Red Spice Road can often be perceived as a fine dining venue but when it comes to the express lunch banquet menu priced at $29.50 for an appetiser and three main courses to be shared among your guests, we found unlikely value.

Lauded for its Pork Belly, Red Spice Road in McKillop Street has been delivering Asian Fusion food to the masses since 2007.

The express banquet menu here (it is also available for early dinner between 5 and 6 excluding Saturdays) is changed fortnightly so there is nearly always something new to try.



During our visit, two of the three dishes delivered brilliantly on flavour with the beef a particular highlight. The appetiser was a beetle leaf concoction that could be gobbled in a single bite and was nothing special but a nice touch before entering the main courses.

The porkbelly was appropriately tangy but had a nice punch as well while the chicken yellow curry worked nicely with its coconut base.

Overall, we were pleasantly surprised with the value and taste of Red Spice Road's express banquet. We'll be back soon.

True vegan options in Melbourne can be sparse outside of the traditional Indian options scattered around the CBD so when our vegan friends came to visit, it was the perfect excuse to pay a visit to vegan outlet Supercharger amidst Emporium Melbourne's ever expanding dining options.

The menu itself is fairly varied with plenty of options for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as the, to be expected, array of organic juices and some good looking desserts.

You can opt for pre-made combinations but we decided to let our creative juices flow on the recycled paper ordering form trialling our own combination with 4 items and 2 super bases for $13.80.


Serving itself took only a few minutes and we were quickly at our tables.

While the food itself was of a decent size, our own flavour combination choices were bland at best and each component itself just seemed to lack a little punch. In general, some of the choices looked to lacked the sizzle to lift the individual parts above their dreary stalemate.

Perhaps it was a case of our ridiculous pairing, so we'll back to try our hand at one of Supercharger's own pre-configured bowls. For now, we'll reserve ultimate judgement.

It is incredibly rare to find restaurants in Melbourne hover well over the 4.0 mark on Zomato on a consistent basis so when Laneway Greens appeared in our search for 'Healthy Lunch Spots' in the CBD, the 4.5 rating at the time was too good to refuse.

Tucked away on Flinders Lane, Laneway Greens would be quite easy to miss if not for the line of lunch customers piling out the door. For one thing, Laneway Greens may be the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing minimalist casual dining spot to the end that food emerges (almost George Orwell 1984 style) from a little hole in the wall in the corner.



Given the line out the door and high rating, we understandably had high expectations so our tolerance level was slightly higher to the price of the Beef Bulgogi Style Salad ($16.50) (see the rest of the menu here) we chose and the wait time of nearly 20 minutes for food.

Eventually our buzzer went off and we collected our salad from the hole in the wall and we were off given the tight squeeze, during lunchtime peak hour, inside the store wasn't ideal for sitting around.




The packaging was elegant and we were just super excited to open this bundle of green goodness with Cauliflower Rice, Pickled Mushrooms, Kimchi and a Tamari Dressing. 




Sadly, looks did not live up to expectation with our salad. The sauce quickly became overpowering and the beef seemed drenched in fat rather than the lean variety we prefer in a healthy salad. Towards the bottom of the salad, the vinegar in the sauce was making the greens nearly inedible while the accompanying dressing only added insult to injury. And frankly, the quantity was frugal for a male and left us hungry soon after.

Our salad wasn't shocking but it did little to live up to the widely popular consensus that seemed to surround Laneway Greens.

We, more than anyone else, want healthy dining to succeed in Melbourne but at $16.50 and in this form of an overpowering combination, we won't be returning to Laneway Greens anytime soon.

Once relegated to a desolate corner of the iTunes eco-system, podcasts are rapidly gaining momentum and Google has finally decided to turn up to the party with its own podcasting app  to match Apple's pre-installed stalwart (our pro-tip: use Pocketcasts instead).

Of course you've heard about the rampantly popular Serial and This American Life but what about the other players to kickstart your 2016 in podcasting?

Here's our top 5 picks for the start of the year:

1. StartUp

It might seem dry and outlandish at first but Alex Blumberg (formerly of This American Life) narrating himself and reflecting on creating his own podcast business is both addictive and intriguing.

A insightful look into the reality of many 'startup' businesses in America, StartUp is worth your time and you'll soon be intertwined in the story of Blumberg's fledgling podcast business and the reactions of his wife Nazanin all in a lovely narrative style.

2. Slate Money

If you want to be kept up to date with the latest major news and trends in the economics and finance world without having to intensely study the subject at university, Slate Money is the almost perfect insightful light entertainment.

At times irreverent, banterful hosts Felix Salmon, Cathy O'Neil and Jordan Weissmann are always interesting and Slate Money is a podcast we look forward to every week.

3. Ctrl-Walt-Delete

4. Stuff You Should Know

To say burgers have been experiencing a renaissance in Melbourne and around Australia would be a gross understatement. The notion of a 'healthy' or 'gourmet' burger was ill found in the vernacular of the everyday Australian until self-proclaimed 'gourmet burger' franchise Grill'd rolled into hipster laneways and streets across the country.

To tell the truth, the proposition was simple. Hand-crafted burgers made with high quality ingredients and interesting flavour combinations that would stand head and shoulders above the heavily processed offerings from traditional fast-food outlets such as McDonalds, Hungry Jacks and KFC.

It turns out that paying $10+ for a single burger was completely fine with most Australians as long as they were incredibly delicious and so began the nation's unexpected burger revolution.

Now that there was big money involved, everyone wanted a hand in the pie with premium burger outlets across the country popping up such as the intrepid Mr. Burger, hipster abodes Huxtaburger and 8Bit, foreign invaders Carl's Jr, the omnipresent local fish and chip shop, Crown's inevitable attempt to cash in on the latest food trend with the Merrywell and Neil Perry's belief that his sacrosanct magic touch may win over everybody with the ambitiously named The Burger Project.

(Don't worry, eventually we will have reviewed all of the aforementioned attempts at burger glory)

For now, our burger adventures will commence with the original player in the gourmet burger game, Grill'd.


Degraves Street is quintessential Melbourne and the perfect place to try Grill'd's offerings. It has the perfect location for a disruptive outlet such as Grill'd embedded among the heart of Melbourne's cafe culture.

Upon entry, it feels like we are almost driven a menu into our face by a enthusiastic but a clearly robotic and annoyed attendant. Despite the imploring attendant asking us to try the Black Crumb Chicken Burger that looks like it just came out of a coal pit, we decided to stick with the more traditional options from the fairly extensive menu that incorporates a variety of chicken, beef, lamb and veggie patties on a number of different buns including a 'low-carb super bun' that looks more like a biscuit to us from a distance.

Sticking to the Simply Grill'd ($9.90) on a Panini bun and a snack-sized portion of the Grill'd Chips ($3.80), we knew a burger outlet's original burger is the real test of its strength.

Upon depositing our charity bottle cap to our jar of choice (the charity with the most caps at the end of each month gets $300 and the other two get $100 each. We sat down and the burgers arrived in decent time despite the waiter absolutely unapologetically butchering our names.


The burgers themselves were neither gigantic nor the minuscule portions generally associated with McDonalds cheeseburgers. As it should be, the patty was appropriately juicy and cooked well while the herbed mayo was a nice flavour kick alongside the crunch of the fresh salad. The bun too was soft yet crisp on the outside exactly like it should be. But was the burger on a whole revlatory? No (the chips too were standard fare in our minds-nothing too special). It was pretty good but nothing to brag about and that's where it seems Grill'd has nestled in amongst the other fast food offerings. A slightly up-market burger joint that is tasty and reliable.

What about the 'healthy burger' tagline? Of course the Simply Grill'd without the mega salty accoutrements such as bacon does fairly well coming it only 37% of the daily sodium intake with 858 mg and 28% of saturated fat at 6.8 g according to the nutritional information. However, it is important too remember that the serving of chips really can push it over with 352 mg of sodium at 15% of your daily intake. Of course, burgers should never be your daily go-to meal but they are definitely a delicious treat.

So are Grill'd burgers healthy? They might not be the answer to the THR1VE but it's your best bet to satisfy your burger craving (much better than Maccas any day of the week).