Tasty vegetarian Thai, old Georgetown

My spell of year-end leisure continues in the old part of Georgetown. I love this area, around the heritage enclave. Every visit invariably reminds me of how lucky I am to be able to call this gorgeous town home, with its colonial-era architecture, narrow streets and most of all its general atmosphere - distinctly nostalgic and chilled at the same time.

Lots of good flavours can be found in this part of the town too. We were farewelling some vegetarian friends bound back to big bad-ass KL, so we parked ourselves at Tasty Bake, a 6-week old cafe on Pitt St near the splendid Goddess of Mercy temple.

This place isn't designed to handle a huge traffic of diners - just a couple of tables set up outside and a sofa area inside. As we soon found out, this was directly related to the the kitchen capacity as well - only one dish at a time. So if you went in a big group, you'd find that the first person who got served would have well finished his/her meal before the last person got fed.

First up was Phad Ki Mow - basically fried flat noodles with vegetables, plenty of basil and hot, hot bird's eye chilli. Extremely palatable.
Fried vegetarian "chicken" nuggets - I don't know about this. My stand on vegetarian is to stay clear of mock meats, regardless of how it's prepared.

Star dish of the day was definitely the Cashew Salad, no contest. Toasted, crunchy cashews tossed with diced tomatoes, red peppers, onion, basil and coriander and probably a hearty squeeze of lemon juice... beautiful!

MS and KJ both ordered the mixed Vegetable Green Curry, which came with rice. The curry was probably too light and watery for my liking but once again, basil came to the rescue.

The Mutton Curry was spicier, richer and more agreeable to me than its green amigo. Yes, mock meat elbowed its way in but who can resist the call of the flesh?

I settled for the Tasty Fried Rice, which was ordinary on its own, but delicious when paired with the mutton curry.

After enduring the wait time in between every dish, we decided to further test our patience by ordering a round of healthy drinks while witnessing a couple of obviously high or drunk jockey touts fight out some territorial dispute. No one got seriously hurt, thank goodness. And when it finally arrived, the pineapple coconut smoothie (with choice of whole or soy milk) was a refreshing end to a lovely meal and good company. Thanks for picking up the tab, H! Hope you had a good trip back!