The best restaurants and bars in Footscray

Bar Thyme is a relaxed neighbourhood bar and bistro with a focus on sustainability, seasonal produce and natural wines. The warm and friendly space on Barkly Street is a project by Howard Stamp, once head chef at Movida and part of the Lincoln Hotel team, and it runs a more sophisticated food and drink program than you might expect at first glance. The ever-revolving menu changes weekly (sometimes daily) based on seasonal availability, using the best produce from both local and ethics-driven suppliers. Think freshly shucked oysters, sirloin steak with Café de Paris butter or smoked mackerel rillettes. An exceptionally pretty heirloom zucchini salad arrives with fried flowers, ricotta and a sprinkling of lemon, while thrice-cooked chips with HP sauce give a nod to Stamp’s British roots.

Not only could the food at this unpretentious husband-and-wife-run restaurant be the best Vietnamese food in Footscray, some Vietnamese expats are even calling it the best in Melbourne. Their most famous dish – as you might guess from the name – is banh xeo (a Vietnamese-style crepe), but they also do fantastic banh beo (steamed rice cakes), dumplings, noodle soups and more. Wash it all down with a pot of green tea or fresh coconut juice, or conclude your meal on a sweet note with the restaurant's delicious caramel flan.

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 lattes. But don't understimate the feed you can tuck into here, for this is joint isn't just a digital nomad's coffee shop dream. Think manchego and kimchi toasties, wagyu smash burgers and crowd-pleasing brunch dishes, like the chilli oil-drizzled garlic roasted mushrooms with sourdough, cauliflower puree and a perfectly poached, gooey egg. Yum.

On the Irving Street strip, you'll find all-day Ethiopian café Konjo Café serving up single-origin Ethiopian coffee and enormous platters of sumptuous fare. Split peas, red lentils, green lentils, cabbage and beetroot are cooked down individually with berbere and dotted on large platters of Ethiopia's traditional spongy flatbread injera in the beyeinatu combo, an Ethiopian national dish, while those who prefer rice to bread are catered to with the rice beef tibs, which sees beef strips sauteed in onion, garlic, jalapenos and berbere, and the rice kitfo, where finely chopped raw beef is seasoned with mitmita (a chilli spice blend) and kibbeh (Ethiopian spiced clarified butter). Coffee is brewed and served traditionally out of an earthenware pot called jebana and the best part is: Konjo does a breakfast menu too, featuring crusty bread alongside ful (stewed broad beans), silts (scrambled spiced eggs) and enkulal be sega (scrambled eggs plus sauteed beef). 

Ask a Footscray local what they eat for lunch, and most would tell you to fetch a banh mi. And where from? Our recommendation is Nhu Lan. Pictured is the banh mi with shredded pork skin. At time of writing, a delicious roll from this bakery will only set you back about nine buckaroos.

With its wear and tear unashamedly on display, Pho Tam isn't the most modern restaurant in Footscray, but when the food's this tasty... who cares? Pho is the typical fast-food choice here, with the spice-infused beef and chicken broths adorned with your choice of sliced or poached meats, herbs and aromatics. Vietnamese-style congee is also a popular order, as is the bo la lot (grilled beef in betel leaf) served with a perfectly balanced nouc mam cham, banh bot lot (banana leaf-wrapped tapioca dumplings filled with caramelised prawn and pork) and the anchovy-based noodle soup, bun mam.  It may seem crazy that Pho Tam is open from 9:30am, daily, but it's just a testament to its loyal local following. 

No, it's not all pho, banh mi and Ethopian fare in Footscray. If you feel like something a bit fancier, you can book a spot at this tiny omakase diner for a multi-course Japanese fine dining odyssey. And yes, you'll need to book. The space only seats four, with only two sittings over four nights a week. The menu is seasonally influenced and you can expect only the finest produce from Australia and Japan.  

Slice Shop Pizza serves 18-inch pizzas by the slice, with slices a steal at $5.  Burn City Smokers co-owners Steve Kimonides and Raphael Guthrie have swapped wood-smoked meat for enormous hand-tossed pizzas in their latest venture, inspired by the famous New York slices, which are eaten on the go while folded in half. Head chef Tano Pennino developed the pizza bases over a few weeks, careful to ensure the slices don’t lose their structural integrity when folded. 

One of the oldest Ethiopian institutions in Melbourne, Café Lalibela has been sating the appetites of Footscray residents since 1998. Ethiopian beverages are as much a focus as the food – in 2003, the diner imported three brands of Ethiopian beers for the first time to Australia, which have since proven highly popular, and offers traditional hand-roasted Ethiopian coffee as well as hot yekemem shai, black tea steeped in cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. Vegetarians are as well-catered for as omnivores – take your pick between braised meat and vegetable stews (wots) and Ethiopian staples like kitfo and beyeinatu. Locals in the know opt for the dulet, a sumptuous stir-fry of minced lamb backstrap, liver and tripe, typically a weekend-only special. 

We’re starting with dessert because you might not get the insider tip that one of the wait staff gave us. While all three desserts on Up in Smoke’s menu sound desirable, we were told – in a Highlander movie “There can be only one!” fashion – that the banana cream pie was non-negotiable. Now we know why: with its sturdy biscuit crumb base, velvety banana-and-caramel filling and cream dab crown, it’s sensational. Sweet without being cloying, every billowing mouthful will make you want to shout “God bless America!” So save some precious stomach space. As unlikely a location for an American barbecue restaurant as Footscray might seem, on a Sunday night, the joint’s going gangbusters. 

Ebi serves up excellent Japanese/British fusion fish and chips, and it totally works. Try not shouting ‘banzai!’ (hurrah!) as a pudgy, oblong hunk of blue grenadier in bronze beer batter is sprinkled with dried nori and accompanied by a bountiful serve of crunchy chips and sweet kewpie mayonnaise arrives at your table. Order a perky green side salad with Japanese pickles, lotus root and sesame dressing to help negate the grease guilt. This tiny shop also turns out bento boxes, tofu cheesecake and their legendary springy veggie balls.

Named after the highest mountain in Ethiopia, Ras Dashen is owned by couple Alemitu Alemeo and Wondi Aberra, who are, in the same vein, always striving to be the best. Many in Footscray and its neighbouring suburbs would agree Ras Dashen is just that. Since opening in 2011 on Nicholson Street and moving to its current site in 2017, Ras Dashen has charmed locals with its selection of wots with either beef, chicken, lamb, chickpeas or split red lentils, different iterations of injera sourced from a local bakery (choose between one that has white sorghum and another that has brown sorghum), and coffee roasted from green Ethiopian beans. It’s a beautifully warm and cosy restaurant, where you’re best off whiling away the hours alongside a big group of friends – the more people to share in on the food, the better. 

They do 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 nun chucks.    

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. Modern and imaginative specials don’t veer too far from beer-swilling territory, and mains are sized for pub appetites, with thick slabs of charred and tender steak. Thoughtful beer notes are chalked on boards around the bar, and the six taps pour Carlton for the penny pinchers, Trumer Pils for the Europhiles, and four local craft numbers for the trendies. Station is happy to embrace the folks of Footscray both old and new.