Not South Asian but from Perth and about a decade older than your character, and while I'm not vegetarian myself I knew a lot of vegetarians as a uni student in the 2000s, though none were Hindu.
Utopia was THE place to eat in Perth City amongst the vegans I knew, partly because options were so limited. They sold a wide variety of South East Asian dishes but with fake meat, I think mostly tofu. I have an intolerance to soy which made it very difficult for me to find anything I could eat there, but I still got dragged there a lot by vegans because it was the only place with more than one thing on the menu they could eat. Ofc your character's omnivore friends might not be as compliant as I was :)
IMO the Happy Buddha was the far superior vegetarian restaurant, but that was I think in Nedlands and eventually shut down.
Searching for an old Utopia menu (since these days they seem to only serve bubble tea) I found a 2009 review by a vegan I knew back then, with some other restaurant reviews. Which is a bit late for you but still hopefully helpful https://veganabouttown.blogspot.com/2009/01/utopiaformosa-northbridge.html
Other that than that, from what I saw vegan students also ate a lot of chips from fish and chip shops. I think they had to be careful around things like Chiko rolls and Corn Jacks because of beef fat in the pastry.
I think one of MacDonalds or Hungry Jacks used beef fat on their chips back then but can't remember which, I think it may have been Hungry Jacks.
Vegetarians had more options, hmm... As I recall they ate a lot of cheese and vegetable based pies and sausage rolls from cafes and bakeries. Also egg/cheese and salad sandwiches though that might be too sensible for a teen.
And yeah, everyone ate vegetarian pizza, the vegans without cheese.
I'll post a link to this on my dreamwidth, since I'm mutuals with some local vegetarians and South Asians (though off the top of my head noone who is both) and some of them might have more accurate information.
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branchandroot
*waves from Perth*
Date: 2024-04-17 09:05 am (UTC)Utopia was THE place to eat in Perth City amongst the vegans I knew, partly because options were so limited. They sold a wide variety of South East Asian dishes but with fake meat, I think mostly tofu. I have an intolerance to soy which made it very difficult for me to find anything I could eat there, but I still got dragged there a lot by vegans because it was the only place with more than one thing on the menu they could eat. Ofc your character's omnivore friends might not be as compliant as I was :)
IMO the Happy Buddha was the far superior vegetarian restaurant, but that was I think in Nedlands and eventually shut down.
Searching for an old Utopia menu (since these days they seem to only serve bubble tea) I found a 2009 review by a vegan I knew back then, with some other restaurant reviews. Which is a bit late for you but still hopefully helpful https://veganabouttown.blogspot.com/2009/01/utopiaformosa-northbridge.html
Other that than that, from what I saw vegan students also ate a lot of chips from fish and chip shops. I think they had to be careful around things like Chiko rolls and Corn Jacks because of beef fat in the pastry.
I think one of MacDonalds or Hungry Jacks used beef fat on their chips back then but can't remember which, I think it may have been Hungry Jacks.
Vegetarians had more options, hmm... As I recall they ate a lot of cheese and vegetable based pies and sausage rolls from cafes and bakeries. Also egg/cheese and salad sandwiches though that might be too sensible for a teen.
And yeah, everyone ate vegetarian pizza, the vegans without cheese.
I'll post a link to this on my dreamwidth, since I'm mutuals with some local vegetarians and South Asians (though off the top of my head noone who is both) and some of them might have more accurate information.
And good luck with your story!