PekoPeko

In a drab strip of shops ducking for cover behind the St.Kilda Road Skyscrapers, is a small jewel. It's like diving into your ancient auntie’s jewellery box full of plastic tat and finding a proper gem. That's PekoPeko.

It looks like nothing from the exterior - just one of a group of down at the heel, cheap eighties style single storey shops, festooned with a bright sign of a funky Asian caricature - and yet when you step in through the door it is as though you have entered the Tardis. Suddenly you are in a big modern style café with funky down lights, some banquettes and a communal table. The vibe is warm and busy. The clientele is predominantly Asian.

The fare is simple but sustaining, cheap and delicious. At lunchtime, worker bees descend from their open plan offices and dive in for a quick plate of rice, a deep bowl of noodles or some takeaway. At night the local apartment dwellers hit.

The menu has 74 items listed but ordering is straightforward. Most will choose either a Peko Box (Bento Box) $10.50, a Peko Plate (rice and topping) $8.90 - $11 or a Peko Noodle Bowl of noodle soup $9.50 and share an entrée $5.50-$8.40, between two people with all dishes arriving together. The drink list has a handful of Beers and wines, along with quirky Asian drinks like Calpis Soda and Green Tea Lattes.

The food here is a fusion of Taiwanese and Japanese. The entrees range from Wasabi Mayo Prawns and Taiwanese sausages to crispy chicken wings. Deep wide Noodle bowls have fried pork, beef, curry and dumplings amongst the offerings, and the soup and noodles have a great slurp factor. You find fried noodles and fried rice amongst the light meals $8-$9.50.

The Peko Boxes are great value. You get a good wodge of sticky short grain rice, a serve of vegetable, sometimes cabbage or snake beans or whatever’s handy, plus a deep fried wedge of tofu and whichever main you choose. Names like Pop Chicken, Pork Addiction roll off the tongue along with Ma Po Tofu and Hot Chicken Dance. We’ve sampled quite a few now and all come straight from the wok, scorching hot and bursting with delicious flavours. The meat is melt in the mouth and the fish fresh.

You can finish with coffee and hot chocolates. I can’t recall any desserts as we are usually too stuffed to put another thing in anyway. By the way, this is fast turnover dining. Don’t linger – they need to turn the tables, and by the time they don’t, the staff are busting to get home.

Get in, chow down and waddle out. You won’t regret it.

PekoPeko Modern Asian Café Restaurant
190 Wells Street, South Melbourne. Ph. 9686 1109

This review is cross-posted at Deep Dish Dreams.

Tiba's Lebanese Restaurant

Two doors up from another great Brunswick institution Mediterranean Wholesalers, sits Tiba’s a bustling Lebanese takeaway and restaurant. The front of house is a popular spot to grab a kebab or falafel on the run. They also sell excellent dips and pastries to take away.

After some months of experiencing the delights of Tiba’s dishes to take out, I thought it was time to actually eat in.

But what to eat? The sit down menu offers a variety of set meals as well as sides from which you can build a satisfying feast. Friends of mine from a “mixed marriage” (a meat eater and a vegetarian), who are regulars like to create their own shared meal from falafels, tabouleh and dips with a carnivorous bit on the side.

For a first time experience we went the easy route, with some set meals.

I opted for the “Falafel Serve” ($10) – 5 freshly cooked falafels, pickled turnips, green salad, tabouli, hummus, yoghurt dip and rice. This turned up on a large plate, with a generous helping of flat bread in a basket. The falafels were satisfying, though I have had better (and worse). The pickled turnip was a perfect addition, for both flavour and texture.

The Significant Eater got a little excited by the meat based offerings and went for the “Mixed Grill” ($16) which came with all of the above minus the falafels but with 5, yes 5, different meats including a cutlet, spicy Lebanese sausage, chicken and lamb. While my meal came on a large plate – this was huge, catering platter size and overflowing with meat and salads. He managed to chew his way through the lot with appreciative grunts, the only criticism being it was a little salty for his palate.

What I like most about Tiba’s is the great value for money, diverse clientele and I even took a liking to the plastic replica mosque that lights up and plays the call to prayer unexpectedly halfway through your meal! I’d expected the staff to down tools and pray but service carried on as usual.

There can be a downside to cheap; in this case it was the smell of chemical air freshener that wafted in waves throughout the meal. There was also a randomness of where the staff seated people. We sat literally on the divide between the ‘nicer’, table-clothed restaurant side and the takeaway kebab bar. Despite there being lots of empty tables in the ‘restaurant’ which had the same menu, there was a weird reluctance to seat people there – even the couple who pointed to a table and asked nicely but still ended up being placed right near the door in the takeaway section. Needless to say the décor is heavy on the type of tack that will never be fashionable (plastic, musical mosque aside).

With these petty grumbles out of the way, there is one more thing you need to know about Tiba’s, being a Halal restaurant means no alcohol. Having advanced knowledge of this meant we had a pleasant pre-dinner drink a block or two away at the Village Green.

Tiba’s ticked a lot of the “very cheat eat” boxes as far as I am concerned: for under $20 there was a wide variety of complete meals (i.e.: protein and a decent serve of vegetables) for vegetarians, vegans and carnivores. Despite it being unlicensed, I could still get a balanced and tasty meal as well as a drink (even if it was somewhere else) nicely within budget.

Tiba’s Lebanese Restaurant
504 Sydney Rd,
Brunswick
Phone: (03) 9380 8425

This review is cross-posted at Confessions of a Food Nazi.

Jia (Chadstone)

Shopping centre food courts - they're not exactly the culinary epicentre of the world, but they are generally pretty cheap and sometimes, if you are lucky, you may just stumble across something that actually tastes pretty good. Such is the case with Jia, at Chadstone.

Located in the lower level foodcourt Jia attracts a lot of passing traffic. They have a take-away side and also do cooked to order meals, which can be consumed in their adjoining dining area. What attracts most visitors though are their specialty: pork dumplings. They are available steamed or grilled and a plate of 10 will set you back $8.80. They really are quite good and you get a substantial feed for the money. I find myself ordering them most times I visit Chadstone.


These dumplings are good because they're hand made and simple. Three ladies, who don't speak a word of English, work at the front of the shop stretching out dough and filling it with a fragrant mix of minced pork, coriander and spring onion. The dumplings are shaped, steamed and ultimately grilled. They are good and upon enquiry I find out that they sell at least 2000-3000 of them each day. Whoa!

Jia also does decent Asian meals and good hot soups, many of which are around the $10 mark. So the next time you are in Chadstone and need a food fix go past the greesy burger and chip joints and head down to Jia. You'll hopefully be pleasantly surprised.

Jia
Shop 70B - Lower Level Food Court
Chadstone Shopping Centre

This entry has been cross-posted on Melbourne Foodie

Love Pho? Head to Swan St

If you are hanging around Swan St but can't be bothered to leg-it all the way to Victoria Street then Love Pho ( 181 Swan St, Richmond) is the one for you.
Its Pho isn't the cheapest in town but at $9 is pretty good value and you get the benefit of a brightly coloured lime green contemporary interior. It's sort of like being in the Pho24 chain in Ho Chi Minh (or Singapore nowadays) without the chain bit.
Today's steamy facial of soup contained beef balls. Yes they were ball-shaped but too small to be the full bollock.



The usual sides of herbs, chilli and some brown sauce come along to.It is a challenge to eat the wholegiant bowl. I emerge fresh and damp-faced, full and triumphant ready to defend my corner of the world.
It's difficult to find bad Pho in Melbourne and there is great debate about where and which is the best. St Albans vs Footscray. Victoria St vs the CBD.
All I can say it that Love Pho, coincidentally a sponsor of the Love Pho exhibition, is a welcome addition to Swan St.

You can check-out my post on the Best Phos in Melbourne over at the Tomato blog here.

If you want to join this group blog and write about your favourite pho or very cheap eat (that's less than $20) then email me gastrotomATgmailDOTcom.

Kimchi Grandma BBQ

Asian food has always been a mainstay of cheap eating and about 80% of Kimchi Grandma BBQ’s menu meets our criteria of a “very cheap eat”. Sure there is a wagyu dish or two for more than twice that price but pampered beef meals aside, the vast majority of the dishes on offer provide a satisfying and enjoyable meal on a budget.

My first Grandma Kimchi experience was at their flagship Carnegie restaurant. It was late on a weeknight, the staff were looking forward to their shift ending and while they weren’t over friendly, the service was prompt. Perhaps because I was tired my inaugural meal was not that memorable but I remember my partner chowing down with relish, pleased to share his favourite local restaurant.

The empire has since grown to Box Hill, Hawthorn and for the last couple of years, the CBD. The city restaurant looks a little snazzier, yet has the same butchers paper tablecloths and anonymous white tableware.

The menu comes in a large black plastic insert-style book. Many of the dishes are illustrated, perhaps as a result of too many questions from the uninitiated in the early years of the chain. For those unfamiliar with the cuisine, it could crudely be described as similar to Japanese but with liberal doses of chilli paste. Other than the spice - tofu, cabbage and chilli oil are frequent inclusions. A recent episode of ”Food Safari” provides a good primer on the subject. Grandma Kimchi BBQ, has a range of meat, rice, noodle, seafood and soup dishes but purely vegetarian offerings are thin on the ground. It is possible to create a vegetable based meal out of entrees and side dishes though.

While I’m told the traditional bulgogi (marinated thin strips of beef, pork or chicken) brings many loyal fans back to Grandma Kimchi, after repeated visits my favourite remains hae mul chon gol, a seafood steamboat dish. A pot of seafood, tofu, mushrooms and other vegetables simmered in stock with lashings of chilli paste and powder, is cooked at the table. It is a meal for 2 (or more) people and comes with rice and of course kimchi – usually between 5-7 small dishes of pickles including the eponymous cabbage dish. It is a fun meal to eat and suits itself to a long meal grazing and chatting with friends. The chilli level is enough to make your nose run and warm your mouth without burning, without obliterating the delicate flavours of the star ingredients. Tea also comes free with all meals. At $36.90, this meal fills you to the gunnels for less than $18.50 a head.


Kimchi


Ready to cook


Hae mul chon gol - ready to eat

While service is usually efficient in getting you seated, regardless of it being a quiet or busy night for some reason drink service seems to be uniformly slow. After half a dozen or so visits the meals have always been of a consistent quality and with each experience my fondness for kimchi grows.

Kimchi Grandma BBQ
145 Bourke St (between Russell and Exhibition Sts), Melbourne
Phone (03) 9650 0384

Also check out the cheap lunch set meals and special deals.


This entry has been cross-posted on confessions of a food nazi

The Buckingham Hotel, Footscray

"Old Man" or traditional Aussie pubs are a dying breed. Most have been converted into overdone restaurants, apartments or the dreaded pokie venue. Others have been turned in funky/kitsch lounges that can be great, but very busy and have seen substantial price creep over the last few years taking them past the $20 "Very Cheap Eats" meal/drink limit.

The traditional pubs remaining frequently have character, but finding ones with clean, cold beer lines and quality bar meals represents a growing challenge that I hope can be reversed. One such gem is hidden in the residential backstreet's of Footscray called "The Buckingham Hotel" at 23 Buckingham Street.

It has a typical pub menu, but the standout offer is a $7.50 lunch special which is a single blackboard choice that changes daily (ensuring freshness). During Friday lunch, we were presented with a large serve of baked lamb chops and chips ($7.50)...basic food I agree...but the chops were slow baked in a hearty homemade sauce using noticeable base ingredients of carrots, celery, onion, tomato and herbs. The chips were hot, chunky and tasted of real potato. On a previous day, the special consisted of a whole chicken breast, hand crumbed (yes...hand crumbed, NOT the crappy frozen bulk schnitzel!!) with chips, gravy and a separately served impressive garden salad ($7.50).

It's fair to say the meals are simple and honest, but the homemade quality of the food that arrives is impressive for the price. This is stuff your mum might have made and is perfect to enjoy with a cold beer for around $10 all up. The Buckingham Hotel represents a simple, relaxed and inviting venue to enjoy another side of Melbourne life...away from the rush, flash and noise of busier destinations. Even parking is a breeze.

Tempting to stay for a second drink in the beer garden at these prices.