THE DINING Words By Bec Doyle Nestled in the trendy Sydney neighborhood of Surry Hills, Mark & Vinny’s is the restaurant Sydney has been waiting for. Slightly behind the curve when it comes to vegan cuisine, Sydney is not bustling with tons of plant based options. I spoke with Vince Pizzinga, of Mark & Vinny’s, and he explained how they intend to change that. While living in LA, Vince says his eyes were opened to the possibilities vegan cuisine had to offer, and credits his first visit to Cafe Gratitude as a catalyst to his interest in plant based food. “One day I had this idea that I wanted to give vegans the experience of having eggs on toast. It was really as simple as that.” Well Vince, we vegans thank you for it! After discovering a process called reverse spherification that was widely used by chef ’s, Vince says he ordered some equipment on Amazon and prototyped the very first vegan egg! After sharing this idea with restaurateur Mark Filippelli, Mark was all in, and two years later the pair opened their first restaurant together - Matcha Milkbar, a completely plant based restaurant, and it was a huge success! In their latest venture, Mark & Vinny’s, the pair sought to bring all they had learned and developed at Matcha Milkbar to a pasta bar! They innovatively include nutrient rich ingredients in their dishes, particularly their pastas like their spirulina linguine, or activated charcoal pasta found in their Lasagne Vegana. “Spirulina is just this incredible ingredient, it's a high potency form of protein, astronauts use it.” With their menu changing seasonally the possibilities are endless. Vince says they like to keep the menu new and exciting for their regular customers and give their chefs the opportunity “to stretch their legs and be creative.” Vince also says that using seasonal produce is extremely important to them. Local, fresh produce is always going to taste better than something that's travelled thousands of miles. “Not to mention the amount of resources it takes to ship ‘a blue-
94 M. CITIZEN MAGAZINE | ISSUE 04
