Time Out Melbourne Food & Drink Awards 2025: Cheap Eat Nominees

It hasn’t always been so easy to source a mind-bendingly good one in the CBD, so when Banh Mi Stand first sprang onto the scene last year, we were careful about getting our hopes up. Yet the Flinders Lane hole-in-the-wall has garnered some serious hype that’s long outlived its initial post-debut shine. And so when we show up hungry on our lunch break, a cloud of customers swarming the counter is no less encouraging. Save for some tiny plastic stools and milk crates on the pavement, it’s very much a grab-and-go deal.

Established by chef Ricardo Garcia Flores as part of a dream to introduce Melburnians to the family heirloom Mexican dishes he grew up with, El Columpio has a short but sweet menu. If you arrive before midday, you’ll be treated to a breakfast menu that comprises tamales and chilaquiles. Arrive after midday and the menu is identical, no matter if you arrive at 1pm or 8pm – expect the traditional Mexican soup pozole, a selection of tacos and a few sides. Weekend specials round things off – when we visit, it’s tacos de barbacoa estilo Hidalgo, one of the most famous exports of the state north of Mexico City, which sees lamb wrapped in agave leaves and slow-cooked in an underground pit.

In the summer of 2019, we stumbled across a colourfully renovated vintage caravan stationed at Edinburgh Gardens. Its groovy ‘70s-esque branding had drawn in a throng of park-goers who, like us, were curious. At last, we discovered Northern Soul: a food truck with a menu that makes the British heart proud. Five years on, it’s no longer just a food truck. The Mancunian duo who run the operation, Jessica Tosh and Joe Grimshaw, have set up a permanent shop in St Kilda so you can get your Northern Soul fix from one spot (a really clever decision when you think about how many British tourists hang out there and are in need of a greasy hangover cure). And spoiler alert: they’re absolutely slaying it.

So good they named it thrice, this hole-in-the-wall down Meyers Place is a blessing for locals, tourists and city revellers alike. You can’t miss its sign, a neon yellow arrow blaring ‘pizza pizza pizza’ from the window. What you may miss, however, is the cosy cocktail bar found out the back, accessible by paring back a shiny black curtain – the perfect nook for a discreet nightcap. Needing a quick drink and snack before a show one night, a colleague once whisked us inside, and we've harboured delicious memories of its pliable, saucy pizza bases ever since – a truly authentic New York-style experience.

Ras Dashen has been sating the appetites of inner westies for more than a decade, and it shows no signs of abating. The colourfully eclectic interiors of Ras Dashen are as inviting as they were when Ethiopian refugee Wondimu Alemu first set up shop on Nicholson Street in 2011. Having since moved to Barkly Street in 2017, paintings and scarves striped in the green, yellow and red of the Ethiopian flag hang from terracotta -coloured walls alongside ornate bowls and woven hats – if you look closely, you can even see Alemu’s beaming face memorialised in one of the paintings. 

Down a laneway from the Queen Victoria Market, the Cevapi Project itself is small and neat – just a simple countertop with a few tables and chairs outside. There’s Balkan pop music blasting inside and you can see the staff in the kitchen busily working away. Is it strange form to give the Time Out equivalent of a Michelin star to what’s essentially an Eastern European sausage sizzle? Nah, no way. This is where you can find some of the most authentic Balkan bites in town and it’s safe to say we’re obsessed.

First making a name for itself as a food truck in Preston, Wazzup Falafel set up a permanent outpost earlier this year along High Street in Northcote – excellent news for lovers of the Palestinian-Jordanian outfit, now able to enjoy their famed falafels in the most extreme of Melbourne’s weather conditions. Falafels are unsurprisingly the name of the game here, but you get to decide how they’re served up to you – in a box alongside a medley of other ingredients, threaded on to a stick, atop piping hot chips in the self-fashioned ‘FSP’, slotted into wraps, swallowed by the folds of baked pita pockets.