Howdy all. I’m writing this up on the evening of the day I did this – and that’s the 2^nd of December. I planned to meet friend of the blog (and friend of mine) Tim Blight of UrbanDuniya.com for lunch. We originally were going to do some sort of vlog, then we weren’t, then at the last minute I decided we would. And I suggested we head to Oakleigh, which Tim agreed to. How to make it interesting?

I also got online to try and find somewhere to eat. But there were so many options? Oakleigh is a South-East Melbourne suburb, and is a less than 30-minute train ride from the city. So if you are in town visiting, to go there for a meal is not unfeasible. And as I said, you won’t be starved for choice.

I thought we could go on some sort of ‘foodie’ tour of Oakleigh. From one place to the next, have a course here and a course there, and that’s what we ended up doing. And I was surprised by how easy it was and how enjoyable it was too.

Oakleigh’s centre is not very big, so walking from one place to the next was easy and never took more than a handful of minutes. We met outside the mall there, Oakleigh Centro, a couple of minutes’ walk from the station, and proceeded to our first stop for our ‘starters’ if you will.

I had pre-chosen all the venues the night before. Stop number one was the All Seasons Dumpling Restaurant, a Chinese restaurant specialising in dumplings and noodles. We sat down to a pretty empty restaurant, but one that some really good reviews and we shared a bowl of beef dumpling soup as our starter. It was excellent. Simple, it came with thick noodles too which I generally really like, and we were pretty happy indeed. Four dumplings each. We had to be careful, we didn’t want to over do it on the amount of food we consumed. I should also mention that it’s off the main drag of restaurants which are either side of a two-block pedestrian mall which is the heart of Oakleigh. They also do a roaring take away and delivery trade I believe.

Very happy with our starters, we moved on to find us our second venue, one I had been to once before and was excited to introduce Tim to. That was ‘Kalimera Souvlaki Art’. A funky looking place with some of the best souvlaki you can find anywhere. The bread is so soft and they have a great choice of sauces. I had the standard tzatziki and Tim’s chicken souvlaki (I had pork) came with a chilli yogurt sauce that he really liked. We were both super impressed with the taste and quality of our meals. Great service there too, very friendly people.

We hit the main strip and went to ‘Risk Bar’, which is also a restaurant. This was for drinks. We had started our circuit at our end point, so this meant we had drinks and then had dessert. And it was at Risk Bar that we had our drinks. I thought since we were only there for a drink, it should be something fancy, and so I went with a cocktail. Tim doesn’t drink alcohol, so I encouraged him to get a mocktail instead.

I had a ‘Sex on the Beach’. I don’t usually drink cocktails, and I remembered why whulst having this one. From memory and without resorting to Google, it was Vodka, Peach Schnaps, Pineapple juice, oh now I can’t remember but a bunch of juices. It was mostly pink. It tasted nice enough, but I seriously doubted they put any alcohol in it because I couldn’t taste any vodka or peach schnaps in there at all. But it’s a nice little bar and restaurant and the service was friendly. People didn’t seem to mind that I was filming which is good. At Kalimera a guy pulled out a giant snapper and played it like a guitar for the camera.

Finally we ended our day at TODCO – The Oakleigh Doughnut Company. It is a famous little place which does gourmet doughnuts, and we tried three between us. The Sour Cherry one actually was my favourite, the cherry flavour mixed surprisingly well with the cinnamon. The custard cream was a real custard doughnut too. Tim had some sort of advanced custard cream, called the ‘Galacto’ I think it was. We again were really happy with what we had.

And that was that! I think this will be one of the best ‘Melbourne Revealed’ vlogs I do. The idea to have a sort of plan and do something a little different worked well and I was surprised how no-one seemed to care that I was filming half the time. And we were surprised in a good way to find that each place we went was really good. I would recommend all of these places if you go to Oakleigh. It is a Greek stronghold in Melbourne, and if you are after souvlaki you really can find it in probably a hundred places in the centre of Oakleigh. Perhaps one day I could do a souvlaki challenge, but boy there are so many options there, you could barely take a bite from a souvlaki from each place!

Thanks for reading today. Take care wherever you are. And if you have a Melbourne Challenge for me, well, let me know! I’m looking for interesting ways to explore Melbourne for this vlog series! Take care and May the Journey Never End!