I’m very spoilt for choice when it comes to eating out in my new neighbourhood. Just down the road is Victoria St which has countless Vietnamese restaurants, a great Korean place, and so many more eateries that I haven’t discovered yet. A few blocks away is the Carringbush Hotel, and on the ground floor of my building is a very popular cafe called Three Bags Full where I regularly enjoy breakfast. Every Tuesday morning dozens of cyclists arrive around 7am – their bikes covering the entire front of the cafe.

The Carringbush Hotel has very fast become my ‘local’ and is the place I like to go with family and friends when they come to visit. It was built in 1889, around the same time as my building and is very warm and welcoming (helped in part by the open fire in the lounge). Good food, friendly staff and a very convenient short walk away from home makes it hard to resist, which is probably why I spend so much time there. In fact it’s so welcoming there’s a risk I’ll become like one of those characters in Cheers.

In Victoria St there’s a great Vietnamese restaurant called Ha Long. They serve very delicious duck rice paper rolls and you can also take your own wine which is a huge bonus as I have a good collection that needs drinking. I loved that the ladies were making spring rolls right there in front of us at a table in the restaurant.

Also in Victoria St is Quint cafe. Their brioche french toast with caramelised banana is really good. They also make great coffee and the staff are ultra friendly. At Quint you can see some of the colourful Victoria St personalities which can be quite entertaining at times.

Next door to Quint is the tiny Korean eatery, Seoul Soul. It gets great reviews on the foodie websites and so is a bit hard to get into, but definitely worth the wait. At my first visit I tried a dish called Bibimbap which is served as a bowl of warm rice, topped with your choice of sautéed and seasoned meat or tofu (I chose spicy pork), pickled vegetables, Korean chilli paste, and an egg. Everything is stirred together just before eating and it is really delicious. This is what it looks like before you stir.

Photo from restaurant website.

Finally, across the road from Seoul Soul is the Happy Lucky Dumpling Bar. Who could resist a place with such a great name? It was recommended to me as somewhere to buy cold dumpling to eat later. I couldn’t wait that long and bought some delicious hot pork and prawn dumplings to take home and eat immediately. While waiting for my order I watched this lovely lady meticulously filling and rolling dumplings for some other happy lucky customer.