Mum – meatless meals in Wong Chuk Hang

In a city where it is far too easy to be unhealthy, vegetarian restaurants are thankfully starting to pop up everywhere we look! Mum Veggie + Coffee + Sweet, a cute vegetarian café, has recently joined the throng, offering healthy and delicious food to South-siders in the ever-burgeoning area of Wong Chuk Hang.

As I’m sure you must now be aware, the thought of me bidding adieu to meat is about as likely to happen as me giving up food altogether! That said, I do appreciate a good veggie meal and was very happy to put Mum to the test.

On the ground floor of the shiny One Island South building, Mum is a modern, cosy space with that ever-popular unfinished look – exposed ceilings, dusty stone walls and a hotchpotch of furniture. There is certainly something sweet and alluring about this little spot, as further evidenced by the many curious faces we watched during our meal cautiously peering through the entrance, before slowly making their way to the counter display of fresh, colourful salads and cakes.

After a delicious refreshing juice (try the Super C, loaded with fresh orange, apple and lemon), we tucked into a burdock root salad. The combination of colours and textures from the burdock root, carrots, bean sprouts and salad leaves, lightly dressed in a moreish sesame dressing, married together beautifully.

Whilst we loved the idea of the Mum’s dumpling-style udon noodles, the vegetable dumplings were sadly a little lacking in flavour. Dunked into the chilli and sesame dipping sauce, they fared a little better, but would have benefitted from a little more seasoning. Thankfully, however, the perfectly doughy udon noodles were spot on.

Possibly the best of the three dishes we tried were the sesame somen noodles with wakame seaweed and assorted veggies. Again, the array of textures, from the crunchy leaves and seaweed to the chewy noodles, complemented each other well, and the sesame dressing (I think Mum likes sesame!) completed the dish.

Unable to resist the gorgeous looking cakes that had been staring at us from the moment we sat down, we ordered three to share: the vegan banana cake, tofu brownie and vegan toffee apple cake. Whilst we found the banana cake a little on the dry side, the toffee apple cake, served warm, was sweet and comforting, with a layer of fresh apple on top to keep it moist. The tofu brownie, however, by far outshone the other two. This was also served warm and was utterly heavenly; you would never tell it was made with tofu and it was hard to believe it wasn’t terribly bad for me!

Prices at Mum are as refreshing as the food, with main courses around $50-70 and desserts around $25. It’s not necessarily somewhere I would rush back to given its slightly out-of-the-way location and the fact that it doesn’t open for dinner either, but if I found myself in the area, there is no denying that I would stop by, even if just for a ‘healthy’ chocolate brownie!

Want more meatless meal inspiration? Check out Sassy’s top 10 veggie restaurants in Hong Kong here!

MUM Veggie + Coffee + Sweet  G/F, Shop No. G07, One Island South, 2 Heung Yip Road, Aberdeen, Hong Kong
2115 3348  www.facebook.com/…

Check out more from Ale on her fab blog, The Dim Sum Diaries!