Coffee streusel slice

January 2, 2026

   

It would seem that, for the third year in a row, I've gotten nostalgic over my Christmas-new year break and pulled out the Australian Women's Weekly Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits. This isn't actually a recipe we ate back in the 1990s; my brother would not have accepted the walnuts and neither of us would have been interested in the coffee. My tastes have changed! A biscuity based covered in coffee caramel, walnuts and a streusel topping is right up my alley.

My adjustments were minor. Worried about spreading the biscuit base as far as I needed to, I used a smaller, square baking tray than what was recommended and ended up with a taller, chunkier slice than the one in the book's photo. I was not interested in freezing and grating the streusel, so I just lightly crumbled it with my hands. Given the accessibility of dairy-free condensed milk these days, this would be easy to veganise.

The outcome was sweet and golden, and the walnuts almost melded into it. (Maybe I'd enjoy a coarser chop for greater contrast?) The small quantity of instant coffee powder didn't make an impression and I'd gladly add a lot more. This was a pleasing interplay of what I've always loved with what I've come to appreciate over time.

Coffee streusel slice

(slightly adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits)

base

125g butter, at room temperature

1/4 cup caster sugar

1 1/4 cups plain flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

filling

400g can sweetened condensed milk

30g butter

2 tablespoons golden syrup

3 teaspoons instant coffee (or add more, to taste)

1/3 cup walnuts, chopped

topping

1 cup plain flour

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/3 cup brown sugar

125g butter, at room temperature

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a 20cm square baking tray with paper.

Make the base in a medium-large bowl. Use an electric beater to beat together the butter and sugar. Sift in the flour and baking powder and stir until well combined. Spread the mixture evenly across the base of the baking tray, and bake it for about 15 minutes.

While the base is baking, get a small saucepan out and set it over medium-high heat. In the saucepan, stir together the condensed milk, butter, golden syrup and coffee. Bring the mixture to the boil and let it simmer for 3 minutes, until thickened. Stir in the walnuts. When the base has baked, retrieve it from the oven and pour over the filling. Allow it all to cool for 10 minutes.

While the filling is cooling, prepare the topping in a small-medium bowl. Stir together the flour, cinnamon and sugar. Chop the butter into cubes and either rub it into the flour or (my preference) mix it in with a fork until well combined. Break the mixture up into uneven chunks and drop them all over the top of the slice. Bake the slice for 20 minutes, until lightly browned, and allow it to cool within the tray.

Cheap East 2006, 20 years later

   

We started where's the beef way back in 2006 when we moved down to Melbourne from Brisbane. That means, of course, that it's 20 years since we started exploring Melbourne veg dining options and posting low quality photos of delicious food. 

Our bible for the first few years was The Age's 2006 Cheap Eats Guide, a region-by-region guide to 473 cafes, bars and restaurants across Victoria that promised meals for less than $25 a head. We checked back in 2016, revisiting a bunch of old favourites and checking the stats. At that point, 282 (59.6%) of the places listed were still open, and getting blogged by us in 2006 or 2007 was associated with a very large benefit (around 80% of the places we had blogged stayed open compared with 56% of the unblogged places).

Another decade has passed, so it's time to update the figures! The decade since 2016 has been a tough one, with the number of places still open falling by about half - we're down to 144 out of the original 473 (30.4%). There are a range of factors that predict longevity, but the key finding: being blogged by where's the beef will boost your business' survival. 

   

Between arriving in Melbourne in late 2006 and the end of 2007, we visited and blogged 43 places from the Cheap Eats, and 21 (48.8%) are still trading two decades later, compared with just 28.6% of the places we didn't blog. Now that's influence. In a fully adjusted logistic regression model, getting a wtb review before 2007 was linked with a doubling of your odds of staying open for 20 years! Incredible stuff.

   

There's some interesting variation between venues. Pubs seem to have the most staying power. Vietnamese restaurants in particular have struggled through that second decade, with only one of the twenty places in the Cheap Eats still trading this year. 

   

This is echoed in the regional data - the Inner East (which has a strong Vietnamese history and community) experienced the most closures, but more than half of the listed places have closed in every region. It's a tough industry.

We're going to revisit a bunch of places from the early years of where's the beef this year and check in on how they've changed (or not) since the heady days of 2006. Stay tuned!

where's the best in 2025?

   

Mankoushe back in 2012

It's here - probably the last 2025 retrospective you'll see circulated! The blog has experienced lags before, though none of this length. Chalk it up to some minor health hiccups, some other interests to pursue, and - probably most of all - some very screen-heavy times during my job that put me off ever opening a laptop in my off-hours.

This lapse has enabled us to report a resurrection! Our local all-you-can-eat Sri Lankan restaurant, Maalu Maalu, closed mid-2025 and has reopened in 2026! We'll have to get back in and report any changes we've noticed. The incredible Vola Foods closed around the same time, but it's worth keeping a sharp eye on their social media for pop-ups. This Borderland gave us a generous 8 month warning of their planned closure, enabling us to enjoy one more meal. There've been the more usual briefly or unannounced closures - Milkwood, Small Axe Kitchen, Banh Mi Nights, Ge'ez Ethiopean Restaurant, Big Esso, Madame K, Girls & Boys. The one that's hit hardest is Mankoushe - in the 15 years that they operated, we blogged them 11 times and visited many more besides. 

   

Just one way to enjoy Tofu Shoten

Happily, there are plenty of new and new-to-us eateries to celebrate. For 2025, the where's the best? page welcomes Beautiful Jim Key, Beit Siti, Lunar, Short Round, Sleepys and Walrus to our inner north brunch listings. The Sporting Club Hotel is back and bougier than ever; there are also good dinners to be had at Biang! Biang!, Chanhouse, Miss Moses and My Asian Neighbour. Perhaps the best of all is Tofu Shoten, a takeaway that is an entire category unto itself.

2025 was the first time in six years that I crossed the Australian border. We had some really memorable times and meals in Japan and Taiwan (captured in one, two, three, four posts.).

   

Miyo sensei and Naoko guide us through vegan Japanese cooking at Idées Kamakura

Browsing through the two past years of cooking turned up recipes that have earned repetition and where's the best? status. Michael, more than me, has logged hit after hit from Hetty Lui McKinnon and Meera Sodha: charred cauliflower & crispy tofu with sweet peanut sauce, sesame noodles with charred broccoli & chilli oil, celery-cashew stir-fry with a food court omelette, caramelised garlic, zucchini & butter beans, tahini & soya mince noodles with pickled radishes, blistered beans with gnocchi Trapanese, kale dumplings with brothy butter beans, omelette roll sushi rice bowl. Dinner has been transformed! 

My kitchen wins have skewed cosy: porridge in our relatively new microwave, cheesy scone wedges to accompany soup, and vegan chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter buttercream, just for the sake of testing out my op-shopped silicon moulds. We've had a lot of fun with friends getting back into vegan potlucking, usually with a feature ingredient in mind. It's inspired me to sneak odd fruits into crumble and potato chips into biscuits, try making sesame toast at home and even buy an ice shaver off facebook marketplace. Michael and Lui McKinnon teamed up once again for some show-stopping salt'n'pepper gems.

   

Mushroom sesame toast

2026 is already a quarter done, so I've got a head-start on forecasting what's ahead for the blog. This is the year that where's the beef? will turn twenty years old. It marks the anniversary of Michael's and my move to Melbourne, when we walked down to Carlton Readings and bought a Cheap Eats 2006 guide. We've held onto that guide and we'll be returning and reviewing a bunch of stalwarts throughout the year. I hope you'll join us!

Corn & sour cream filo pie

December 25, 2025

   

My mum, brother and aunty visited our place for Christmas in 2025. They don't expect anything fancy of us but are always very appreciative when Michael and I cook. The weather was right for a picnic at the nearest park so we planned a menu that we could feasibly take down there. The centrepiece was a filo pie stuffed with charred corn kernels, spring onions, feta and sour cream.

I adjusted the recipe to suit my style. I thought, mid-summer, that fresh corn would be much more fun than canned. I sautéed the spring onions, instead of mixing them into the filling uncooked, because I prefer my onions tender. Dragging the pastry sheets through the thick filling seemed unwieldy, so I just layered up the filo and filling in turns as I'm accustomed to. And I used the whole box of filo, instead of the fraction suggested in the recipe, for convenience.

This pie was worthy of the occasion, standing tall and golden with a creamy and gently savoury centre. We didn't mind spilling pastry shards all over the blanket. The pie was well teamed with a pomegranate molasses-dressed tomato salad and roasted asparagus topped with capers and almonds. We followed up with bienenstich for dessert at home. 

Corn & sour cream pie

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi in The Guardian)

the kernels from 2 cobs corn

300g spring onions, finely chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 eggs

300g sour cream

200g feta, crumbled into 2-3cm pieces

100ml milk

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

salt and pepper

spray oil

375g box filo pastry

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

100g baby cornichons

Place a medium frying pan over medium-hot heat and add the corn kernels. Stir them only occasionally, allowing them to char. Before they properly burn, transfer the kernels to a large bowl. Keep the heat in the pan going, and sauté the spring onions in a bit of oil until tender; when they're ready, turn off the heat and add them to the corn in the bowl. Beat the eggs and pour them onto the corn; add the sour cream, feta, milk, baking powder, salt and pepper, stirring everything together until well combined.

Preheat an oven to 200°C and line a springform cake dish with baking paper. Unpack the filo pastry and roll it up in a lightly damp tea towel. Spray oil into the cake dish and build up some filo sheets to cover the base and sides. Spoon in about half of the corn filling, then scrunch up some more pastry sheets and spray them with a bit of oil in between; repeat with the remaining corn filling and messily layer the rest of the filo sheets with some oil on top. Give the top a final oil spray and sprinkle over the sesame seeds. 

Bake the pie for about 40 minutes, until golden on top, then allow it to cool for up to an hour, before serving with the cornichons on the side.

Daphne

December 11, 2025

   

Daphne is the younger sibling of Etta, probably our favourite fancy restaurant in Melbourne - it arrived in time for a first visit on my birthday. Daphne is going for a more casual but still-special experience compared to Etta, and it was near-full and absolutely buzzing on our visit. The menu is varied and clearly demonstrates what they have to offer - a martini club, a steak night, oysters, homemade pasta with a glass of wine, a fancy hot dog with fries and tarragon mayo, a bougie little kids' menu. The emphasis is far from vegetarian but there's more than enough to cobble together a meal. 

We started with cocktails! Of the four martinis on offer, Michael tried a Daphne Dirty ($25), which featured olive oil washed Vansetter vodka and Perello Picante olives. Extending the theme, I sipped an olive oil sour ($24), which mixed Buffalo Trace bourbon with amaretto, the titular olive oil, honey and citrus.

   

We started with a medley of melon, cucumber, goats' cheese and sorrel ($16). It was novel, summery and spicy. (It was tough to choose between this and the Bloody Mary heirloom tomatoes.)

   

Asparagus soon followed ($18), showered with capers and parmesan.

   

I felt ready for the second Cobb salad of my life ($29) - all I remembered of the first was that it was huge, and involved lettuce and mock bacon. 'Huge' does seem to be the defining feature, with this one similarly piling on the lettuce, corn, avocado, cherry tomatoes, beetroot and capsicum, with a bit of boiled egg, chives and plenty of ranch dressing to go around.

   

This all had us working up to the heartiest vegetarian dish on the menu, a leek and cheddar pot pie ($28) with some compensatory mixed bitter leaves. It's hard to fault a rich pie like this in any season.

   

For dessert we shared a chocolate crémeux topped with fior di latte gelato and chocolate crackle ($14). It read a little ho-hum to me but actually I loved these contrasting textures and shades of milk and chocolate - it reminded me of my beloved frozen chocolate crunch. The staff recommended an excellent wine for Michael to pair with it too (I think it was Lichtenberger González Blaufränkisch).

This first meal at Daphne was a piecemeal but fun ride - it'll be interesting to see how this venue evolves with time.

____________

Daphne

52 Lygon St, Brunswick East

9191 9410

food, drinks

https://daphne.melbourne/

Accessibility: Daphne has three steps up on entry. Furniture is moderately spaced, a mixture of low tables with backed chairs, high benches with back stools, and booth seating. We ordered and paid at our table, and didn't visit the toilets.