Lunches under a fiver

Wednesday 28 April 2010, 9:00 AM
By The Team | Posted in Places

Is your wallet wailing from a severe loss of dollars during your lunchbreak? Fear not. It is possible to eat out in the city and still have enough change to get the train home. Here are some of Melbourne’s cheapest of eats that definitely won’t short-change your tastebuds. Lace up your cheapskates and let’s go!

Rich Maha
Each lunchtime this bustling Indian canteen is filled with people looking for a chilli hit. Order the freshly made egg roti chanai. This lovely flat bread is crunchy around the edges while the middle is soft and spongy, perfect for mopping up the spicy gravy and yellow lentil dahl that comes with it. Hip pocket damage: $4.50

Shanghai Dumpling House
This Melbourne institution is famous for its brusque and erratic service, ultra-cheap dumplings and speedy turnover of customers. If you’re on a bad date and want it over fast, this is the place to do it.

Carnivores will enjoy a hefty 15 pork dumplings for a mere $5.50. Vegetarians can hoe into 10 mushroom and vegetable dumplings for $4.50.

Queen Vic Market Borek shop
If you’re like me and get disoriented by the sheer choice of food around you in the Deli hall, just follow the long line of people to the Borek shop.

These long, flaky Turkish pastries come in spicy lamb, spinach and cheese, potato and onion and are a bargain at $2.50 each.

Dinkum Pies
Dinkum Pies feels like you’ve stepped off the highway to a small country town, complete with the lovely, uniformed ladies who call you ‘darl’ or ‘love’. As you sink your teeth into Dinkum’s flaky, buttery pies, brimming with the filling of your choice, you can already feel the love and the jangle of change from your $5 transaction. Ponder on the homespun wisdom of “When it’s brown it’s cooked. When it’s black it’s buggered” and feel at peace with the world once more.

Sushi monger
This humble sushi bar makes some of the best sushi rolls in town, made on the spot with an ever-growing line of hungry suits and heels curling out the door and down the laneway.

Avoid the queues by getting there before noon. If you’re game, you can even eat in but be prepared to get close with your neighbours. $5 will buy you two sushi rolls and a miso soup.

Aix crepes
Tucked away in Centre Place, its worth using your best Matrix moves to edge your way seamlessly through the lunchtime hordes for these flat treats.

Known for their delightfully delicate crepes, Aix serves all your favourite fillings from traditional lemon and sugar to savoury fillings with a provincial flavour. They do a mean nutella crepe for only $4.50. A large brown-freckled crepe arrives neatly folded, hiding molten lava of warm nutella inside. You’ll definitely be feeling like you can dodge bullets after that.

These are just a few of the places you can feast at for a fiver in Melbourne, do you know of some others?

Lunch hour traveller – Melbourne during the wartime 40s

Thursday 18 March 2010, 12:30 PM
By The Team | Posted in Places

City Gallery presents Over Paid, Over-Sexed and Over Here?, an exhibition that tells the moving story of a group of US Marines on leave in Melbourne in the 1940s.

We wandered in during our lunch hour to discover we’d stepped back in time.

Into this environment arrived 15,000 battle-worn US marines, in need of rest and recreation, with plenty of US greenbacks to spread around. It’s fair to say these fine fellows were greeted enthusiastically by many Melburnians.

At the City Gallery’s exhibition, you’ll get a taste of life as a stranger in a strange but welcoming land, stepping into the shoes of a US marine.

Make sure you take a look at the Pocket guide to Australia with its insights into ‘How USA and Australian eating habits differ’ (see images above), offering advice such as ‘Meat pies are the Australian version of the hot dog, and in Melbourne the substitute for the hamburger is the dim sin (sic).’

Melbourne’s beer is described as ‘stronger than ours and not as cold.’

The book also includes useful information on slang that’s pretty amusing to read today. And you’ll find plenty more to enjoy at this exhibition, celebrating and remembering some of the positive contributions the US has made to our culture (as opposed to, say, The Amazing Race).

And if you really want to step back in time to the 1940s, go on your own US marine-style adventure. Drop into Young and Jacksons (corner Swanston and Flinders streets) and squeeze in a drink before the 1940s cut off time (6pm).

Cop a squiz at Melbourne’s famous nude, ‘Chloe’, and, of course, if you take a shine to any fellow patrons try a bit of the old ‘Hell-oo sailor!’ A bit of jitterbug dancing would not go astray, either.

What: Over Paid, Over-Sexed and Over Here? U.S Marines in Wartime Melbourne, 1943
Where: City Gallery, 110 Swanston Street, entry through Halftix
When: 10am to 2pm Mon, 11am to 6pm Tue to Fri, 10am to 4pm Sat until 30 April
Cost: Free
Verdict: It’s a fascinating and insightful almost-hour. You could easily spend more time reading letters in depth and listening to audio.
Travel experience: Who says time travel isn’t possible?

The lunch hour traveller

Tuesday 9 February 2010, 5:39 PM
By The Team | Posted in Places

While travelling propels and entices you to get out and experience all facets of life, it’s staggering how much we neglect what our own city has to offer. Do you ever find yourself staring wistfully into a discount flight-booking agency while waiting for the dude to turn green on your way to work?

Travel is one of the great parts of life, so why save it up for the times you actually get away? Why not explore the history, culture, arts, entertainment, events and attractions happening in your hometown hotspot? All those international travellers aren’t here for nothing.

Live a day in your lunch hour

While work may still challenge and engage, sometimes there needs to be something else in a day, something significant – however small – to distinguish it from the rest. All it takes is an hour out of your day to challenge your thinking, change your perspective or give you something to reflect on.

In this new post series, ‘The lunch hour traveller’, I’ll seek out a new experience for you to squeeze into your work-week to spice things up a little. A live-a-day, lunch time challenge.

Hope to see you out in Melbourne’s streets very soon!

(In the meantime, That’s Melbourne is the perfect search tool to get you started and keep you up-to-date with what’s happening in the city.)

Tell us about your travels

Already getting out and about between the hours of 12pm and 2pm? What do you like to do in your lunch break to feel like you’ve really lived that day and experienced something different? What have you discovered in the short and sharp range in the city? Tell us about your mini-Melbourne adventures by leaving a comment below.