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Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on November 22, 2016 Hotel Lincoln (now called The Lincoln) has had several changes in management in the decade we've known it. This has meant a few makeovers in look and menu, although I think the atmosphere has been pretty consistent. The front bar has the typical Melbourne pub feel, while the dining room out back is much fancier. There have never been more than a couple of vegetarian options available, although we've enjoyed the ones we've had. When we visited as part of a large group recently, we were happy to order their set menu (The Half Lincoln, $45 per person) and let them show us how broad their vegetarian options really were. The appetisers were light and fun - individual crackers piled with pink pickles, and kelp-salted edamame that kept our hands busy as we chatted. One of the meal's high points was the shared entree of roasted cauliflower with a medley of buckwheat, pomegranate seeds, currants and mint. The puffed-up crunch of the...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on November 16, 2016 Our Cheap Eats project has mostly been about revisiting places we blogged way back in the day, but we're also using it to visit some long-overlooked Melbourne stalwarts. When we needed a quick dinner up at the Parliament end of the city, it seemed like the perfect excuse to finally visit one of Melbourne's institutions: Pellegrini's. It's been trading on Bourke Street since 1954 and by all reports very little has changed in 62 years - there's a wooden board listing different pasta dishes, scrappily decorated walls and staff chatting away in Italian.  It's charming enough, but the bar seating is a little awkward in a group of four. The staff were reasonably helpful taking, us through the vego dishes - the choices are pretty simple: pick from one of a handful of pasta options and then choose either pesto or napoli. I ordered the ricotta ravioli with the napoli sauce (~$18). It was fine - very basic and quite old-fashi...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on October 22, 2016 Shakahari is a true stayer of the Melbourne restaurant scene: our decade-spanning Cheap Eats project covers just a fraction of its 44-year  tenure in Carlton. We made our first visit within a month of arriving in Melbourne and starting our food blog, and notched up five blog posts by 2008. After that we relegated our revisits to twitter, facebook and our own memories, but veg bloggers easy as vegan pie , vegan about town and In The Mood For Noodles carried the blogging baton for a few years after that (see end of post for a link round-up). For a long time Shakahari switched its east-meets-west vegetarian menu seasonally, but it seems to have steadied over time. If anything they've improved their vegan and gluten-free selection. Many of our favourites have stuck around, and we were able to revisit them on a Saturday date night in Carlton. The first is the Avocado Magic entree (now $16; then $12 in 2007 ) - a hefty strip each of avocad...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on August 13, 2016 Part of the reason we decided to do our Cheap Eats 2006 project was to catch up on some glaring omissions in our near-decade of blogging. Cindy covered off Fo Guang Yuan in April, and this weekend we made our first ever visit to Collingwood vego stalwart Friends of the Earth. We haven't actively been avoiding it, but the fact that it's taken us so long to visit is probably at least partly due to a suspicion that FOE would serve up worthy but bland vego food. Luckily, that impression was completely wrong - the cafe has a lot more to offer than just lentil stews: there are doughnuts and other sweets, lunch rolls, pizzas and more, along with a seasonal mixed plate. Everything is vegan by default (although there's dairy milk and butter on hand), and they're good at gluten-free options as well. There's a handy selection of veg-friendly groceries, including organic fruit and veggies. I really wanted to try the baked tofu roll...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on August 2, 2016 Between Michael's and my travels, we've let our Cheap Eats 2006 project lapse for a few months. We're reviving it with this visit to Gopal's in the city. When we first moved to Melbourne I was just barely done being a student and Brisbane's Hare Krishna restaurants, with their cheap and filling vegetarian meals, were a favourite hang-out. Gopal's had the same relaxed atmosphere and we notched up two short reviews in our first months here. We later checked in for a marathon cooking class , and we've failed to mention this dependable eatery on our blog for a good five years since. While we were originally a bit put out by the cost of the chef's special, it has aged well! $12 in 2006, the equivalent feast plate is still just $12.95. This entitles you to a tray heaped with food - soup, rice and your two chosen curries, two chosen salads, a drink and a dessert. It's hearty, bulk cooking based on affordable ve...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on March 29, 2016 Fo Guang Yuan Art Gallery is one of the two biggest oversights highlighted in our Cheap Eats project spreadsheet - it's a vegetarian eatery that's been open the entire decade we've lived in Melbourne, yet we've never visited and blogged it until now. I put this down to the dining hall's opening hours, which are restricted to weekday lunch times and therefore quite inaccessible to us non-city workers. My workplace issued me with an Easter Tuesday off this year, and I used it to sneak in and give the gallery tea house a go at long last. It was quiet, almost hushed, and I had no trouble getting a four-seated table to myself. The menu is much longer than I'd expect for such an unassuming operation. The appetisers alone run to twenty mostly deep-fried options, and then there are several dozen more stir-fries, tossed noodles, noodles and noddle soups. Most dishes involve mock meat, with a few centred around tofu or mushroom...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on February 27, 2016 We're still working our way through our Cheap Eats 2006 project , revisiting places from the first copy of The Cheap Eats Guide that we bought way back when we moved to Melbourne. On the last Saturday of summer, we headed back to Albert Park for an early dinner in the sunshine at Andrew's Hamburgers. They pre-date the American-driven burger craze that's swept through Melbourne in the past five years or so by about 60 years, first opening in 1939 and coming up with the current burger recipe in 1957 . They've put some tables on the footpath outside, but otherwise not much have changed: the menu's the same, the burgers are the same and the steady stream of customers is the same. Prices have crept up alongside inflation - from $7 for a veggie burger in 2007 to $10 in 2016 - pretty reasonable really. Andrew's aren't in a hurry to change a formula that works for them. We grabbed one of their veggie burgers (with a hom...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on January 26, 2016 Our Cheap Eats project was a welcome excuse to revisit Ray, a cafe we've long liked . I reckon it might've been the first eatery we visited sporting the exposed brick-and communal table look that's now so ubiquitous in Melbourne. Ray's popularity has motivated an expansion and minor remodel since then, though the ambience is much the same. The menu's had something of a remodel in the last couple of years too. Known initially for its Middle Eastern tweaks to the usual brunch fare (such as dukkah-spinkled poached eggs and French toasted Turkish bread ), it's now a haphazard litany of pop culture references with Oatkast and Iron Maiden sitting alongside Avocado Da Vinci. Thankfully their dietary features are clear, with plenty for vegan, gluten-free and halal eaters. Michael took on the handsome Cob Dylan ($19.80), a generous stack of corn fritters topped with a fried egg and augmented with avocado, fattoush salad, ...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on January 25, 2016 We were heading in to Richmond for a gig on Monday night, so decided we'd take the opportunity to revisit The Tofu Shop as part of our Cheap Eats 2006 project . This place has been trading since the early 1980s, so it's no real surprise that it's still going strong. The basic ordering process hasn't changed since our first visit in 2008 - you pick your plate size and then select from the bain marie dishes until they've filled it up for you. The prices have gone up, but not by a ridiculous amount - a small plate costs $12, a medium $17 and a large $26 (compared with $8, $15 and $17 back in the day). I ordered a medium dish and let the staff work out a selection for me - there was lots of good stuff in this bowl, including: broccoli with sweet chilli tempeh, potato and black-eyed beans, chilli jam tofu, chickpea curry, baked zucchini with paprika, feta and garlic (this was the only non-vegan dish) and pickled cabbage sala...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on January 11, 2016 Cindy's family wanted to meet us for dinner in Footscray and, with our enthusiasm for our new Cheap Eats 2006 project still high, we decided it was a good opportunity to revisit Cafe Lalibela . It's been more than seven years since we last visited, and not much seems to have changed. The staff are friendly, the service casual, the menu has a good range of vego options and there's a steady stream of people coming through the door. We made the same move as last time and ordered the beyainetu (the platter below serves 3), a combination of different veggie dishes on an injera platter ($14 per head - up from $12 seven years ago, which is pretty good going). The dishes are heavy on the protein: lentils and beans cooked in various sauces, along with a potato and carrot dish. The injera is the star of the show - the fermentation adds a citruss-y kick to the chewy, spongy bread, which soaks up the relatively mild flavours of all the ste...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on January 6 & 10, 2016 In 2006 Tom Phat was a new entry into the Cheap Eats guide , on the frontier of Brunswick gentrification and Asian fusion food. A decade later its brunch & bar fit-out has barely changed and aged rather well, with floor space doubling thanks to an extension into a neighbouring shopfront. While dishes have shuffled around from time to time, the menu has remained a mish-mash of eggs and roti, curries and stir-fries, cocktails and mocktails, with well-marked veg options, plenty of tofu and at least one mention of tempeh. We first visited and blogged Tom Phat in 2008 and made a follow-up post in 2011 . While these describe positive encounters, we'll admit to a couple of disappointments regarding both the food and the service in between; Carla was far more thorough in her polarised feelings on easy as vegan pie . In the past week we've returned for both dinner and breakfast to find out how Tom Phat is faring in 2016. F...