The best toasties in Melbourne

At this temple of bread, the sourdough is the star of the show and for good reason – Wild Life bakes some of Melbourne’s best. It’s properly tangy with a crunchy caramel crust and chewy crumb, and it shines as the foundation of thick toasted sandwiches with an abundance of melty Comté inside. The sweet and nutty cheese surrounds sticky, Worcestershire-coated onion, creating a comforting sanga that is simple and unfussy. It's equal parts hot, melty, savoury, sweet and crunchy, making for a sandwich you hope will never end.

While some favour a “more is more” mentality, Brunswick fromagerie Harper & Blohm’s snappy list of sandwiches is all about tasteful restraint. Aside from their classic three cheese, each features just a single variety to highlight the quality and characteristics of the curds. The Barry’s Blue remixes that most grown-up of salads – blue cheese, fig, rocket, walnut – into an elegant toastie that balances the gentle funk of blue cheese with the sweet touch of wafer-thin pear slices, spicy rocket and the bitterness of walnuts. It’s all layered between square slices of organic sourdough toasted to a deep gold, and this rich, luxuriant sandwich goes down best with a velvety cup of Market Lane batch brew – we’d advise against pairing with a milky coffee.

Tuna sandwiches have a daggy reputation, but we’re here to make the bold claim that the tuna melt at this sun-washed sandwich shop in Richmond is one of the best things you can eat. They nail the tuna salad here, adding dill, diced onion and pickled green chilli for kick, toasting it with melty American cheese and ‘hectic sauce’, a moreish chipotle aioli we’d happily slather on anything in arm’s reach. The bread’s a key player too – light rye generously buttered on the outside and toasted to a shattering crunch. Crisp Saturday mornings with one of these, a chocolatey cold drip and the day’s paper – you could do no better.

Maker & Monger has long been considered one of Melbourne’s pre-eminent grilled cheese purveyors, and rightly so. On weekends, the little cart does brisk business from its spot near the back of Prahran Market, beckoning shoppers in with its display of high-stacked sourdough, each surface generously buttered. Options include an all-American cheddar fest and a zippy pimento, but for pure melty goodness, you can’t go past the fondue. It’s easily the cheesiest of the lot, producing an Instagram-baiting pull when you separate the sandwich halves. They’re using a mix of Swiss gruyère and comté tricked up with shallots, garlic and wine for a belly-warming toastie that’ll take you to a chalet in the Alps. Extra points for their well-stocked chilli sauce station, which runs the gamut from Diemen’s hot sauce and Lillie Q’s hot smokey barbecue to sriracha and that holiest of condiments – Lao Gan Ma chilli oil.

Beneath Driver Lane is one of those overachieving Melbourne bars that seem to have it all – a subterranean laneway locale, transportative fitout, great cocktails and live blues music. To top it off, they also do one the city’s best toasties, a solid reuben that piles thick slices of Rustica sourdough with thinly sliced wagyu pastrami, melty gruyère, pucker-sour kraut and Russian dressing, served with long pickles. They nail the toasting here, getting the bread crisp all over while retaining its chewy crumb and thoroughly heating the generous layers of filling. It’s one hefty sandwich, less bar snack and more full meal.

The practitioners of Captains of Industry are “Practical Men of Wide Experience” – and as such they offer a one-stop gentleman’s shop complete with a barber, shoemaker and bistro. That may make you wonder how good they are at any one of those trades, but trust us: they're experts. The three-cheese toastie is an oozy, salty and crunchy square of cheesy goodness, and you'll probably need a nap after trying it. 

The world has come a long way for vegans – now we’ve got lush oat lattes, plant burgers that bleed and coconut-based ice creams every bit as silky as their dairy counterparts. Even cheese toasties are on the table at Union Kiosk, where they dole out cheap and cheerful tuckshop-style jaffles from a hole in the wall window on Causeway Lane. They’re coy on their cheese sorcery methods but a base of tapioca flour and coconut oil give it a melty, elastic texture that’s a worthy mimic of the Kraft slices of your childhood, but creamier. For peak nostalgic snacking, we reckon its best enjoyed with their house made baked beans toasted between white sandwich bread. 

Bad Frankie’s main calling card might be their 450-strong backbar of Australian spirits, but we suspect just as many swing by the cosy Fitzroy bar for their eclectic range of nostalgia-inducing jaffles. Edible Australiana is found in jaffle-ized versions of meat pies, supreme pizzas and even hot jam doughnuts. But for optimum late-night comfort, our money – all $10 of it – is on the Mid-week Special. It takes all of the beloved comfort of a juicy parma and tucks it into crispy sandwich bread served with a side of crisps.

If your mum was wrong and listening to pop-punk music wasn't just a phase, then comb out that long fringe, chuck on your tattered Converse and smudge your eyeliner for an outing to Token Toasties. This addition to Brunswick Street serves up delicious toasties and great coffee in a space inspired by the pop-punk and grunge scene from the 90s. The menu features sixteen toasties: half of them are meat-based while the other half are vegan and plant-based. Try the Jumpin' Jack Flash, a vegan take on a pulled pork sandwich featuring sauteed barbecue jackfruit, mozzarella, baby pickles and sriracha. Add a side of freshly fried onion rings and you've got yourself an unparalleled comfort meal. 

It may sound less exciting than some of the other options on this list, but hear us out: sometimes all you want is a classic. This Bourke Street joint is open until midnight, so it's the perfect pit-stop for a carby meal to soak up alcohol after a big night. Thick slices of white bread are generously buttered and filled with slices of Tasty Cheese, and the bread is toasted to a crunch and the cheese is melted to oozy perfection. Take a bite and embark on a trip down memory lane to the simpler days of your childhood.