Gopal's PureVegetarian

Up a flight of stairs on Swanston Street, in the thick of the city, Melbourne's oldest vegetarian restaurant has served Hare Krishna cooking since 1980, meals prepared in the Vedic tradition and made from scratch each morning. The food is entirely meat-free and largely vegan, roaming from lasagne and spinach pie to seasonal salads and Indian plates, sold cheap and without ceremony. It is a canteen more than a restaurant, plainly furnished and quietly busy with students, workers and long-time regulars. Amid the CBD's churn of openings and closures, its longevity is the point: a steady, affordable, unpretentious room that has outlasted nearly everything around it. Open for lunch and dinner, seven days.