Look Out For aduki’s Vegan Award Winners

Winners in the 2008 aduki awards, celebrating Australia’s vegan community, have just been announced. These awards acknowledge vegan food and living with the aim of showcasing the best animal-free products, places and businesses.

aduki’s Managing Editor, Emily Clarke, says:

‘It’s been a tight race in some of the categories and voting came right down to the last day. Others, like the Most Vegan-Friendly City category, had clear winners from the moment voting opened…

‘It was great to see that the businesses were represented all over Australia, even though aduki is Melbourne-based. There really was a spread of voters and winners across the country.’’

The Winners

Best veg restaurant

Green Gourmet www.greengourmet.com.au/

A Sydney stalwart, Green Gourmet offers Chinese vegetable, tofu and mock meat dishes, all 100 per cent vegan. The restaurant is a family run business, aiming to produce food that is nutritious for the body and the development of a balanced mind. Owner Colin Fung also runs a vegan grocery store next to the Newtown restaurant that sells a range of packaged goods as well as tofu ice cream.

Australia’s most vegan-friendly city

Melbourne www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/

Melbourne was a clear winner in this category. With over 50 vegetarian and vegan restaurants and innumerable others offering fantastic food options for vegans, we can see why. Melbourne was also the first to hold a World Vegan Day festival and is most likely home to the largest population of vegans of Australia’s capital cities. And as the only city in Australia to offer a vegan ‘meat pie’ and ‘sausage roll’ on a daily basis, Melbourne truly deserves this title.

Best vegan beer

Coopers Pale Ale www.coopers.com.au

Coopers has long been known as ‘the vegan beer’. It has a special place for many vegans thanks to its affordability, availability and great taste. Being a family run company, rather than a faceless multinational, also helps the suds to go down a little smoother. Many a Coopers-lover will argue their point of Pale (green) vs Sparkling (red), but in this instance, green reigns supreme!

Best vegan wine

Brown Brothers Cienna & Cabernet www.brownbrothers.com.au/

Steeped in tradition, Brown Brothers has a rich family history of wine making dating back to 1857. The Victorian winery offers a huge range of wines and its Cienna & Cabernet is one of its vegan options. A light wine with a vibrant ruby red colour and aromas of fresh raspberries and red currants, the Cienna & Cabernet is soft and juicy with a refreshing finish.

Best mock meat dish or product

Regular Vegan Burger (Lord of the Fries) www.lordofthefries.com.au

Since opening the first shop front less than three years ago, Lord of the Fries has become a Melbourne institution. Late night, drunken burgers are a favourite among city-dwelling hipsters; vegan or not. The classic, regular vegan burger offers a TVP patty, cheezly, lettuce, pickles, onions and sauce on a white bread bun. What started out as a mobile food van has developed into two shops serving up meat-free burgers to Melbourne.

Best soy/non-dairy product

Cheezly www.redwoodfoods.co.uk/

Since arriving in Australia thanks to the folks at Vegan Perfection, Redwood’s ‘Cheezly’ has been a massive hit with Aussie vegans. The UK product line offers a range of soy cheese varieties including supermelting edam, supermelting mozzarella, mature white cheddar, and garlic and herb cheddar. All of the ‘cheeses’ are gluten-free, casein-free and lactose-free and produced in a dedicated vegan factory.

Best vegan dessert dish or product

Turtle Mountain Soy Ice Cream www.turtlemountain.com/

Imported from the vegan heartland, Oregon, USA, Turtle Mountain’s range of dairy-free desserts was created with vegans and allergy sufferers in mind. This truly gourmet soy ice cream comes in a massive range of divine flavours. In addition to Australia and the US, the products can be found in Canada, UK, Japan, Virgin Islands, and Korea.

Best vegan chocolate

Endangered Species www.chocolatebar.com

Endangered Species offers a number of vegan-suitable dark chocolate varieties of its fair trade, organic chocolate. Each flavour has a name relating to a different endangered species and has that animal pictured on the wrapper. The company hopes to raise awareness for endangered animals and 10 per cent of all net profits are donated to help support species, habitat and humanity.

Favourite Aussie vegan business

The Cruelty Free Shop crueltyfreeshop.com.au/

Jessica who runs The Cruelty Free Shop is one of the darlings of the Australian vegan community. A tireless campaigner for animals and veganism, and a lovely lady to boot, it’s no surprise we got a lot of emails singing her praises. The online vegan store offers shoppers a range of goodies from cookbooks to condoms and cream cheese to nail polish; all vegan and all cruelty-free.

Best Aussie veg website/blog

Viva La Vegan www.vivalavegan.net

Leigh-Chantelle who runs Viva La Vegan also publishes vegan recipe calendars by the same name. The aim of her Viva La Vegan site is to provide a social networking opportunity for vegans. It provides a platform for members to meet likeminded people, share recipes, stories and ideas. Currently receiving a facelift, the site will soon offer podcasts and videocasts also.

About aduki independent press

aduki is a unique small press based in Melbourne, Australia.

The focus is non-fiction books, essays and magazines with particular interest in: community, environment, veganism, migration, politics, social justice and travel.

They publish work by emerging and established authors and cover topics and issues that are often overlooked in mainstream media.

You can expect titles from aduki independent press to provoke discussion and debate and be a source of learning and entertainment.

They also publish aduki magazine, a food and lifestyle publication for vegetarians and vegans. aduki as been re-launched as ‘aduki online’, a web-based resource for vegan news and information from Australia and around the world.

Very interesting – well done aduki