Up a discreet flight of stairs on to the 1st floor on Bourke Street, we found The Grand Trailer Park Taverna. A homage to the vintage American diner, you will find Milkshakes, Fries and Burgers of all varieties here. We braved a wintry a Melbourne night to try its fare.


While not terribly extensive, the burger list has decent variety and comes complete with names that generate a smirk to slight bewilderment. Personally, we opted for the The Chunk - Double Double ($16.50) and a large bucket of Beer Battered Chips ($5.50). The atmosphere was quite dinerish with a great mix of families, the after work crowd and couples.


Packed with two beef patties, cheese, onion, pickles, jalapenos, pickles, mustard & tomato sauce in between a brioche bun, the Chunk seemed messy and overloaded at times. Despite being of decent size, the Chunk failed to hit the nail on the head conclusively.  It left us satisfied but was not the knockout blow we were looking for.

The jalapenos were a welcome kick of spice and the patties were cooked well but the sweetness of the brioche bun combined with the sauce failed to close the deal. On a side note, the chips were good in their crunchy batter without being too thick.

While batting above average, The Grand Trailer Park can't claim the crown of Melbourne's best this time around. We'll certainly be back though if we are craving burgers around the Parliament end of Bourke Street.

 

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.

It's been a slow and sweeping revolution. From the fringes of Richmond and Springvale to sweeping the outer metropolitan suburbs and the CBD. Roll'd rode the wave all the way to becoming a mega-successful franchise. We're talking, of course, about Vietnamese street food.

In the lull of the usual food court offerings, Roll'd has certainly been a breath of fresh air taking its upmarket price offerings to the suburbs. We are devout devotees of Roll'd's Rice Paper Rolls but this time we decided to venture out and try the Bun Noodle Salads.

At $10.90 a pop for the Bun Noodle Salad with Lemongrass Beef and then with Tofu & Vegetarian Rolls, this certainly wasn't Maccas.

Bun Noodle Salad with Lemongrass Beef ($10.90)

Bun Noodle Salad with Tofu and Vegetarian Rolls ($10.90)

When it comes to bustling dining hubs in the South Eastern suburbs, Kingsway in Glen Waverely takes the cake by a country mile. The subsequent problem that eventuates in Kingsway is sifting through the raft of outlets on offer to find the true hidden gems. Precariously, we here at Hashtag decided to embark on such a daunting task.

First stop?

Straits of Malacca which specialises in Malaysian hawker street food.

The first thing that strikes you as you walk in is that this is certainly not a date night restaurant. Straits of Malacca may be a franchise but the interiors are struggling, the service is leaning on irreverent but we didn't come here for fine dining. We came here for the food.

The waiter wasn't messing around so we didn't either, going straight for the rice dishes with assorted fried goodies that were neither good for the heart nor keeping a clean set of hands.

As expected, the dishes came out both in an unceremonious manner and in a reasonable time.

The traditional wrapping and seaweed pouches for the vegetable cakes were a nice touch garnering some sort of semblance to the actual Straits of Malacca plastered grandly on the walls.

Of course, the fried stuff was good (Let's be honest, generally most things fried taste good). The accompaniments including the beans, chutney and other assorted vegetables were decent and rounded the dish off well albeit in an extremely oily one. (The rice and the pappadum were the standard fare)

Portion sizing was good and reasonable for the price but this certainly wasn't in the sub $10 'cheap eats' category.

Our 'cash-only' exit was brisk and utilitarian which funnily surmised the experience as a whole. Straits of Malacca is decent but easily lost in the sea of other eateries in the Kinsgway strip.

At the very heart of it, Zambrero is a brilliant concept as healthy Mexican food chain dreamed up by Dr. Sam Prince that donates a meal to the hungry in a developing country or Australian community every time a meal is purchased with over 7 million meals donated to date. However, any food outlet has to deliver tasty food to survive in the fearsome CBD food scene that is Melbourne so we had to try it out.

Black Rice Powerbowl with Beef ($13.90)

A quick glance of the nutritional information from the Zambrero website says that all is pretty good if you stay away from the sauces (the sauces could send the sodium content soaring to an alarming percentage of your recommended daily intake).

The bowl itself is well balanced with well cooked rice and a variety of tried and tested Mexican flavours. The beef is flavoursome but the meat is little too minced for us and we would definitely prefer a few more substantial pieces. Further to this, the Jalapeños add a nice kick and are must to get those spice senses tingling but the portion as a whole could be on the lighter side for someone with a large appetite especially for the price.

Nevertheless, not a bad way to get a feel good Mexican fix, albeit on the slightly pricier side.

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Gazi was the first feather in George Calombaris' now giant Greek casual dining empire that encompasses the Hellenic Republic chain and Jimmy Grants souvlaki outlets. Taking over the prime position of the Press Club on Exhibition Street, Gazi was certainly a bold move at the time.

Now, Gazi is entrenched as a go-to-destination for casual Greek dining in the CBD and we had to check it out for ourselves.


Arriving in the midst of peak time on a Wednesday night, we were lucky enough to snag a seat at the bar and we wasted no time getting down to ordering from the reasonably curated menu (the menu changes often so unfortunately we couldn't recall the exact names of all the dishes we tasted after some research online). The spit roasting meat situated on the wall of the open kitchen was too hard to resist so we had to grab the Chicken with White Beans, Tyrokafteri and Walnut Dressing ($28.00) and Beef. Additionally, we ordered two salads to accompany our meal as well as the Fish with Walnut Dressing ($23.50) and not forgetting the popular Chicken Souvlakakia with Chips, Parsley, Onion and Mustard Mayo ($9.50). 

Chicken with White Beans, Tyrokafteri and Walnut Dressing ($28.00)

Fish with Walnut Dressing ($23.50)

Chicken Souvlakakia with Chips, Parsley, Onion and Mustard Mayo ($9.50)

Despite being in the mid-range tier when it comes to price, all the dishes did not disappoint and the flavours managed to beautifully complement each other in traditional hearty Greek fashion. With pleasant service to boot and a beautifully quirky interior, Gazi may be a trailblazer but it's certainly here to stay.

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