Au Lac Dickson
Woolley Street is Canberra's Vietnamese and pan-Asian heart, and this family-run room has anchored its vegan corner for well over a decade. The cooking is entirely plant-based, no egg, no wine, no MSG, but the ambition runs to a full mock-meat repertoire: soy duck, laksa, pho, massaman curry, satay skewers and a communal hot pot, with the imitation beef, pork, chicken and seafood all built from soybean protein. Longtime vegans and the merely curious eat side by side, rarely feeling they have compromised. Dinner is the main event, though Thursday to Sunday adds a lunch service, and booking ahead is wise at week's end. It belongs to a particular lineage of Australian Buddhist-influenced vegetarian kitchens, where abundance and mimicry are the point, and it does the genre as well as anywhere in the capital. Finish with the fried ice cream.