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 “victoria”
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
Design:Made:Trade was a 4 day exhibition (2 day trade, 2 day public) set up in the beautiful heritage listed Royal Exhibition Buildings and a keystone event of State of Design 2010, Victoria’s annual design festival. The grand vaulted space was segmented with 3×3 metre VISY cardboard booths, each containing fabulous furniture, fashion and industrial design brands. It was inspiring to see how the designers transformed the same space to reflect their brand, for example by using felt circles, drawing silhouettes of gabled windows or turning it into a 50s lounge room. A ‘no photographs’ sign was prominently displayed at the entrance so ...
Went to Shakahari for dinner twice last week, and took nary a photo because I hate the lighting at Shakahari and can never take a good photo there with Toy Camera (the Ixus 55). So here's a photo of a strawberry daquiri I had earlier this year; their seasonal daquiris are always super tasty and I often order one with dinner. Danni had the Nirvana, which was also pretty amazing.Fortunately for two visits in one week, the menu has changed since our last visit in April. The entrees and mains are now all vegan! And about 75% gluten free. Exciting!Over ...
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 & ...
Sunday night we decided to try fine dining at Shakahari. I know it was a long weekend, but I was super disappointed to discover that the dessert we all coveted (the rice pudding) was unavailable! Particularly given this was only one of two possible vegan dessert options, this was unexpected and not welcome! At least there were cocktails to be had.And main meals, too. Christine ordered the pot pie, which was only lukewarm! Delicious, but lukewarm. Danni ordered the Memory of Medina, which as always was perfectly serviceable. I tried the pasta, which I had never before done. It was ...
I've already blogged about the delicious lasagna at the vegie bar, but we ate at a few other places over the weekend!After the storm on Saturday, we didn't want to venture too far from home so we popped on over to the EBC. Trashy and familiar, I elected to eat the classic vegan parma at the EBC. Danni went for the shepherd's pie (TVP and potatoes and vegan cheese, I think) from the specials board. This was really tasty! We shared a cherry ripe cheesecake. Who could go past such a delight?I know several people have had some terrible service ...
You may remember that at the Nuffnang Christmas party I met Akisa, the brains behind a cool beauty website called BeautySwatch. I liked her idea so much (a huge colour library containing swatches for thousands of lipsticks) I thought you might be interested to hear more about Akisa and her work with BeautySwatch. Hi Akisa, can you tell me a little bit about your background? I’m a corporate rat by day and BeautySwatch editor by night – I have no affiliations with the beauty industry but do have a love for beauty products and the way they make you feel when you transform ...
The first thing we did with my family, of course, was go in hunt of some noodles to share. We wanted to go to Idea Fine Foods for their excellent combination of CNY and noodles but, alas, they have closed! Warm and hungry and slightly grumpy, we turned around and went to the Thai restaurant across the road, Sawasdee. Up the stairs we found the mezzanine busy, but were quickly seated even without a reservation. Our waiter claimed that there was no fish sauce or shrimp paste in the vegetarian curry, so we took him at his word and ordered ...
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, ...
On Wednesday evening, we ventured out to Shakahari with Sheebaface and Zanchey. This was my second visit of recent months (you can read about my previous visit here). I was interested to discover the menu had changed since my October visit (this change felt very seasonal), especially in light of Cindy's comment on my previous post, indicating that they had kept the same menu for some time.I commenced the evening with a delightfully pink cocktail, the name of which I sadly cannot recall. A zen something? It was bright pink and delicious, and a great opening gambit on my part. ...
It has been some time since my last visit to Shakahari, so it was with some delight that I met up with H there recently.We settled ourselves into a corner table, well away from the many couples, as we didn't want to disrupt their dates. We spent a lot of time chatting, and very little time perusing the menu - we quickly decided on the avocado rolls and the rice gnocci to share, and the croquettes and the lasagna, and declared that we would attempt dessert. We also drank a lot of delicious genma cha.The avocado rolls have been quite ...
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 ...
After managing to miss our flight to Melbourne (not our fault, thanks, Qantas), D + I managed to rebook on the next one. This meant that there was no food for us, nothing in the airport except fruit and nothing on the plane except bread. We landed in Melbourne and were swept away to deliver Essie to Uni Melb, by which time it was 1630 Melbourne time and we'd had nothing to eat all day but watermelon and oreos. Castros ordinarily provides vegan pies, but had sold out for the day and we made do with a vegan apple muffin. ...
