Radhey Chai Bar raspberry cheesecake

Raw raspberry cheesecake, Brunswick Street

Pros: Delicious, light, creamy

Cons: Small portion, not sweet enough for everyone’s tastes

After a trip into the Cruelty Free Shop in Fitzroy to buy some Daiya cheese and vegan snacks, we went looking for somewhere to eat. Initially looking at Vegie Bar and seeing it was too crowded, my wife, mother in law and I kept walking down Brunswick Street until we came to Radhey Kitchen and Chai Bar.

It was fairly quiet, perhaps one other table was taken, relaxing and the food seemed well priced so we went in. You order at the bar and there were plenty of choices on the menu, including a $10 specials on the back page. The mix included everything from lasagna, pastas, focaccias and soup to curry, wraps, spring rolls, tandoori tofu and samosas. At the front, there were a couple of salads on display and an entire dessert case with brownies and cakes. The service was very good and there’s an outdoor section where you can eat if you prefer.

My wife and I decided to try the vegan meatballs in sauce, with a side of salad (we chose the tahini and potato salad) plus the quinoa bake, with cashew cream cheese, with chips. The MIL had a Malaysian wok fried noodle dish.

They all looked terrific and had a perfume-type aromatic taste to most of them.

The meatball tomato sauce was unexpectedly tempered — not the sharp, basil-style Italian tomato sauce that I am used to — and the meatballs seemed to be made out of potato and maybe chickpea flour. They had chai-style flavours throughout. I’m pretty sure I detected cinnamon and turmeric in the meatballs, perhaps even nutmeg and cardamom. While I can’t say this is my favourite way to have meatballs, I actually really liked the different flavour and they suited the theme of the restaurant.

The quinoa bake was amazing — delicate flavours with vegetables (we think eggplant and maybe zucchini) throughout. It was slightly tomato-flavoured and the cashew cream was gorgeous. The chips and ketchup were pretty standard frozen chip fare and seemed out of place with the other dishes we had.

We didn’t get around to trying their famous chai drinks (next time, for sure) and it’s worth noting that they don’t sell coffee. However, we did decide to try the cheesecake that I had been staring at since we entered. At $7 for a fair serving, we couldn’t resist. The colour was so beautiful and made the whole thing jump out at me from the display case. This sort of lavender-ish pink that makes a cheesecake that little bit better.

Smooth, creamy and not overly sweet as some vegan desserts can be, it not only looked beautiful but it tasted great as well.

Raspberries, along with figs and a few other fruits, have a special place in my memory, so I was super happy that you could really taste the raspberry flavour throughout. Unfortunately, it didn’t smell of raspberries, which was a little disappointing, but the taste definitely made up for it.

I think it had been frozen as it was very cold and dense in the middle, but despite this density it was still light when you ate it. The base was crumbly, but delicious and the perfect thickness.

Overall, I could totally eat a few if I hadn’t eaten a whole meal beforehand. For anyone visiting, it seems the dessert menu changes, with a number of other cheesecakes on their Facebook page (including wild berry, banana and chia and mango berry). I’ll be looking to visit again to try the others.

The price

The dishes were fairly priced — our mains were $10 and $14, with the Malaysian black bean noodles at around $12. The cheesecake was $7 — pricey for the size, but fair enough for a dense flavour and it did share easily among three people after big meals.

The ingredients

Raspberries, coconut, cashew, ccao (in the base), almonds (toasted on the top and perhaps in the base if not hazelnut)… if it was sweeter I would have suggest agave, but I’m not so sure.

The nutritional value

Sugar free, gluten free, raw and made using primarily local, organic ingredients, the cheesecake and the other food we ate is made on a principle of “Food-yoga”. Which is something about balancing what you eat. I can’t say whether it was healthy or not, but it was definitely not the worst around! From my understanding, it’s also the Buddhist practice where no onion or garlic are used in the cooking and this cafe uses those principles.