Last Sunday I opted for a beach day in Mooloolaba with friends instead of tackling the stack of textbooks sitting on my desk (always the better choice, am I right?)
After a few blissful hours spent laying in the sun, I suddenly hit a low point when I realized I’d completely forgotten to put on sunscreen and had badly burned my derrière pack a lunch and was absolutely starving.
The Mooloolaba Esplanade really has the nicest cafés and restaurants, but most of them are definitely made for sitting down and enjoying a meal. I’m not exactly a ‘local’ yet in Mooloolaba, so I was having a hard time finding something quick and easy – …and vegan… – to just grab with me and go back down to the beach.
A moment of clarity came upon me and I remembered having eyed out a particular healthy-looking café a few weeks ago. I even impressed myself and my companion enormously by remembering exactly where it was, a couple of blocks up from the beach.
So we trotted off, me and my (probably skeptical) friend who I’d convinced to tag along with me on this food hunt, and 10 minutes later we were both completely enamoured.
Hands down one of the best food discoveries I’ve made here… Envy Café.
Like walking into someone’s living room… I love this kind of ambiance. 
︽My kryptonite right here, folks︽
Don’t worry, I practiced some major self-control!
Dairy-free month continues.
No, YOU are special! 😀
Envy Café serves all kinds of food; this is not a specialized vegetarian/vegan joint, but everything is organic and all meat comes from grass-fed animals. So it’s a perfect place to take all your friends, no matter what kind of food they like. Sandwiches, burgers, salads, soups, juices, smoothies, coffee, cakes… You name it! 😉
The prices weren’t bad either (I’ve paid nearly as much for five leaves of lettuce and a cucumber at the Mooloolaba Esplanade, as I did for a huge takeaway meal that lasted for lunch and dinner at Envy). That being said, I might have spent slightly more money on eating out lately than my student budget allows me to…….. I need a volunteer to hold an intervention.
In my defence, though, I gave up feta cheese. I mean… Just that in itself gives me permission to spend 18$ on the best veggie burger I’ve ever had in my life, right?
To an untrained eye it may look sloppy, but trust me on this – when it comes to veggie burgers, looks can be deceiving. And this was one helluva tasty little guy, so he’s free to look as sloppy as he’d like 😉
This wasn’t anything like what I had in mind when I embarked on my food hunt (takeaway burger doesn’t exactly scream “convenient beach picnic food!”), but all common sense went out the window the moment I stepped over that threshold. I’m already planning our next beach trip to ensure that we have plenty of time for a long lunch at Envy in the middle of the day 🙂
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Walking along the Esplanade on our way to the bus-stop that afternoon, we stumbled across even more juice bars and even a completely vegan café with a view to the beach. I’m falling more and more for the food scene in Mooloolaba… Quality cafés and restaurants are in abundance, and the more I pay attention to it, the more I see how many great options there are for health-conscious vegetarians like me.
I don’t know if it’s my selective memory playing a trick on me, but I just can’t help but think that Oslo has a long way to go here…! Vegetarian/vegan restaurants aren’t exactly at every corner, and all I have are bad memories of paying full price for Caesar Salads without chicken and bacon (leaving me with lettuce, croutons and dressing apparently worth 20$…)
Selective memory or not – I’m quite happy to be eating my way through the Sunshine Coast in the year to come 🙂
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The Happy Camper Project 