For a while now (years if I’m honest) we have been whining about the lack of takeaway options in the neighbourhood.  Our favourite fish’n’chip shop which used to do great vegetarian burgers closed  post quake as the building was demolished.   But for some reason we always seem to over look the Upper Riccarton shopping area, aka Church Corner.  Over the past 10-15 years these shops have one by one been replaced by mostly Asian-centric stores including a number of restaurants and takeaways.

So we have decided we need to stop complaining about it and start trying the various options available to us.

First up we decided was to go back to one that we had been to many years ago, probably one of the first Chinese restaurants in the Upper Riccarton shopping centre – Yummy.

From the outside, like most of the shops in the area, it doesn’t look like anything special.   The mall area for the most part looks like it needs a good clean and refurbishment.  This is a real shame as there are some really interesting businesses in this area.

We’d been to Yummy before but not in recent years.  The reason we stopped coming here was they didn’t have many vegetarian options on the menu, so it was repetitive, but they have changed their menu.

At first glance they offer 5 vegetarian dishes (probably vegan too).  We were ordering for 3 people so picked 3 dishes and got an extra small serving of rice.  We chose the Agaric Vegetarian Duck, the Curry with Mixed Vegetables and the Broccoli with Vegetarian Abalone.  Our reason for choosing these three dishes was they were unlike the usual vegetarian options you see on most menus.

On closer inspection they offered other vegetarian items such as a vegetarian omelette under the omelette section (not shown) and other dishes that likely could be vegetarian on request such as Green Beans with Sambal.

We got takeaways and the 3 dishes was plenty!  That would easily have served 4 people as we had leftovers.

Just before 6pm on a Wednesday night, about half the restaurant tables were already full, and they were doing a roaring trade in takeaways.  Even so, our meal was ready in 15-20 minutes.  The inside of the restaurant is nicer than the outside, nothing fancy but I particularly like the old advertising posters on the walls.

Would we come back here again? YES

Would we order the same dishes again? YES

Would we try something else? YES

Would we recommend Yummy?  YES

Is it better than Welcome Vegetarian Cafe (our baseline restaurant)?  On a par with but fewer vegetarian options.

Over the next few months, we plan to try out a bunch more of the restaurants in this area so it will be interesting to see how many good ones we find.