Mr Kitchen, Melbourne CBD by Bureaucrat

I quite like Mr Kitchen with its bright yellow exterior and it's hawker style food and cheap prices.  It serves favourite hawker dishes such as congee, banh mi, fishball skewers, Asian style savoury pancakes and herbal sweet drinks, among other things.


There's about six types of congee on offer.  I love congee - the thick, savoury rice porridge is so comforting when you're recovering from illness or when you need some serious warming up on a cold, cold day.  For $7.50 you get a reasonable size tub of congee and a wickedly delicious fried Chinese doughnut stick for dunking (those on a diet or have high cholesterol should probably avoid this... if you can!) .  The preserved egg and pork congee came with a fair amount of diced up preserved egg (so many places skimp on this) with lots of thin strands of pork.  The congee really hit the spot, as did the doughnut.


I've also tried the ginger and duck congee.  This had a faint ducky flavour but, really, I thought it was more like a pork congee.  There were lots of slivers of tender ginger which gave the congee a nice zingyness to it.

The doughnuts are morish and, my goodness, you'll need some tea to wash it down (or better yet, lots of exercise).  It's oily, it's fried and unapologetically unhealthy - think of it as croutons on steroids.  It's a heart attack waiting to happen but, man, it'll be a delicious way to go!

Verdict: we liked it a lot.

Overall
I don't know about their other fare but I know the congee will be a go-to cheap lunch for me.  You can definitely eat for less than 10 bucks here.  Plus, it means I can also eat the doughnut stick!