(upbeat music)
- Yelloww Productions presents
The best cheap eats in Melbourne, Australia.
I'm Chris, this is Yelloww Productions.
I do travel guides that are fun, informative,
and entertaining.
this is part of my series on Melbourne
and in this video I'm going to be telling you
some of the best cheapest places to eat in this city.
I'm here in Fitzroy at a place called the Fitz.
And I'm on a street called Brunswick Street.
Brunswick Street has lots of cheap eats
and today the first one in this video
I'm going to be eating a hamburger
and you might be thinking, "Chris you're from America,
"why are you eating a hamburger in Australia?"
Well, one Australian beef is actually
kinda famous around the world,
but two, I don't know if you can see it,
right above the tomato,
they do with beets in their hamburger.
They call it beetroot here,
we'd call it beets in a lot of other places.
And this is $19 Australian dollars,
you get the hamburger and you get some chips, right?
French fries are chips.
And a beer is $7 Australian dollars.
When in Rome, but when in Australia you have to get the beer
cause it's world famous here.
They have some of the best water,
which makes some of the best beer.
So if you're in Fitzroy you can stop at The Fitz,
but there's a lot of other cheap places around here.
There's The Fitz.
And now I'm gonna take you
and show you some of the other
best cheap eats places in Melbourne.
And it's not the cheapest eats,
but they're actually a lot of the places that I ate
while I was here for a week,
and a few others that I also just found, long lines
and others places that people said were delicious.
I'll include those towards the end of the video, alright?
Here we go.
If I wanted the cheapest things anywhere in Melbourne,
stop by the Queen Victoria Market,
that's what I'm sitting outside of.
So if you hear some music it's cause there's a guy
outside serenading us in this little outdoor eating area.
But there's a stall that specializes in Boreks.
Boreks, it's a Turkish, I don't know,
sandwich I might call it?
Like a warm sandwich.
This one, mmm.
It's a cheese and spinach.
It's hot, it's toasted,
it's pretty good.
And it's big, I mean for $3.50, super cheap for this.
While you're here, like a couple stalls over,
there's a coffee shop.
It's got a C for cappuccino,
and some of the cheapest cappuccino I think you'll find.
And I'm gonna say this is so much better,
and for the cameraman who's Ben,
if you haven't seen our video in the Melbourne travel guide,
he's in that one.
I'm gonna tell him to turn around,
and say this is so much better than what's across the street
which is like McDonald's right there.
So skip McDonald's, come to the Queen Victoria Market.
The Queen Victoria Market is home to
lots of other cheap eats just inside that building
I was sitting out in front of, the deli building,
there's the Bratwurst Shop.
For $7 you can get a fresh cooked bratwurst,
$5 if you don't want a bun.
Just down the aisle is the Corner Chicken Shop,
and here for $5.50 you could get a quarter chicken,
some chips, also known as french fries to many people,
and you can get some gravy on top of the fries for free.
Just two buildings over from the deli building,
there is a food court of sorts.
And in the food court, there's a wide variety of cheap eats.
But the two I'll point out are
Australian Meat Pies and Sausage Rolls for about $5 bucks.
And Fish and Chips for $6.90
One of my favorite restaurants in any city or country
is Pepper Lunch,
and they have a branch in Melbourne
right on Elizabeth Street.
It is true to its Japanese roots,
because they've got the plastic model food
right in the window.
The thing to get here is the Sizzling Beef Pepper Rice,
$9.90 I happened to get the jumbo one,
which is a few more dollars and you get some extra beef.
But it's basically fast food steak.
They bring it out on a cast iron skillet that's piping hot,
the beef isn't cooked when you get it,
but the cast iron skillet does.
You mix it up, mix it, mix it, mix it.
And once all the beef is cooked,
then you mix it in with the rice,
add the soy garlic sauce and some pepper to taste
and then you have a delicious meal.
This Pepper Lunch is interesting
compared to the ones in Japan
because you can get some different sides here,
including beer-battered chips, which are french fries,
onion rings, sweet potato wedges.
They have Sapporo Beer, they have Australian beer,
and of course all the beef here is Australian beef.
So it has a little different taste than you have in Japan
but still really good, pretty cheap, super filling,
and super quick cause the food comes out to your table
in just a couple minutes.
You can be in and out of here in like 20 minutes.
Head on over to Laksa King, the king of laksa
for a $10 piping hot bowl of laksa soup.
Laksa is super popular in Singapore,
which is where I first found it.
But this bowl tastes pretty much like
what you get in Singapore, except quite a bit bigger.
Laksa is a soup with a coconut curry base noodles.
They have over 130 items on the menu here,
but definitely get the Combination Laksa.
Getting to Laksa King is pretty easy,
it's just a 15 minute train ride from
the Central Business District to the New Market Station.
And it's right across the street from where the train
let's you off.
For some cheap and tasty Dosa, head over to the Dosa Corner.
It's just a couple blocks from the Southern Cross Station
and they specialize in Indian Dosas.
What's an Indian Dosa?
It's kinda like a crepe, a big crepe.
It can be plain or come with a filling.
They've got Dosa deals, the cheapest is $7,
the one I got was $14.95.
Comes with the Chicken Dosa, Idli, Vada and a drink.
And it comes with three sauces
that you can dip your Dosa in.
It's perfectly acceptable to eat as a hand food.
Actually it's so big and the sides that are plain
you'll want to eat as a hand food,
you'll break out your fork and knife
when you go in for the middle where the chicken is.
The dipping sauce on the right, that's a Sambar,
it's kinda like a soup,
the middle's kinda spicy,
and on the left it was sort of a peanutty taste.
For some cheap and tasty Japanese curry bowls
on a little alley in front of Southern Cross Station,
stop by Don Don.
It's this little red door right here
with that little red sign.
And that's all the signage they have.
You go on in, head up the staircase,
order at the cash register.
They have about 10 items.
I got the Katsu Curry Bowl,
it's about $10 Australian dollars.
Had some freshly fried pork, rice, curry, egg,
and pickled ginger, pretty delicious.
Add Japanese hot tea, it's like another $1 buck.
Seating is just upstairs to the right of the red door,
in this little window right here.
It's a cozy seating area.
If it's full, just ask to join a table with someone else.
They get pretty busy at lunch.
For some delicious and cheap Malaysian cuisine,
head over to Mamak.
They specialize in Roti, Satay, and other Malaysian dishes.
I got the Roti which was $8.50 Australian dollars.
And Roti is kind of like a Malaysian crepe.
You can see them making them in the window,
and they have savory ones, and sweet ones.
They're making one with a banana here.
You can see that it starts out as
a really small piece of dough and it gets really really big.
It's kind of impressive.
And I also really enjoyed the Mee Goreng,
it's a Malaysian noodle dish.
Kinda spicy with seafood,
there's some egg in there.
And the best part of this place,
you order and your food comes to your table
in like two minutes.
The Mee Goreng was $14,
and I also had a Ginger Tea for $4.
They have a great selection of Malaysian teas also.
On the corner of Swanston and Little Bourke Street
two pretty cheap and tasty places.
One, Hot-Star Taiwanese street food.
They sell these big chicken fried things,
they say it's kinda like a schnitzel,
but not, it's a big fried chicken breast.
$8.50, they fry it up fresh to order.
And it takes a little while cause it is fresh.
They have a screen that shows you the numbers
so when it's time for your order to come up,
you come up and get it.
And then right next to it is Gong Cha,
a Taiwanese Milk Tea shop with Boba Tea.
Their teas are pretty good,
check it out with or without boba
depending upon how you like it.
For some cheap and tasty Taiwanese breakfast snacks all day,
stop by Mr. Kitchen.
It's just a block away from that Hot-Star Taiwanese chicken,
actually there's another one right next to it.
Everything here is really cheap.
You know but what I like is the Soy Bean Milk,
and it is fresh soy bean milk, $3.50
you can get it in the little fridges on the side.
If you've never had fresh soy bean milk before,
check it out from Mr. Kitchen.
For some cheap and tasty Australian burgers,
visit the Grand Trailer Park Taverna.
Interesting combination of names,
but their Australian burger is 100% Australian beef
for $17 Australian dollars.
I got the burger that has burger, cheese,
and a mac and cheese croquet.
I mean that's pretty exciting.
Some things to also know,
just about eating burgers, if you're eating anywhere else
in Melbourne or Australia for that matter
is what a lot of people would call ketchup
they call tomato sauce.
And also a fairly typical ordering thing that you'll see
is a lot of restaurants have table numbers.
Like here the table number's 12
and when you go order your food,
you go to the counter, you have to have gotten a table
and you tell them your table number when you sit down.
And also if you want water,
another good thing to know is often you just ask for water
and they bring you a big bottle for water.
I mean it looks like wine,
but I'm not a wino, it's just water.
So let's dive into this burger and see how it tastes.
I have to put the microphone down.
It helps if I hold the microphone now.
I do like the mac and cheese on the burger.
Piping hot, fresh, good lettuce, good tomato.
And by the way, they don't call them french fries,
they call them chips.
While this next restaurant technically isn't super cheap,
I have to include it because it's about the cheapest
one star Michelin restaurant you're ever gonna eat at.
Tim Ho Wan, it's a Dim Sum restaurant from Hong Kong.
They have a location in Chinatown in Melbourne,
they serve Dim Sum all day long.
They are very well known for their Char Siu Bao,
or their pork bun, it's baked and it's a little bit sweet.
I also really like their Har Gow,
which are their shrimp dumplings.
I also like the spinach and shrimp dumplings,
the egg tarts are freshly made, those are pretty good too.
And I also like the shrimp rice rolls.
I included it in here because each of the dishes
individually can be kind of cheap, about $7 or $8 per dish.
And something that's also cool,
it's not some super sketchy Chinese restaurant
where you have no idea who or how they're making the food.
They have this semi-transparent window
where you can actually see those buns
being made right there.
Well I hope you enjoyed this video.
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Alright, well bye-bye.