Melbourne's a city with a great food culture. We've got
restaurants to suit anybody, food styles from all over the world, and
coffee to match. This is usually good - it's hard to have a great time without great food. However, the best food is usually the most expensive, and most of us aren't looking to drop a few hundred dollars on poached quail eggs and shaved truffles every time we go to get a meal. Luckily, Melbourne's full of smaller restaurants and cafes that offer great value for money - you just have to know where they are.
Crossways Food For Life
Let's start with
Crossways, the Hare Krishna restaurant on Elizabeth St. It's only open for lunch, but the food-per-dollar can't be beat. Five dollars will buy you a gigantic plate of curry, complete with pappadums, a hearty-if-not-healthy halva for dessert, and unlimited lassi to drink on the side. Beloved by poor students and stressed-out businessmen all over Melbourne, Crossways is an excellent place to get your Indian fix. It's all vegetarian too – even vegan if you ignore the dessert – so don't worry about bringing your friends along. If you can't get enough of Crossways,
Gopal's nearby is similar and open for dinner.
Bimbo Deluxe Restaurant
For those less spiritually inclined,
Bimbo Deluxe is a great place for lunch or dinner. It's a bar at the corner of Brunswick and Rose St, distinguished mainly by a spectacular range of four-dollar pizzas. They're only available at that price for dinner and lunch on certain days (check the link for more details), but it's worth making the effort to go then. From the Australian-style pizza with kangaroo meat to the Mexican Poncho, which is basically nachos on a pizza base, and far tastier than it sounds, Bimbo Deluxe is easily the best value food on Brunswick St.
Sister restaurant Lucky Coq is also pretty good.
Thresherman's Bakehouse
Thresherman's Bakehouse, at 221 Faraday St near Lygon St and Melbourne University, is like
Brunetti's little brother. It offers a range of pastries, coffee and hot food, but it's more relaxed and far less expensive than Brunetti's. Twelve dollars will get you a three-course meal (unfortunately all on the one plate). The real attraction of Thresherman's Bakehouse appears later in the day, when the pastries table and sandwiches drop in price. Grab a four-dollar salami or salad sandwich and finish by choosing a sweet dessert from the pastries table, where almost everything is a dollar or a dollar-fifty. If you're a student at Melbourne University, you've really got no excuse for not visiting this place regularly.
Those are just three options out of many. Camy Shanghai Dumpling has gone unmentioned, as has the
Bar Fred pizza or
Konjo's Ethiopian Restaurant's enormous portion sizes. One caution, though: if you're taking a
date out to dinner, don't tell them you heard about it from an 'Out on a Budget' article, that might not go down well.
