Home/Grown and the Quest for a Good Vegetarian Meal?

An old West End house transformed into a coffee shop

'Grown' plant based restaurant at 21 Buchanan St

Looking across the road from 21 to
where number 8 used to be in the past

I hinted at the strange day I had leading up to a book talk I was attending at the Brisbane Greek Club that I wrote about in this post -
Welcome to Country Under a Desert Sky?

Marcia Langton being interviewed on the
RN 'Big Ideas' show at the Greek Club 

I was e-mailed a few days before the book-talk and told that I wouldn't be able to get anything to eat at the Greek Club because the restaurant was still closed for renovations, even though the bar would be open on the night for drinks, so I knew I had to grab something to eat before going to the talk.

Now that I'm eating a Vegetarian diet and no dairy products I have to keep an eye out for Vegetarian/Vegan restaurants and I was flicking through a national men's magazine that I had taken out a subscription to last year so I could get the travel bag that went with it, read the magazines and then pass them on to my oldest son, who is more into looking good when going out somewhere than I am.
And in this latest magazine was an article titled 'Viva las Vegans' reviewing three Vegan restaurants in each of the Australian state capitals of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.    

What caught my eye was the Brisbane restaurant named 'Grown' at an address that was familiar to my memory, although the restaurant was not part of those old memories.
The memory of the street where the restaurant is now was way different in my mind, because those memories were from my childhood of when my Nan's house was on the corner at number 8.  

The street as it looks today
full of high-rise buildings

$1 to park to 4:24pm?

I decided to go check out this plant-based restaurant in my Nan's old street and see if I could grab a bite to eat before heading over to the Greek Club for the talk.
The last time I visited this street was the day I had eaten a plate of snails-
What's Up at #42?
But now I was on a vegetarian diet.
My how time does change?

Half of 42 is 21, 4 what it's worth, 2:-)

21 is also half of 42, so that must mean something, right?-)
It's all metered parking now up that street, so I threw a $1 coin into the meter to see what time that would take me to, and the meter told me that my car had the right to park there until 4:24pm.
That took me by surprise, as that was the number of the yellow taxi that my father owned and drove, and this was his old childhood street that he grew up in.

'Grown' plant based restaurant
  21 Buchanan St

Unfortunately, 'Grown' wasn't open for dinner until 5:30pm and that would be too late for me, so I went to have a walk along the riverbank one street behind 'Grown'.

Things had sure changed a lot since I used to throw a fishing line in from this riverbank.
And it was probably the last spot that I ever fished in, too.
Not that there was anything worth catching from that river that was edible.
Most of the fish I caught were catfish that I would throw back in the river.

And I never remembered seeing any sand here.
It was just thick dark river mud at low tide back in my day.

That sign probably explains a lot about my poor fishing catches around these parts of the river in my youth and how lucky I was not to take home any "edible" fish for my family to eat.

There is even a fenced dog park along the riverbank now with four trees just like the one my dad's ashes are scattered under back at the old family home that we no longer own.

You could say it was a walk down a memory lane for me that I don't remember much of anymore.

And the next time I come back and walk along the riverbank there will be even more buildings that I don't remember being there by the looks of it.

After my walk-through childhood's fading memories, I decided to head back into West End and check out another vegan restaurant named in that GQ magazine ...'VegeRama'.

I would have loved to have checked out this coffee shop called 'Who Shot the Barista', but it was closed for the day when I walked past it.

When I got to 'VegeRama' I was told that they weren't open for dinner until 5pm, so I headed back along the street to the 'Grill'd' hamburger joint where I saw a billboard advertising a vegan cheeseburger.

The 'Grill'd' vegan cheeseburger with fries

After eating my burger, I headed over to the Greek Club for the talk and couldn't find anywhere close to park, until I spotted one car parking space on the other side of the road in a backstreet.
So, I did a U-turn and was relieved to have gotten the spot.

I was about to hop out of my car until I looked up to read the numberplate of the car parked in front of me, with the numbers of 424 ... my dad's old cab number.

So, I just had to snap a photo of that numberplate.
It was a weird trip through the memories of my mind, in my dad's old neighbourhood, and with a few spooky "coincidences" to help me remember.