Where to get lunch in Melbourne's outer suburbs

Best for: cheap eats
Lunch: daily

For any person on the go, the banh mi is the perfect, one-handed meal. Those who love the French-influenced, porcine sandwich will know Nhu Lan to be one of the best producers of the sandwich. Another plus is the cost of your lunch will be less than the cost of your train trip.

Best for: cheap eats
Lunch: daily

Café Lalibela is one of the oldest Ethiopian institutions in Melbourne, serving traditional and authentic Ethiopian food and beverages. The restaurant strives to maintain the traditions that are practised daily in East African nation. It has also started its own importing business, bringing three brands of Ethiopian beer to Australia, which have since become quite popular with customers.

Best for: cheap eats
Lunch: daily

You can find a whole mess of Malaysian curries and also a few laksas at the pan-Asian eatery, but we’re all about the roti. The buttery, tissue-thin flatbread flies fast and free around the Footscray restaurant. Every now and then, one of the team steps out from behind the counter and spins the dough in the air like a set of nunchucks.    

Best for: the casual catch-up
Lunch: Tue-Sun

Flemington might be best known for hosting the race that stops the nation, but mere metres away from the racecourse is Hem 27, a Vietnamese eatery in the Showgrounds Village shopping complex, where you can bet on a winning meal for less than $20. If you think Vietnamese soups are are all a gradient of pho, you need to try the banh canh cua at Hem 27, a rich soup made with silky tapioca noodles that are similar to udon. The thick crab gravy soup is slightly spicy and tangy, with flecks of crab meat. Toppings are generous – there’s a surf and turf combo of fish cakes, mushrooms, and pork loaf – but the crowning glory is the deep fried soft shell crab. 

Best for: the boozy lunch
Lunch: Fri-Sun

The pizzeria is the demountable classroom of the food world. Not too glamorous, but eminently practical, it’s the saving grace of suburban life and the reason the aphorism “feed the rich, go home poor; feed the poor, go home rich” was coined. Tables are equipped with a DIY box of cutlery, napkins and all the accoutrements of good times (oil, vinegar and chilli sauce). Non-pizza fun sticks to the produce-driven brief: whispery slices of peppercorn-studded mortadella dressed with the jammy minimalism of mustard fruits; a mousse-light cod roe dip with salty fingers of wood oven focaccia. 

Best for: the casual catch-up
Lunch: Thur-Sun

As the Mexican wave swept Melbourne, Diana Hull couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Back in Mexico, the best tortillas are made with whole stoneground nixtamalised corn (dried corn that’s been treated with an alkali solution). So, Hull and partner Gerardo Lopez went out on a limb, ordered up a few thousand bucks worth of tortilla-making equipment, and set up Melbourne’s first tortilleria using whole corn. There is a small menu of Mexico City street food - the crowd favourite is tacos al Pastor. Free-range (Otway) pork is marinated in achiote, ancho and guajillo chillies and – wait for it – cola. 

Best for: the power lunch
Lunch: daily 

After months of refurbishment, pub fans of the west can return and expect the same friendly, relaxed atmosphere, great craft beer and wine lists, and Station Hotel's famous steaks. Locals and steak aficionados can select from a menu that offers premium grain- and grass-fed steaks from Australian beef, including 300g Great Southern Pinnacle porterhouses to 200g Sher Wagyu. 

Best for: the boozy lunch
Lunch: Fri-Sun

The old suburban atmosphere has been preserved at the Vic with paint peeling off bricks, concrete floors and the occasional floral print rug straight out of 1972. To wet your whistle, the drinks list is short and to the point, aiming for simplicity and quality over choice and intrigue. The food is top notch. The mains section includes pub classics done with serious skill, and starters are more creative, like vegetable and samphire fritters. 

Best for: the casual catch-up
Lunch: daily

Rudimentary – a cream-and-caramel-coloured shipping container conversion – has sprouted up like a metallic mushroom on the site of a former car park in Footscray. Yes, it’s in once rough-as-guts Footscray: an area known for its plethora of cheap Vietnamese street eats, not its banging brunch spots. We wish we were one of the lucky locals, contentedly nesting here with their Macbooks and Small Batch Roast lattes. Any man who serves up a breakfast dish of braised pork belly is all right by us, especially when pork scratching-style pig’s ear crisps, two perfectly fried eggs, red chilli shards and a slice of sourdough, licked with sweet-sour tamarind sauce, are added to the mix. 

Best for: cheap eats
Lunch: Mon-Fri

Laksa King is a large, clean canteen with long communal tables, a small courtyard area with bamboo plants specialising in laksa. A tall blackboard menu lists all the Malaysian classics, including eight kinds of the namesake dish. For the record, Laksa King does a great version of this much-loved classic: the big, deep bowl has a rich broth, a good measure of coconut creaminess and a nice warm hit of chilli that won’t break your tastebuds. There’s a mix of hokkien and vermicelli noodles and a healthy amount of shredded chicken, prawns (two), fried tofu squares, fishcake, and deep-fried eggplant that has sucked up all the flavour of the broth.