Mister Nice Guy ‘Cream cheese icing’, ‘Roast veggie bagel’ and ‘Cherry cheesecake’
A vegan bakery in Melbourne’s Ascot Vale
Cream cheese on a bagel, and cheesecake
Pros: Good atmosphere, fabulous sweets, rarity to see a vegan bakery, decent prices, clear allergen labeling
Cons: Busy, takes a while to get served, could make the savouries at home myself, not enough cheese-orientated menu items to keep this cheese-lover happy
This vegan bakery, Mister Nice Guy in Ascot Vale (they also have a Prahran store that I hear only stocks the cupcakes), caught my attention online recently with its beautiful photographs of sweet baked goods and extensive menu. I caught up with a friend, and dragged my partner and mother-in-law, and we settled in for a bite.
It took us a while to get to the bakery’s location (151 Union Road, Ascot Vale), but was well worth the drive and parking wasn’t too tricky. We entered at around 11.45am last Sunday, and it was a struggle to find a table at first.
I wish I’d snapped a few photos of the interior, but it’s of that slightly hipster worn-out appearance that makes it somehow really comfortable and relaxing to eat in. Think painted bricks, chalkboard walls, wooden tables and cake stands and you’ll get what I mean. Short black bar-stool style seats for some tables, it also has some outdoor seating options on the pavement — but it was a little cold for me to be dining outside.
It seems to be hipster-mecca, attracting an alternative clientele, the type with plugs in their earlobes and strange hair lengths, which adds to the atmosphere that it’s a “hidden gem”… even if the majority of the vegan population of Melbourne know about it (and, I’d imagine, visiting on the Sunday — it was pretty packed at times). We even bumped into people we knew, and considering we’re not that familiar with Melburnians it attests to the popularity of this place.
I can’t imagine a better pairing with cheese than carbohydrates (although a recent Frankie article sought to advise on cheese and tea pairings, which was an amusing read, though they also profiled Mister Nice Guy not long ago) — be they carbohydrates of the wine variety or the bread variety. So it is only natural that I was leaning towards anything with a cheese (and a gluten free) option on the menu. Luckily, everything was clearly labelled as to allergens — including soy and gluten.
It’s a rotating menu, so you choose items from in the glass cabinets at the front. This is a little impractical given the popularity of the shop and its size, but is a nice head-nod to other non-vegan bakeries, and it’s actually all sorts of unspeakable loveliness to be able to see all the cakes displayed and, effectively, choose any of them. Hugely enjoyable, despite jostling with other diners and trying to see what the bagels look like around the queue in front of it.
You queue and order at the counter, and then they hand you your cold foods on plates while you wait for your warm foods. Which means, if you’re really hungry, you start eating your cakes before your savouries — kind of bizarre. I was also a little unimpressed with how long it took for a hot chocolate to arrive — I’d finished drinking my soy latte (from Naked Espresso) and eating my bagel before it showed up at the table. I’m told it was worth the wait, though a bit of a shame that it took so long (to the point where I went back up to the counter to check that they hadn’t forgotten it). You can choose your ‘milk’ to be soy, almond, rice or hazelnut, which is great. We opted for soy, while my friend had coconut milk on her milkshake (though she said it tasted like soy).
For myself, my partner and mother in law we bought three toasted bagels, two soy lattes, a hot chocolate, a massive slice of cheesecake and a polish chocolate babka (basically a chocolate scroll). We didn’t finish all the food — the babka came home and was my girlfriend’s coffee snack the next day. She said it was a bit sweet for her tastes, but a nice luxury all the same.
I came back to the table with the Cherry Cheezecake and a three-pronged fork. Except this one looked different to that on the website — being more like the Baked New York Cheezecake on the inside and with a cherry topping, as opposed to having cherry inside. This bothered me not at all — I am always happy to eat cheese or cheesecake in any form.
It’s very smooth, and I think the cheeze is nut-based, possibly cashews, as it’s lovely and creamy. It’s not overtly sweet, which is good because the cherry aspect is sweet enough being a coagulated jelly-style topping (with whole cherries that you’d commonly find floating in syrup in a tin or jar) that I really liked. The crust is buttery as advertised and is a revelation — being the perfect thickness to make it filling but not overwhelming, and not stodgy in the way many crusts can be. It holds its shape beautifully, and isn’t that odd gelatinous springy texture that you get from many vegan cheezecakes.
I’d eaten half of it by the time the bagel made it out of the toaster and onto my table.
I had the Roast Veggie Bagel, on a gluten free bagel bun.
While I was pretty sure they used Tofutti’s Better Than Cream Cheese in the bagel, as it’s an unmistakeably processed-looking smooth white paste and reminds me of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, apparently they make all their cheeses in house. It is basically the perfect bagel cheese and worked really well with the pesto that they’d also spread on the other half. The pesto reminded me of the Botanical Cuisine pesto (they do cheeses and desserts too if you’re interested), but I couldn’t be sure. It had three thin pieces of roasted capsicum (of the pickled variety from the jar) that you could see through the bagel hole, a handful of baby spinach and a bit of roast pumpkin. I read online that it was supposed to have onion in it, but I didn’t remember any and there’s none in my photographs either — however, I don’t think it affected the flavour at all.
The bagel was enjoyable but, on the chance that there are vegan bagel buns around or if I just opted for bread, I could easily make something similar at home. There also wasn’t that much filling on mine — and a bit of Internet stalking of other peoples’ experiences suggests that maybe we had an off day on the bagel front.
It was largely the same with the other bagels that came out — our table had BLT and curried ‘egg’ (tofu) bagels. The BLT uses Cheatin’ brand faux-bacon. They looked great, and I hear they tasted good, but again these could be made at home pretty easily. However, it is nice to have something vegan freshly made and not pay a premium for it — you’d pay similar for a non-vegan bagel I think. One little quibble I have as well is that it’d be nice if they could toast it in a griddled-toaster, I love the look of that on a bagel and think they’d be far more impressive when they came out (I have seen some Instagram photos where they’ve come out from a griddle, but sadly ours didn’t — perhaps because we had gluten free ones?). Some of the bagels have poppy seeds or sesame seeds on them.
They also do a cheese and vegemite scroll for $4.50 each that to me looked like it could be either VBites/Cheezly or Vegusto type cheese (again, made in house though). The menu says it’s a “nut-based” cheese and my guess is perhaps a cashew and nutritional yeast combination — I’m not sure.
While I’m a savoury person, people really go to this place for the sweets.
Their recipe for cream cheese icing is online, so, inspired by the goodies in store, I thought I’d give it a try myself on a homemade banana and carrot cake.
Banana and carrot cake recipe:
I basically made this one up as I went as we had a whole bag of carrots and some frozen bananas that I wanted to use up. The amounts here are my estimates of what I’ve used.
Ingredients:
Three frozen bananas chopped
Three grated medium carrots (peeled, topped and tailed)
300 grams gluten free flour
Yeast (three teaspoons)
Egg replacer
Nuttelex (half a cup)
Soy milk (150ml)
Maple syrup (about half a cup)
Vanilla essence (one capful)
Easy peasy steps:
If you’re using frozen bananas, they will have gone black — they’re still fine to eat — but they’ll be simple to peel, just top and tail them and use a knife to segment off the skin.
Mush up the banana and carrot together with vanilla essence.
Combine the nuttelex, maple syrup and three “eggs” worth of egg replacer (including the water, as per your packet’s instructions) in a separate bowl. Add the flour. Put the yeast in half a glass of warm soy milk, and stir. Wait until it froths. Add to the flour mix and then add the banana/carrot mix.
Stir the mixture thoroughly.
Grease a pan (I used baking paper for this as it’s a slightly more stodgy cake) and then spoon the mixture in before leveling it out.
Bake on high for 30 to 40 minutes. Keep testing it with a knife to determine whether the inside is cooked. Mine sank as I had to turn it off when it wasn’t quite done (shopping duties called!) but it wasn’t a complete disaster.
Their icing recipe calls for:
2 cup vegan cream cheese
4 cups icing sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 lemon zested and juiced
I used half a tub of Tofutti, mixed with about one and a half its size of icing sugar, half a capful of vanilla essence and half of one lemon’s juice.
Beat it all together for as long as you can stand it — it should go smooth. There may be little lumps, but don’t be too concerned.
Wait until the cake is cool, then add the icing and refrigerate.
The resulting cake was divine — a little dense, but it held its shape perfectly and because I used maple syrup instead of sugar, it wasn’t too sweet with the icing. The icing tastes a little bit like yoghurt to me — but it was excellent.
I’m pretty chuffed with both this effort, and Mister Nice Guys’ recipe that I’d adapted for the icing. However, it’s always nice to visit “in house”. So back to Mister Nice Guy…
The price
I thought that, for three of us, just short of $50 was reasonable, filling and justifiable enough to pop in for either a lunch or just a coffee catch up (with delectable treats as well). I can’t remember the specific breakdown, however the cheezecake was around $7 or $8 for the slice, the babka was $4.50 and I think each bagel was around the $8 or so mark — I don’t remember if the bill was more for the gluten free ones and I opted not to get a receipt. I’ve read that the coffees and drinks are quite expensive, which actually makes sense when doing a bit of mental calculating — but I do think we got our money’s worth.
You can buy a whole cheesecake for about $80. They’re big cakes, but it is quite a bit to outlay. They even do wedding cakes, covered in beautifully iced rosettes and there was an amazing rainbow cake on display. If it was for an event or similar, then I can see it being justifiable.
The ingredients
I’m guessing here, but this is what I’d be assuming.
Cherry Cheezecake: Cashew nuts, cherries, maybe a bit of icing sugar, glazing agent (my guess is vegeset), vegan biscuit base, possibly nuttelex, coconut oil.
I don’t know how close it is to the cream cheese icing they make, although clearly icing would be sweeter, however I’d imagine it has some of the similar ingredients as the icing above does.
They also have a cherry pie recipe online, which may give you an idea of what is potentially in that cherry glaze/topping on the cheezecake.
And this is slightly unrelated, but holy crap I’m sharing it anyway: their Christmas cake with candy cane icing recipe.
Roast veggie bagel: GF bagel bun, Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, pesto (they call it trio pesto, but I don’t really know what that means — rocket, basil and something?), baby spinach, roast pumpkin, roasted red capsicum (pickled) and perhaps Nuttelex on the bagel bun
You might find onion in yours, if my previous comments are correct.
I wish there were more savoury gluten free cheese dishes to choose from. They had a shepherd’s pie that used TVP mince, but there didn’t appear to be any cheese on the top of it. I have read online that there was a ‘Cheezy garlic pockets’ option for a while, which sounds truly amazing.
The nutritional value
They are kosher, and offer soy-free, gluten-free, wheat-free, corn-free, fructose-free and low GI options. While anything that tastes as amazing as that cheezecake is never going to be good for you, it’s likely better than a non-vegan counterpart and you could do worse for yourself. Having cooked a vegan cheesecake in the past, I know just how much sugar you can cram in and still have it taste as though it’s good for you (scary that)!
They also use organic and fair trade ingredients where possible.
If you’re waiting for something in particular, keep an eye on their Facebook changes for updates on what is in stock each day. The menu rotates.
It would be great if they had an outlet closer to work or the CBD. I also wish I’d tried the peanut butter cakes — next time! My ideal day out now involves a vegan Laksa at Flemington’s Laksa King, and sweet treats here.
Note: They’re closed Mondays, but other weekday hours are 9am to 6pm, with weekends from 9am to 5pm. They have what appears to be limited delivery options but worthwhile if you’re close by, and for everyone else they do takeaway.
For more pics hit up their Instagram (it’s worth it).
