Cheap eats: Melbourne’s best dishes for less than $10
CAN you really get a decent feed for a tenner or less?You betcha. Dan Stock uncovers Melbourne’s most delicious dishes for $10 or less.
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CAN you really get a decent feed for a tenner or less?
You betcha. Dan Stock uncovers Melbourne’s cheap and cheerful dishes for $10 and under.
Beef boat noodles at Soi 38: $10
What it may lack in the looks department this brilliant bowl more than makes up for with an incredible personality.
Found in an inner city car park (how perfectly Melbourne) Soi 38 is serving up authentic Thai boat noodles that are worth a drive by.
The beef boat soup, deeply rich and sweetly aromatic, comes with your choice of noodles — egg, vermicelli, rice — and topped with gnarly bits of beef and meat balls that are tender and full of flavour.
Bean shoots and coriander add some green, while a good handful of pork scratchings adds salty crunch. Add chilli and fish sauce and you have a bowl of beauty that’s rich and rare.
38 McIlwraith Place, city
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Trapz at a Romana: $8.50
For the past six years Matteo and Llaria Paoletti have run Italian trattoria Michaelangelo on Queen St in the city, but have only recently opened La Romana next door.
Here they are turning out the Roman street food known as “trapz”, which are pizza pockets stuffed with daily changing fillings ranging from meatballs in Napoli sauce to more exotic flavours — slow-cooked tripe, stewed oxtail, or even tongue with salsa verde.
213 Queens St, city
Choripan at Piqueos Asadero: $5
While this great South American diner has been stoking its wood grill and shaking the pisco sours for the past three years to great effect, a new Colombian chef (Juanito Berbeo) and name (Piqueos Asadero) has added incredible value to its game.
Now $5 will buy some of the best snacks in town, whether a tranche of crunchy-crowned pork belly spiced with salsa criolla for a Peruvian chicharron, or an excellent sweetly spiced Argentinian empanada, but the Chilean choripan gets the nod for best in show, due to the wonderfully dense house-made chorizo doused in chimichurri.
298 Rathdowne St, Carlton North
American cheeseburger at Burger Project: $9.90
The motto is “fast food, slow food values”, and Neil Perry’s new addition to our ever-growing love affair with the burger pays no mere lip service.
Those burgers made from 36-month Cape Grim beef cooked perfectly pink really do fly out of the kitchen.
Cushioned between a proper burger bun toasted crisp with pickles and diced white onion, the American cheese version — thanks to a good squirt of “rose” mayonnaise and a certain famous “secret sauce” — is the satisfying pick of the bunch. Damn, they’re good burgers.
St Collins Lane, city
Three cicchetti at Heart Attack and Vine: $10
The Venetian cicchetti — like Italian tapas — are an ever-changing grazing affair after dark, where you might find a baccala-stuffed jalapeño with fried capers next to cinnamon braised lamb ribs next to the pretty as a picture pumpkin custard with parmesan rind among the choices that run to over a dozen each night.
329 Lygon St, Carlton
Chacarero at Latin Food and Wine: $8.80
For almost a decade Maria Escudero and Marco de la Plaza served up their winning empanadas and other South American specialities from their shop in Sunshine North, but demand meant they have recently moved to much bigger Ballarat Rd premises.
Here you’ll still find great Chilean sandwiches that are meaty meals unto themselves, where the chacarero is a spicy star.
On a soft dusted house-made white bun, noi lucky
a thin, tender steak branded by the grill and hidden under a blanket of melted cheese is teamed with fresh tomatoes, a good squirt of mayo and green beans with crunch and squeak.
It’s the liberal sprinkling of green chilli that makes this sandwich truly hot stuff.
809 Ballarat Rd, Deer Park
Banh mi thit at Hoang Lan Selina Hot Bread: $4
In terms of the great culinary contributions the Vietnamese have bestowed upon Melbourne, it’s a heavily contested showdown between a comforting bowl of pho, and the delights of a banh mi. At Selina they have dibs on the latter, where they use pork neck to amp up the meat, and lots of chilli to amp up the heat all housed in a crunchy roll completed with coriander, pickled carrot and spring onion.
304-10 Hampshire Rd, Sunshine
Roti telur bawang at Mamak: $8.50
Roti is the specialty here, and the telur bawang adds a red onion and egg to the thin pastry sheets, making for a dip and dunk dinner of good dhal, excellent fish curry and spicy shrimp sambal.
366 Lonsdale St, city
Ice cream doughnuts at Motorhome Majestic: $10
Two fluffy balls of cinnamon sugar-doused dough come stuffed with a changing choice of excellent 7 Apples ice cream.
Sounds sweet indeed.
238 Union Rd, Ascot Vale
Fish cakes at Noi Lucky: $8
The small and wonderfully welcoming Noi Lucky is where Thai restaurateurs from all around Melbourne come for authentic northern Thai dishes rarely seen on menus elsewhere — tongue and vibrant papaya salad chief among them.
But it’s the best-in-class fish cakes that should begin every meal: soft and spicy, fried to a crunch, they are good as is, great when dunked in sweet chilli sauce.
1-3 St John Ave, Springvale
Morcilla sandwich at Carlton Wine Room: $8
This is the snack that will always bring us back to the new-look Carlton Wine Room.
Chef Aaron Starling takes two slices of buttery brioche and pan-fries them crisp.
Between them he teams cinnamon-spiced morcilla with whipped mustard cream and burnt onion, finishing the lot with a sprinkling of sea salt.
Perfect with a glass of bracing albarino.
172 Faraday St, Carlton
Deli sandwich at Young Uncles: $8
Bert Glinka and Brendan D’Amelio hot smoke a range of smallgoods in a custom smoker out the back of their Polish deli, Uncles. At their cafe next door, they offer a DIY lunch created around those delicious traditional meats — choose your ham, salami or other smoked sliced meat, and team with cheese, pickles, salad and sauce.
127 Thomas St, Dandenong
Cheese and spinach gozleme at Goz City: $10
These savoury-filled flatbreads are Turkey’s gift to world food, with the salty feta and spinach a veg-tastic treat (though the herby chicken and traditional meat versions are also very good). Served with a generous pot of sour cream on the side to swipe the squares through.
This is fast food done fab.
502 Lt Collins St, city
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Pizza at Vinnie’s Half Price Pizza: $2.90 a slice
The queue says it all — join it and you’ll be rewarded by slices of pizza as massive as the line is long.
It’s simple stuff: margherita, say, or Hawaiian or Mexicans on satisfyingly crunchy deep dish bases.
Vinnies’ devotees don’t claim it’s the fanciest pizza in the world, but they do like to say it’s the best.
Preston Market
Fried mini pork buns at Shanghai Street: $9.90
These are the crisp-bottomed parcels of porky delight that are worth not only waiting in line for, but ruining a white shirt with.
The fluffy fried pork buns are as juicy as they are meaty and a hands-down plate of perfection.
342 Lt Bourke St, city
Carne Asada taco at La Tortilleria: $4.70
They’ve just picked up a gong as a state winner at the prestigious delicious. magazine produce awards for their traditional nixtamal corn tortillas — and once you’ve tried their tortilla there’s no going back.
Try a soft taco topped with spicy grilled beef and see why La Tortilleria is so rightfully awarded.
72 Stubbs St, Kensington
Coffee bun and teh tarik at Pappa Roti: $6.50
It’s the aroma of butter and coffee and warm sweet buns fresh from the oven that brings hundreds through the door at Pappa Roti.
This outpost of the Malaysian chain offers coffee crème-topped buns that are baked until they are crisp on the outside, gooey with a butter filling inside.
Enjoy with a teh tarik for a true Kuala Lumpur experience (bun only for $3.20).
29B Buckingham Ave, Springvale (also CBD)
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