Is it possible to go wrong with a $5 pizza?bad photography due to very dim hipster lightingI'm sure it is possible to go wrong with $5 pizza, you could be ordering a domino's pizza. But at Bar Fred, the pizza is good, and the beer is cold. The beer is likely to be $10, but it will probably be huge. I like Bar Fred, it's within stumbling distance from home, its not going to cost you a fortune, there is no eftpos, which assures this and they play good music. They even play whole albums. My first few times here were ...
Archives for “north carlton”
This years birthday was a celebration filled with good friends, to many drinks and great food. I have come out the other end a year older, a few kilos heavier, and with a few memories for the vault. Thanks to those who made it one to remember! I'll start with Yum Cha at Yum Cha Cafe.I am my no means a Yum Cha expert. I don't really know the rules, but we had a nice lunch. We felt obliged to pick whatever was on offer, and ended up with a few too many fried selections. But we ate until we were ...
Newish cafe A Treat of France, on the busy North Carlton side of Nicholson St, has a stark minimalist interior but a stunning front window full of amazing looking treats. On passing recently I could not resist trying a chicken and mushroom quiche for lunch. The pastry is short and the filling delicate and silky, more like the egg custard in desserts than in most quiches. The flavour was impressive and the coffee is reasonable too. Fitzroyalty - hyperlocal news about Melbourne's first suburb: Fitzroy 3065 by Brian Ward is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
Cafe Pinocchio on Rathdowne St in North Carlton introduced a new offer on their site recently that drew me from campus for lunch. The $20 Hungarian set lunch (March only) of a main, dessert and coffee sounded good and I love the food of central Europe. I enjoyed a stuffed capsicum so soft and full of minced meat and rice that it had mostly collapsed, a kugel cake (not sure of my spelling, delicious with a texture like pannetone or brioche) and a good strong macchiato. It’s a cute and friendly place worth visiting, espacially during March for the Hungarian ...
It has been a really long time since I made a post. But that doesn't mean that I stopped eating! Far from it, its the best time of year for eating, and believe me, I've done well. I got really busy finding a new place to live, moving into the new house, starting a new job, surviving christmas and starting a new year! So as well as my memory serves me, I will attempt to wrap up of the places I have been and the things I have seen....The move has bought me within walking distance to Banda Parte` Pizza. ...
vanilla shake and rhubarb danish. 745 Nicholson St, Carlton North (03) 9380 1950
Classic film, classic pizza. Seriously original and tasty combination, by far one of the best in Melbourne. I’ve been here a handful of times and the food and service have been consistently good. Go check it out! Anna Karina (above), star of Bande à Part (and Jean-Luc Godard’s one time wife and muse) ate her (Karina) pizza here when she visited Melbourne last year for the International Film Fesitval. Pretty cool. “Karina pronounced the pizza — grilled peppers, pesto, goat’s cheese and speck — delicious, and reminisced about her first experience of eating out in Paris at the age of 18, newly ...
Back in May I visited Residential a new kid on the Lygon Street block. At the time I wrote:The words that came to mind when I ate a late Sunday breakfast at Residential are “under whelmed”. I arrived at a quiet time and the large café was barely at a quarter capacity, Dur-é was hovering, a barista did his thing in an unhurried manner and two young female wait staff manned the floor. It was a low-pressure hour, yet the service was haphazard and slow. Not only my own meal, but many other patrons within view suffered from mixed ...
344 Rathdowne Street, Carlton NorthMy Sunday brunch is scared. I want eggs, I want bacon, and I want coffee. Good coffee. I tend not call in on a lot of places when it comes it this meal. I like to know what I'm getting. I can laugh off a sub par midweek meal. I can even try to forgive and forget a less than impressive Saturday night dinner, but screw up my Sunday brekkie, and you are no friend of mine.I would like to introduce you to my friend Black Ruby. She is located on lovely Rathdowne Street in North Carlton. ...
563 Nicholson Street, North Carltonwww.littlezephyr.comOn a very cold Tuesday night, my boyfriend and I decided to head down Nicholson Street to find a bite to eat. Our favorite mexican joint had recently closed, so we were a little lost for ideas. Luckily, we stumbled upon Little Zephyr. The restaurant is one of those little places which is instantly welcoming. The polished wooden floors and the soft lighting make for a warm atmosphere. Not to over done, a perfect place for a quiet dinner for two. The wine list offered a nice selection of mostly Australian wines with a few ...
If you want to go to a great cocktail bar in Melbourne, try some of the places recommended by everyone I talked to on Episode 6. Black Pearl Bar, map Madame Brussels, map Cookie, map 1806, map Seamstress, map Rust, map Lily Blacks, map Match Bar, map Bar Nothing, map Robbie Stein, map Blue Diamond, map Carlton Yacht Club, map By Dennis Mojado from Wikimedia Commons
I find it ridiculous in the age of radical transparency being brought forth by the ubiquity of online information that data paid for and owned by citizens is kept from citizens by out of touch governments. I believe that taxpayer funded data must be freely available to the public. A good example is the information gathered by local governments during their food hygiene inspections of restaurants. We the ratepayers pay for this work to be undertaken to ensure food business prepare and serve food safely and hygienically. We want to know the results of the inspections and prosecutions so we can ...
Residential opened on the quietest stretch of Lygon Street a few months ago. I was going to call it the dead centre, being a scant block from the cemetery but that is not exactly true as Enoteca carves a niche for itself on the opposite side of the road. I’ve lived near the spot for 22 years and businesses on the Princes Hill side of Lygon often seem to struggle. The last scalped claimed being Kin that threw in the towel after only 18 months.Residential has a good provenance in its co-owner Dur-é Dara, a stalwart of ...
I regularly read the City of Yarra website to find information about local services and to discover new local events. The more I read it, the more frustrated I get with how out of date it is. I’m in the mood for a whinging rant but I’ll also give them some free advice about how to create a modern site that meets the needs of the community. Problem: the site is designed to be viewed only in Microsoft Internet Explorer. It looks crap in other browsers and creates an inferior user experience. The City of Yarra website as viewed using Microsoft Internet ...
I’ve been thinking about whether to post this for some time. I believe in free speech, but whether I should be seen to promote (and thus be accused of implicitly approving of) speech I strongly disagree with is another matter. In general, I think that sharing information about the local community allows the community to better understand itself. So, despite my misgivings about drawing attention to a group whose politics I find deeply suspect, residents of the City of Yarra should know that a national-anarchist group has established itself in the area, at least according to its own media. It’s difficult to ...
According to the National Public Toilet Map, there are 36 public toilets in the City of Yarra. More are needed in busy shopping and entertainment areas. Although it doesn’t confirm this number, the council acknowledges that more toilets are needed on its website. In a page dated 2007 (that is carefully hidden in the roads section), the council states: Council proposes to strategically locate new public toilet facilities throughout the municipality in key shopping precincts and business activity centres to continue to support and provide this vital service to the community. The proposed facilities would provide much needed amenities for all ...
Those of us that live in the culturally rich and diverse inner northern suburbs of Melbourne are spoiled for choice with retro and vintage clothing, independent music shops, vegetarian and vegan cafes, quirky art galleries and live music venues. A number of businesses publish guides to draw attention to the latest, the best and the most interesting places to eat, drink, dress, party and play. In this post I will be reviewing the reviewers. It’s not my aim to criticise these sites but to investigate their missions and business models, and to hypothesise about their viability. The four sites reviewed below ...
797 Nicholson Rd North CarltonThis place makes very good cheap pizzas, serves lots of beer and quite a bit of wine. By the end of the evening I was suggesting it could become SPOT’s spiritual home. But I’m ahead of myself. Using the VAWTB (Value, atmosphere, wine, toppings base) assessment methodology: Value- Excellent. 9.5 Big pizzas, with good ingredients, all about 10 bucks. Atmosphere- 6.5 OK but perhaps the area with greatest scope for improvement. Manager made some at best ambiguous comments which didn’t bode well but the bar staff were ...
It's school fete season. You can smell the fairy floss from Carlton to Merri Creek. The Merri Creek fete won hands down for value for money - good books, reasonably priced plants but the coffee was crap. Fortunately Julio, conveniently opposite the school provided sanctuary for those seeking quality sustenance and caffeine far from the maddening crowd. Back to my own neighbourhood, Sunday was
The City of Yarra has published a guide to the art galleries and spaces in Yarra, with a listing of all the galleries in Fitzroy, Collingwood, Abbotsford and North Fitzroy and North Carlton on its website and a map to download (98kb PDF). Fitzroyalty - hyperlocal news about Melbourne's first suburb: Fitzroy 3065 by Brian Ward is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
Little Zephyr (563 Nicholson St, North Carlton) seems to have attracted very little in the way of online reviews. In one way it’s surprising, because with its tastefully designed interior, well cooked food and reasonably prices it’s reminscent of the very popular Commoner. On the other hand, the location, in a quiet stretch of Nicholson street, and an exterior that blends in to surrounding buildings, perhaps it shouldn’t surprise. The menu is short, with just 8 tapas, 3 mains and 4 pizzas, but despite this, there should be something to tempt most people. There’s a pollo parmigiana, which seemed a little ...
We are sweltering in Melbourne at the moment. Too many days topping 39C (102F). Not quite as extreme as Adelaide, where each day for almost 2 weeks the barometer has hit 35C (95F) or above, and will continue to do so for days to come. This is not a climate to cook in. It is the weather to drink beer (a strange beverage that I can only contemplate imbibing in such heat) and lots of water. It has also been visitor season – so the menu over the last few days have been as follows:Thursday: ...
On Sunday morning I had breakfast at the splendid cafe North on Rathdowne St in North Carlton. I must confess that since moving south from North Fitzroy to Fitzroy I have neglected my former haunts in the north – both North Fitzroy and North Carlton are wonderful areas where I spent a great deal of time in previous years. I’d heard good things about North and needed to see and taste for myself. I was glad I did – breakfast was fantastic, the service good, the coffee delicious and the ambience warm and friendly. These pictures do not tell the story ...
Back at Kin for breakfastI just wanted to add to my previous post about Kin restaurant in North Carlton that they do an awesome and extremely well priced breakfast. They make their own light as a feather brioche which is irresistable as a kind of breakfast appetiser (and they don't mind if you dunk it in your coffee - I asked!). There are the standard eggs various ways (with some bonus lovely condiments to accompany), beautiful homemade sausages, and some amazing little pastry 'pouches' stuffed with various beautifully matched fillings. Treat yourself to the beautiful surrounds of Kin for a ...
