To’s Cafe & Hot Bread

With so many options in this strip of Footscray, it’s hard to pick a killer spot to eat, the take away options here are good though, I enjoyed my pork roll with salad. The bakery stuff looked pretty good too.

On the rare days that I don’t pop into Nhulan for a BBQ chicken sandwich, I am magnetically drawn to To’s: Their barbecued pork buns are a fluffy dream of aniseed scented, savoury/​sweet pork morsels. These treats regularly induce lip smacking and eye rolling of legendary proportions and are optimally consumed on one of the «atmospheric» benches lining frenetic Leeds street. The twee chicken pies are a steal at 1.50 a pop: Flaky, rich, and «delicieux». NOM!
Another Footscray gem.

The Banh Mi is super. A freshly baked crunchy bread roll topped with your pick of roast pork or chicken and a variety of Vietnamese salad ingredients. All yours for $ 3.50.
There is a variety other treats at this bakery too. Brightly coloured Asian cakes, rice paper spring rolls, prepacked noodle dishes to eat on the go, not to mention a large bain marie of freshly cooked treasures.
If your looking for a lamington for your Nana Debbie, you might try your local Bakers Delight. Other than that, this place bakes fresh the usual bakery suspects too.
To’s is clearly a hit with the locals and the service is refreshing friendly.

I absolutely love it when one stumbles across a business where the old adage of ‘you pay for what you get’ just does not ring true. To’s Café and Hot Bread is a good example of this. Sure it is a Vietnamese Bakery that looks like it has seen better days, in a neighbourhood of similar proportions. But that doesn’t actually mean the food is bad quality.
In fact, like so many Vietnamese bakeries, the French stick you buy from To’s will be as good as any French patisserie you may regularly spend your hard earned cash at. And all it will cost you is some loose change.
I also love their pork bun rolls. With a variety of flavours — including a breakfast one with egg and onions inside (I personally would steer clear of this one as I am not an egg fan).

Footscray gets a bad rap. So much so that I only went to said maligned suburb for the first time on Sunday for a barbeque. But I plan to go back.
Not for its cosmopolitan bars — there aren’t any — its chichi boutiques — ditto — or its beautiful architecture — think brutalist rather than Victorian — no, no, I plan to return to Footscray in order to patronise some of the incredible range of ethnic food shops on offer in what is arguably the immigrant gateway to the city.
En route to said barbeque I found myself at To’s Café & Hot Bread, a utilitarian looking but charming little Vietnamese bakery doing a fine line in not only Vietnamese rolls — or Banh Mi Thit — but also French sticks, some extraordinarily gelatinous looking sweets, dumplings and even samosas.
Briefly getting swept up in the strange romance of said bakery; forgetting my almost pathological aversion to onions; and caving into my weakness for big buns I opted for one of To’s voluptuously unctuous looking breakfast pork buns complete with half an egg, a lot of pork, and, much to my chagrin: a hell of a lot of onion.
Besides the onion it was generously proportioned, well made and a steal at around $ 3. If you like pork buns — are not onion shy — and you cannot fry, go to To’s.