james test

I've been a bit slack with Gertrude Street Grub of late - mostly because I've not been venturing to any new places and just been revisiting old favourites . This week, I finally got around to dropping into the Made A Mano bakery and grabbing a pasty to takeaway and eat. Made A Mano is an organic bakery, with a wide range of breads and a heap of delicious looking lunch options (focaccias, pastries, muffins etc). It was impossible to go past the vegetarian pasty option ($5): a huge slab of pastry, filled with potato, peas, onion, celery and a dash of curry flavouring. The pastry was crisp and flaky and the filling was rich, tasty and vegie-licious. I found myself a nice park to sit in and savoured every mouthful. Tremendous. Address: 228 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy Ph: 9417 5998 Price: $5 for pastries

Update, January 24 2013: Bangla Curry Cafe has closed. Monday brought with it our first real taste of winter for the year and prompted me to venture a little further than usual in search of a suitably warming workday lunch. Bangla Curry Cafe does a daily lunch special: curry, naan, rice and pappadum for $10.95, and it seemed the easiest option. Unfortunately, the special is limited to only a handful of curries - just dal or mixed vegie curry for vegetarians. I opted for the mixed vegie curry - the usual array of potato, peas, cauliflower and mushrooms in a spicey and slightly sweet curry sauce. The bread and rice were fairly standard fare - it was all hearty and warming, but a little on the mediocre side when Fitzroy has so much else to offer (e.g. another leftover-less day today found me returning to Newtown S.C. , where the tomato, vegetable and lentil soup was divine). The thing that sets Bangla apart from the multitude of other Indian places around is the array of sweets on off...

Update, 31/12/2014: The Builders Arms has been taken over by the McConnells (of Cutler and Co , Cumulus Inc and others) and has gone pretty upmarket. This post is not representative of the pub anymore. It's been a while since a Gertrude Street Grub post. The last few times I've bought lunch I've either forgotten to bring the camera with me or been too keen to revisit TrippyTaco to chase up somewhere new to blog. Things fell into place on Friday though - the leftover supply dried up on the only day of the week that The Builders Arms is open for lunch. From the outside, The Builders Arms is a pretty average looking pub - a few tables on the street and a fairly grimy looking public bar - but if you wander through the door at the back of the public bar, you find yourself in a bizarrely garish pink restaurant. It was too much for me, so I ordered quickly and scurried back to one of the outside tables where the illusion of an old-fashioned pub could be maintained. Th...

The only downside to swanning about town on Wednesday night is that lack of leftovers for Thursday lunch. Still, it's the excuse I need to run down another Gertrude Street lunch review. Today's lucky venue was Radio, a cosy bar almost directly across from work. I've not been there for an evening out, but the Kirin on tap and the old soul, reggae or funk tunes that are always spinning on the record player make me think it would be a nice place for some post-work drinks. During the day they do a bit of food and some very nice Brazilian coffee. The food menu is pretty limited: cereal, muesli or toasties for breakfast and a selection of about 5 baguettes for lunch. The $6 baguettes all come with rocket, tomato, avocado, swiss cheese, a divine homemade mayonaise and your choice of 'meat'. The only vegetarian option is grilled eggplant, but it works pretty well with the rest of the fillings, so I was fairly content. The baguettes are fresh and crunchy and all the...

This week's lunch outing was to Roundhouse Roti. After a previous failed attempt , I was pretty keen to get stuck into some delicious curry and fried bread. Roundhouse Roti is attached to Rose Chong's costume shop (this week with some sort of bizarre skeleton wedding display in the window) and is a fairly tiny shop. The kitchen is open and takes up most of the room, leaving space for one large communal table and a couple of smaller booths. There are a handful of tables out on the footpath and, with Melbourne finally turning in a mild, sunny day instead of ridiculous heat, that's where I settled in. The menu is pretty small, with only two real roti-style dishes (flaky fried bread combined with a saucy curry for dipping) and a few dishes that are basically roti toasted sandwiches. The vego options are the roti dhal, or a roti filled with spinach and feta (I'm ignoring the sweet options, as I didn't really look at them). I had to go with the roti dhal - there...

I learned a valuable lesson on Monday - don't go looking for Gertrude Street Grub on Mondays, everything's closed. My initial plan was to stop by the Roti Roundhouse , and my second option (Radio) is also a Monday closure. I was tempted to return to TrippyTaco , but it was too soon for a repeat blog performance. So I settled on Arcadia, a trendy-looking cafe on Gertrude Street near the corner with Smith Street. The lunch options seem to be largely pre-made stuff (salads, sandwiches, a few curries and pastas) in the display case, with a few rotating specials. I opted for a sandwich: roasted eggplant, fresh salad, pesto and feta cheese, and settled in to a seat out on the footpath. Given the sandwiches were sitting, ready-made, in the cabinet, I was a little surprised that it took upwards of 20 minutes for it to come out. Admittedly it had been warmed up and put on a plate with some rocket, and things were kind of busy inside, but I think they can probably do better. The ...

Update 31/12/2014: Newtown Social Club changed hands a year or two back and has been transformed into Newtown Specialty Coffee . It has a similar vibe but a different menu and a stronger coffee emphasis - I'll have to revisit soon to update the blog. Another week, another lunch. This time at uber-hip Fitzroy cafe Newtown S. C. I'd had the coffee recommended to me and on my odd trip down had noticed a fairly appetising lunch menu - in terms of vego items, there were at least three different pides, a baguette, some rice paper wraps and a couple of salads. The breakfast options looked tasty too, but this section is all about lunches for now. The whole vibe of the place is cool - it's staffed by trendy Fitzroy hipsters and its clientele is primarily trendy Fitzroy hipsters. The decor is the interior design equivalent of an ironic t-shirt: paintings of dogs and kittens, embroidery on the wall - kitsch, but cool. The service is great - everyone's friendly and helpful and...

Welcome to an exciting* new regular** where's the beef special - Gertrude Street Grub. Cindy and I usually sort out enough leftovers from our meals to provide ourselves with weekday lunches. Having house guests in the last few weeks however, has resulted in much fewer leftovers and many more trips out to buy lunch. I've discovered some pretty great places and have decided to put together a weekly*** series of posts reviewing lunch places around Gertrude Street (where my office is) and the southern ends of Smith and Brunswick Streets. The lucky first place (and, in truth, the inspiration for this entire series) is Trippytaco. From what I understand, Trippytaco started out as a caterers who ran food stalls at Meredith and other Victorian festivals (although surprisingly I don't remember them being at the Hispanic Festival ). They've recently set up a shop on Smith Street in Collingwood where their vegetarian Mexican food is on sale all year 'round. The menu is s...