It seemed that every foodie brought their taste-testing appetites to the Royal Exhibition Buildings this weekend for the four days of Taste of Melbourne (26-29 August). The Taste festivals in Melbourne and Sydney are a chance for diners to create their own tasting menu from the selection of dishes offered by some of the city’s well-known restaurants. This year the Melbourne restaurants included oldies like The European and Stokehouse alongside newbies like Le Traiteur and maze. The idea is that you pay for entry ($27.50) and then you have to pay extra for ‘crowns’, the currency of the festival, which you ...
Archives for “restaurants and cafes”
Help me Doctor!: We are in Melbourne for a long weekend next week and want to fit as many great eateries in as possible. Can you suggest ones that serve smaller dishes so we can visit more than one a night/day/meal? Thanks – Louise Your prescription: Hi Louise, great to hear that you’re planning your Melbourne eating in advance :–) My suggestions for eateries that serve small dishes (all of which I’ve reviewed except the last one): MoVida Aqui Izakaya Den Cutler & Co (Front bar, not restaurant) Auction Rooms Shark Fin House Old Town Kopitiam Cumulus Inc (dinner menu) Peko Peko Yu-u (dinner menu) Anada Markov Place Mamasita Hope that helps! - Jetsetting Joyce
As winter approaches I am really starting to indulge in my love of hearty comfort food. While I love all food, in all honestly I don’t get that excited by salads or a sorbet – but I love a good pork belly roast and melting chocolate pudding. Mutti’s is a German endearment for ‘Mother’ and my German friend Lisa from Social Media Podcast found that many of the dishes on the menu were classics from her childhood, even though Mutti’s proclaims itself more of an Eastern European restaurant than a German one. Six of us (Kimberley from The Value-Add, Penny from Addictive & ...
Today my recently Melbourne-relocated Sydney friend commented that Melbourne seems to have a particular fascination with Spanish cuisine which wasn’t evident in the Sydney dining scene. I can’t vouch for whether that’s actually true or not, but tonight I found yet another cool restaurant/bar serving Spanish-inspired food. And it was muy bueno. Markov Place is the perfect Melburnian space – an unadorned concrete frontage hides a cool front bar and more. The bar reminded me of shadowy 60s vintage pictures of coiffed women perched on cocktail chairs, profiles silhouetted against the mirror. But walk in a little further down the corridor ...
Lin Tan and I go hunting for the finest gelato in Melbourne. Joyce: When you think about ‘Italian culture’ in Melbourne, you think Carlton. Hence, the perfect place to start our, ‘In The Search For The Perfect Gelato’? – Lygon Street. So what makes a perfect gelato? In our view – small batches, taste, texture and colour. Gelati-making is an artisanal industry, so the gelati must be made daily on the premises, not in a huge manufacturing plant. It must be made with fresh ingredients, especially fresh fruit, and not with the pre-packaged mixture often used in high-volume manufactured gelati, ...
The Brothers Bloom is a light-hearted caper film filled with lovable characters, fiendish rogues, an outlandish cross-continental storyline and sight gags galore. The story starts with Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody), two orphaned brothers who first discover the satisfaction of conning others as young kids. Shunted to yet another foster home in a small town and as revenge for being cast as ‘outsiders’, they construct a way to swindle the neighbourhood’s children out of their pocket money with an elaborate story about a hermit in a cave. For a moment even Bloom believes the tale, and you realise that he’s ...
Emma and Tom were in town, with their little tyke Sam. ‘Love to catch up – do you know any kid-friendly places where we could have dinner?’. Gosh, very few of my Melburnian friends have children – kid-friendly restaurants has never been on my radar. But then I remembered DOC. It always seemed to be filled with kids. There must be a reason. DOC stands for Denominazione d’Origine Controllata, a mark given to wines and foods from certain regions in Italy. So on one side of DOC’s paper menu there is an appealing list of starters, salads and a pizzas, while on ...
For a smallish city of 4 million people, I think that the Melbourne restaurant scene is disproportionately vibrant – it seems every month I add yet another dozen new restaurant openings to my must-eat-and-blog list. Yet Melbourne has an even longer list of under-appreciated stalwarts, the restaurants and cafes who do their stuff without celebrities, fanfare and month-long waitlists, but who have, over the years, provided my hungry (and critical) tummy with consistently good food coupled with great service at an affordable price. For me, Donnini’s is one such classic. The relaxed and stylish Italian restaurant is a beacon of culinary light ...
I love a good neighbourhood bakery, so I was disappointed with my taste-test of Nicholson Street Baker. On the basis of its cheerful orange awning, RM and I had a brief morning tea there and sampled a dry chocolate cupcake and a sturdy apple and walnut muffin containing minimal fruit and nuts. The best of the bunch was ‘Kylie’s famous’ Hummingbird cake – it was the right texture and was smothered in a nice cream cheese icing, but it wasn’t so good that it deserved any sort of fame. MEL: HOT OR NOT The decisive guide to Melbourne Brought to you by Jetsetting ...
The original Carlton Brunetti is bustling at all times of the day – it seems that Melbournians just can’t get enough of their coffee, cakes, breads….and for me, the Italian hot chocolate ($4.40). The properly bitter and thick hot chocolate simply does not compare to the insipid powdered mudwater that is trotted out at a lot of cafes (including once, to my horror, a ragged Cadbury sachet was used). It’s still not quite thick enough for my liking, as I like to be able to eat my hot chocolate with a spoon, but it did nicely soothe my cough-stricken throat. Update ...
