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?

In season: Autumn at Queen Victoria Market

Wednesday 7 April 2010, 5:32 PM
By The Team | Posted in Places

If you want to eat fruit and vegetables that have less frequent flyer points than you do, the best time to do this is when they’re in season, sourced locally and at their absolute peak of flavour .  To help you pick the best of the bunch, the good folk from Queen Vic market will give you the low down on what to include in your shopping basket each season, starting today with autumn.

Fruit

*Also known black persimmon or Chocolate pudding fruit

Vegetables