Babu Barburger With Balls | Breadtop
364 Victoria St
North Melbourne, VIC 3051
03 9329 2727
Website
Fatbee and I spotted this place during our stroll towards Queen Victoria Market. Hilarious name aside, it appealed as a good nearby joint for a lazy midweek meal on nights when we’re sick of home cooking and microwave meals.
That’s exactly what happened recently on a Tuesday night, but we went the EVEN LAZIER route by having our burgers delivered to us. It only involved a few clicks on their website, a credit card, and within 13 minutes from payment, dinner arrived at our doorstep. Delivery was free because we lived but a minute’s drive away… hah!
Thin Cut Fries (Small) $3.40
The (still-warm) burgers came as deconstructed constructs inside the box, with the pink mayo, BBQ and tomato sauce given on the side so that you can decide what and how much sauce you’d like with your meal.
Number 4 Burger $13.90
150g with Swiss Cheese caramelized onion & beetroot
So we had to get our plates out and reconstruct our burgers after saucing it up! I know this is how Babu Barburger rolls, but to be honest after a long day at work, this putting it all back together part wasn’t that welcome. We’d much rather have the burger all sauced up, wrapped up and ready to eat.
Here’s Fatbee’s burger, he was equivocal about it, the patty was alright but overall the whole thing could’ve been juicier.
Number 6 Burger $15.30
150g with goat cheese, capsicum salsa & eggplant
The online ordering system allows you to specify how cooked you’d like the patty to be, so it was great that our patties came exactly as requested – medium rare. I picked a roast eggplant with goats cheese and capsicum burger because it sounded interesting, but it ended up tasting like it wanted to be a Middle Eastern dish, ha ha!
To be fair, what I ordered was a rather odd combi, but overall we thought the burgers did not quite hit the mark this time round. The next time we’re feeling lazy midweek, we’ll probably DO that 5 minute stroll to the premises and have our burgers hot-off-the-griller right there. Now the only thing would be to reconstruct the burgers as fast as possible when it arrives so that it stays hot!
Strawberry Gateau $4.30 | Portuguese Tart $2.00 | Egg Tart $1.50 – from Breadtop Docklands
Breadtop Bakery
Various Locations
Website
The rest of this post will cover odds and ends that has been happening food-wise. Fatbee likes to buy interesting sweets from here and there to snack on after dinner, and most of the sweets comes from Asian grocers and bakeries. I used to not even think about entering Breadtop to satisfy my sweet cravings, but lately this perspective has changed.
Curry Vegetable Bun $1.50 | Tuna Bun $2.40 | Seaweed Pork Floss Bun $2.40 – from Breadtop CBD
The buns and cakes at these Asian bakeries are exactly to my liking. They’re light, soft and fluffy… and they’re not exceedingly sweet, not to mention incredibly cheap. At this price point, of course you won’t be getting top grade ingredients, but at least the end result is a dessert offering that suits my palate perfectly. And it isn’t like I’d engulf huge quantities of it.
Here’s what Fatbee and I brought home as takeaway ‘lunch’ one Wednesday. We had it with wine… ha ha ha!
Tiger Skin Swiss Roll $8.00 – from Breadtop Footscray
Alright so some of the offerings aren’t that great (like the egg tarts), and the freshness of its products can sometimes go up and down depending on which branch you visit (the busier ones are fresher because the products turnover faster). But at this price point, I ain’t complaining… we’ve already tried about 5 different types of Swiss Rolls (Plain, Coffee, Matcha, Mixed Fruit – favourite!) from Breadtop, eating them bit by bit after dinner each night. They’ve kept me happy…
The other thing that has changed this year is my morning coffee drinking habits. Now that I’m staying over at Bee’s, I’ve stopped making my own piccolo lattes in the morning using my (fancy fancy) Rancilio Sylvia V3 espresso machine and coffee grinder.
I shouldn’t call this “slumming it”, but at his place, packets of Asian instant coffee is the go. Omg… losing klout and credibility much? Ha ha ha!
To be honest, I’d still rather drink these instant coffees than those gimmicky Nespresso-type pod machines, mainly because at least these packets tend to taste a bit like Kopi in Singapore. I now only indulge in good cups of Melbourne coffee when I’m brunching out, or when we’re staying at my place with a recently bought bag of beans.
Update: since I’d written up this post weeks ago, we’ve finally decided to haul the entirety of my coffee-making setup from my place to Fatbee’s… limited kitchen counter space notwithstanding. It made sense because there wasn’t any point leaving such good equipment sitting like unused white elephants in my home. Plus I was getting pretty bleurrrgh about instant coffees… haha!
Carrot + toasted pecan cake with white chocolate cream cheese
Coconut butter cake with roasted rhubarb
We’ll end this post with a few old-style cakes from Beatrix in North Melbourne that we enjoyed one Wednesday afternoon. Because…. why not?? =D
