Bien

Where and what

Anyone who grew up in Rosanna (guilty, your honour) knows the sleepy Greville Street shopping centre. It's a surprise package, boasting not only Melbourne's best fish and chip shop (Banyule Fish Supplies) but this relative newcomer, which three years ago blessed the 'hood with real home-style Macedonian food. Sisters Gina and Jo Kuzmanov run it, and their mother Helen is kept busy in the kitchen whipping up ajvar, goulash and chevapi. It's a place without any tickets on itself, but plenty of heart.

Where to sit

Housed in what used to be a straight-up greengrocer, Bien has evolved into a mixed business combining fruit and vegetables with a great range of organic products including flour - you can mill your own at the back of the shop - olives and olive oils, meat, wine and produce including mighty jars of pickles that would keep your average eastern-European family going for a month. The front half of the shop is given over to chairs and tables, and there's a sweet little seating arrangement out on the footpath where you can spy on the shopping strip; Rosanna's like that.

When to go

Monday and Tuesday, 8am-6pm; Wednesday to Saturday, 8am-9pm.

What to drink

Good coffee is by Coffee Supreme. There's a short wine list featuring Wild Fox organic wines from South Australia (also available to take home) - two whites (a riesling and sauv blanc) and four reds including a rosé. Beer? Mountain Goat, Little Creatures, Carlton Draught and Corona.

What to eat

There's plenty to see in the glass display cabinet, and the staff will add helpful info - maybe that the lasagne's about to come out of the oven, or that the cabbage rolls (stuffed with rice, beef, carrot and mysterious spices) have sold out. Drat. Chevapi, the skinless little sausages best smoky from the grill, are made in-house; they're served with Turkish bread, dips and salad. The ajvar - a thick, roasted red capsicum and eggplant paste that's Macedonia's answer to Spain's romesco - comes slathered on warmed pide and dotted with tiny cubes of haloumi; it's a $5.50 bargain. Also worth praising in the carbs department is the zelnik - nicely oily coils of filo pastry stuffed with spinach and cheese. The house-made pork and leek sausages stick to the tapas menu brief, with the bite-sized pan-fried pieces speared with toothpicks, while a hearty beef goulash makes a good spin on this classic hunters' stew. Finish with baklava and Turkish delight, both made in-house.

Who's there

The mums-and-babies crowd and young Rosanna hipsters.

Why bother?

Macedonian soul.