Mona Vale’s food scene is blossoming with a number of small bars, Asian style salads, craft beer and its own Food and Wine Fair on offer
Mona Vale’s food scene is on the up. It has a Food and Wine Fair in May, an award-winning microbrewery and several trendy bars.
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TRENDY Asian salads are hugely popular with Mona Vale’s lunchtime crowd.
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Come noon, customers spill out into the laneway, waiting for orders. There’s barely room to wave a pair of wooden chopsticks on either side of the counter, yet Banana Blossom is booming.
“We’re always this busy,” owner Ben Thomas said.
“We’ve tapped into a niche market and our salads have become really popular with locals.”
Ben and Nat Thomas introduced their original concept, an Asian-style deli, to Mona Vale in 2009.
“We came from Cremorne, we were looking for a place on the upper northern beaches and we really liked Mona Vale,’ he said.
“Banana Blossom started as an Asian-style deli and our salads have evolved from there.”
Tokyo Classic Chicken, with green tea soba noodles, Asian herbs and creamy white sesame dressing is the most popular of the nine $13 salads. The mix caters for all tastes, Mr Thomas said.
“We’ve designed our salads to meet everyone’s needs, there’s sweet and spicy, as well as hot and savoury,’ he said.
Banana Blossom is a success story in a suburb that’s not widely regarded as a foodie hotspot. The Thomases opened a second salad bar in Manly over winter in 2012, and most recently, its third venue opened in Bondi this week.
From salad bars, to hole-in-the-wall coffee shops, funky bars, pretty cafes and an award-winning micro brewery, Mona Vale is gaining ground as a culinary hotspot, thanks to a blossoming food scene.
Twenty-seven years ago Mona Vale only had suburban staples, long-time restaurateur Marie Stolk said.
“There wasn’t much here, food was limited to Chinese, the RSL and the pub, and that wasn’t really a restaurant,” Marie Stolk said.
“We wanted to do something completely different.”
After a fact-finding trip to the US, Marie and Adrian Stolk’s idea of different back in 1987 was Tex Mex, opening the suburb’s first Tex Mex restaurant. With its exotic blend of fajitas, chimichangas, passionfruit margaritas and waitresses dressed in Mexican costume, the restaurant quickly become a local favourite.
“Back then Tex Mex was a new and a completely original experience,” Mrs Stolk said.
“We’ve been the scene of first dates, hens’ nights and parties.”
The Stolks left the tequila, guacamole and sour cream to new operators in 2000.
Two owners and name change to Missy Foxall, the couple have since returned with son Jaan and the same mix and Mex formula.
“We came back in 2013, the previous owner didn’t want to stay – everything is exactly the same,” she said.
Food is an integral part of the mix at Modus Operandi, Mona Vale’s award-winning microbrewery. Grant and Jaz Wearin’s Harkeith St brewery opened in July and then blitzed the field at the inaugural Australian Craft Beer Awards in October, winning four awards, including champion Australian beer and best small brewery.
The culinary focus is American style pub grub, Grant Wearin said.
“All our food is going really well since we opened. we’ve just brought in a Jamaican jerk corn and everyone loves the beef ribs, but the buffalo wings are the standout,” he said.
“We make a lot of the food ourselves including our handcrafted gourmet pizzas, which has a beer yeast starter.” For food-matching, two beers work well with the menu, Mr Wearin said.
“Our Saison beers, the Pepper in the Rye, is a Belgian farmhouse style ale loaded with tangerine and peach aromatics and the MOFOS Saison, a Belgian/French inspired ale with a citrusy flavour are good with food.”
The Mona Vale Hotel will get a makeover after its sale in September to father and son hoteliers Arthur and Stu Laundy and Fraser Short. The partnership bought the venue as a package with Northies in Cronulla for around $57 million.
The new owners want to broaden the pub’s appeal, co-owner Fraser Short “We hope to broaden what we offer … to make everything better so it will be an exciting new concept,” Mr Short said.
In the short term, the pub will get a freshen up and the menu will move away from old-style pub grub, Mr Short said.
Pittwater Council is promoting Mona Vale as a foodie destination. Each May the council organises a Food and Wine Fair on Winnererremy Bay Foreshore Reserve.
This year’s event - its fifth - attracted an estimated 10,000 people, place management manager, Melinda Hewitt said.
The council has also introduced food and entertainment on Friday nights in October and November as part of the Enliven in The Evening initiative.
The final Mona Vale Laneway Night Market is on November 28. It will be held in the laneway between the Memorial Hall and the library, from 5-9pm.
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