.

Monk Bodhi Dharma's french toast was pretty high up on the list of gluteny things to try since Steph and a few other vegan non-food bloggers raved about it. Toby also raved about his chocolate cupcake that he had last time we went so I had two things that I really wanted to try.

Toby didn't hestitate to order a pour over coffee, which he said had peppery/poppyseed type flavours, the owner said the coffee only comes in a small batch and is a special one, but Toby doesn't remember the name:

He also ordered Indian shepherd pie, which was more of a deconstructed shephered pie with roasted potatos and a lentil stew. He said that it was tasty and filling and loved the amount of protein and would be an excellent post workout meal.

Enough suspense, here is the vegan french toast. It normally comes with lemon ricotta, but the vegan version has a home made cream cheese which is actually quite sweet and almost icing like and is covered in pistachios. The baked pear and toast is covered in a some sort of lovely sweet syrup. The toast itself is very thick and crusty and I kind of struggled to cut it but was a nice contrast to the pear and cream cheese and pistachios. It really is PERFECT breakfast/dessert dish. I wish I had more today and am wondering if I can fit in one more visit before the biopsy.
There weren't any chocolate cupakes available but there was vegan vanilla and saffron cupcake. I enjoyed the unusual pairing, the cupcake had a lovely moist texture and the icing was great texture for vegan icing, kopha perhaps? I thought the saffron flavour would be subtle but you really could taste it. It was probably a bit too much after such a sweet breakfast, but I can't resist desserts.

Toby also grabbed a zen brownie for take away and shared it with some friends at a party. Each one has a double shot of ristretto of coffee in which is way too much coffee for me but Toby and others thought it was amazing.

The only bad thing about this eating gluteny things, is I know what I will be missing out on, and boy will I be missing out on the french toast.

A word of warning though be prepared to wait outside for a table at Monk Bodi Dharma, it's tiny and always seems to be busy on the weekend.

You can read about our first visit here.

Monk Bodhi Dharma
Rear 202 Carlisle St, Balaclava
9534 7250


P.s: we are having issues with our monitor, so can someone tell me if these pictures are a little blurry.