Archives for “Melbourne”

I wish the Metlink Edible Garden was a permanent fixture in Melbourne’s CBD. Just for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival (which is being held between 12-23 March), City Square has been transformed into a living, breathing biosystem. Australia’s largest gardening club The Digger’s Club have been responsible for planting 60 heirloom varieties in the raised garden beds resting on the normally concrete/dirt concourse. The space spills with lush vegetation of herbs, vegetables and flowers and I even saw a fluttering butterfly in the arched trellises of beans (or it might have been a white cabbage moth,  but you get the picture). ...

I like free stuff. I’m just not sure whether Melbourne is ready to see my bum in order for me to get it. Cool magazine shop Mag Nation (the land of magazines yay!) is currently holding a promotion called Undies Monday. Yes, you heard right – if you strip down to your underwear between 12-5pm on Mondays you can grab any item worth $50 and under for free. My intrepid friend Kimberley enlisted me as her (clothed) sidekick while she scoped out her $50 and under item (Purple Fashion, $44.95), then stripped off in front of passers-by on Elizabeth Street. Not many ...

LTRHDS Letterheads is an exhibition of, you guessed it, letters of the alphabet. But this isn’t just a grown-up version of Sesame Street. Each piece of artwork denoting A to Z has been produced by 26 different artists, cartoonists, graffiti artists, graphic designers and illustrators from Australia, UK, US, Japan and Brazil. The free exhibition is the brainchild of artists Alexander Mitchell and James Reka (who’s exhibiting) and each of the contributors is a friend, collaborator or contact of the two curators. Every work is original and available for sale (there is also an exhibition catalogue for $49). Here are some of my ...

For various reasons, I’ve had to cancel three successive meals at Gingerboy – now I’m half-mad at my friends that I’ve been denied for so long. Gingerboy is awesome. The narrow space is darkly sexy and very cool, with plastic piping echoing a tunnel made of bamboo sticks and red silk threads fringing elements of the space in an oriental touch. While they do two dinner sittings, we didn’t feel rushed through our meal. Most importantly, the kitchen is confident in its handling of Singaporean, Cantonese and Thai cuisine, presenting appetising dishes full of bold and punchy flavours. The menu starts with ...

This morning I installed my work for 'The High Life' at Rooftop Bar. The bottom image is Adam Cruickshank's work, also at Rooftop.The High Life is a series of rooftop art projects curated by West Space that will be a feature of this year’s Melbourne Food + Wine Festival. The Festival invited West Space to work with contemporary artists to present artworks that reflect upon themes initiated in this year’s festival keynote project ‘The Metlink Edible Garden’. West Space has commissioned eight artists to make new work that responds to ideas around plants and gardens, food sustainability, urban landscapes and ...

First GOLDEN FUR concert for the 2010 Series is tonight at the Melbourne Recital Centre.PROGRAM:Liza Lim - Veil ( for sextet)Robert Dahm - ...nailed, unstreched, to the floor... (for piano/viola, cello/harp, clarinet/MaxMSP)Robert Ashley - Waiting Room (for trio)Cat Hope - Kuklinski's Dream (for carving knives, clarinet, cello, viola and MaxMSP)Morton Feldman - For Frank O'Hara (septet)Performed by Golden Fur (Sam Dunscombe, James Rushford, Judith Hamann) with very special guests Kim Tan (flute), Lizzy Welsh (violin), Rob Mattessi (trumpet), Matthias Schack-Arnott (percussion), Nat Grant (percussion) and Timothy Phillips (conductor).Thursday March 11, 6pm (no interval)Melbourne Recital Centre ...

To eat and do good? A $15 two course lunch at Fifteen Melbourne was too good to pass up. For those who don’t know, Fifteen is a worldwide social enterprise business started by famous uber-energetic chef Jamie Oliver. Its aim is to provide apprenticeship scheme for young people, between the ages of 18 and 24, to enable them to learn all aspects of the day-to-day running of the restaurants, and all profits go back to the apprenticeship scheme. The Melbourne branch is headed by executive chef Tobie Puttock who oversees 20 apprentices each year. Fifteen Melbourne can be found in a laneway and ...

I found this small factory while out walking in South Melbourne yesterday. It looked a bit sad and vacant and I almost walked right on past until I noticed the rounded concrete porch above the door which continues as ledge above the frosted and guarded windows on the front of the building.A closer inspection reveals that there are small dark bricks below the ledge at street level and cream bricks above the ledge stretching up to the roofline.The side and rear of the building has been completed in cream brick with the roofline at the back has simple asymetrical ...

I was going through the photos the other day and realised that I have taken many food and coffee shots of St. Ali but never blogged since the one I did in August last year - name of post. It deserves a part 2 and even 3. I tend to visit it when I have a long morning at work or when I just feel like chilling out by myself and away from work. It isn't exactly the quietest cafe in South Melbourne. It is always buzzing with people, the slayer hard at work, beans roasting in the far end ...

Want to impress your clients? We have the solution for you. Office on level 42 of the prestigious Rialto Towers with stunning views of Southbank and Port Phillip Bay! We have 2 spacious workstations available in a 25m2 approx space, with access to 12 seat boardroom, meeting room, kitchen, reception and you can even have your own signage on the entry doors. You will be sharing with a financial planning firm. You won’t be left disappointed after inspection of this modern friendly office.

I am a tad slow with my postings. I don't know how other working people blog and work and live their lives, because I'm pretty much exhausted and much too lazy to want to do anything after work.Anyway, today's post will be about my visit to the newly renovated and refurbished Dragon Boat RestaurantWe actually visited this place during the first day of Chinese New Year...the road (Little Bourke Street) was packed and we were seeking an escape!We hurriedly ducked into the nearest arcade and decided that it was time to try yumcha at Dragon Boat. What better way to ...

A call to all Melbournians - Where is your favourite ramen shop? I am not sure when Mister started his craze for Ramen, in particular, Tonkotsu. I thought long and hard and it seems that Menya Noodle Bar in Sydney is the culprit. Mister discovered this place while on a short visit up in Sydney. The next time we were up there, he insisted that we had to pay homage to this place. Before I carry on with my rambles, let me briefly explain what tonkotsu is. It is a cloudy pork soup base. It's cloudiness comes from being cooked with ...

I’m all for comfort food, opaque tights and scarves (I think it’s a reaction to growing up in sunny Queensland) – yay for Marvellous March! Marvellous March is also the name of a handy little booklet produced by That’s Melbourne with details of the big events around Melbourne that will make you love autumn. This is a post to bookmark! Thanks to City of Melbourne, here are some highlights and photos: Moomba Festival 2010 Melbourne’s largest outdoor community festival makes a vibrant return to the heart of the city. From the spectacle of the Moomba Parade to the hilarious Westpac Birdman Rally, from ...

A summer’s day and the heat is up.  You pant a bit then fan yourself with your hand,  a light wind wafts around.  It is refreshing and with it comes an instant love of this movement of air.  It is easy to worship the wind on such a day. In the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne there is The Temple of the Winds. It is an ideal place to give thanks for that wind. Temple of the Winds The temple was built in 1901 and sits on a hill overlooking The Yarra River. This is an elegant structure.  It is built in grey masonry, is ...

As promised yesterday, here’s a blow-by-blow account of our meal at Collins Kitchen in the Grand Hyatt Hotel walking through their a la carte dinner menu. Before I start I should warn you – there is a LOT of food involved. I haven’t eaten that much in a long time! First up, warm house-made sourdough bread. It’s almost ridiculous how romantic a loaf of bread can look. A sushi platter with the most melt-in-your-mouth fish matched with the piquancy of freshly grated wasabi.I particularly enjoyed the spicy tuna nori rolls and snuck in a few while others were admiring… …the antipasto platter. The ...

Old Town Kopitiam Mamak Level 2, Shop 11, QV Square, QV, Melbourne, 3000 website foursquare urbanspoon I would like to note first of all that I have been to this restaurant on numerous occasions and have therefore had the ability to sample several of the dishes. I will thus give you a breakdown of all of them. Old Town Kopitiam Mamak is a recently opened extension of the already established and fairly popular Old Town Kopitiam on Little Bourke Street (as far as I know, no connection to the chain in Malaysia by the way, I find it bizarre how people tend to assume that just ...

Is an exhibition by Simon MacEwan. He was just in the Sunday Age for his jewels being ripped off by Topshop. This is not about jewels though, it's about new drawings. The tagline for the show goes 'Ill considered drawings, the like of which you've probably seen done better by others.' Cute - but it's doubtful. His drawings are pretty good, and really very considered.The hair bear bunch model the invitation. You're doing it wrong*. At C3. March 3. Come enjoy some sunny Autumn loveliness with a glass of cider on the grass.*Rather amusing coming from Simon, who has a ...

What a feast! My need-to-lose-weight-diet was definitely thrown out of the window that evening. I could not help myself. The spread was fantastic and to top it all, great company. So many thanks to Nuffnang and Collins Kitchen for organising this foodbloggers event. More I say! The executive chef, Jason Camillo took us around the open kitchen and introduce us to its 5 different stations - sushi & crustacean, deli counter, wok, grill & wood fire oven and of course, patisserie. It is all about the food. Most of the produce here is sourced locally and menus are changed once every ...

A sudden urge to try something new came over me and I decided that....I WANT JAPANESE. My first choice was to go to Maedaya at Richmond but they're closed on Sundays. Good thing, another option is available on Sundays, which is Izakaya Den at Russell Street. This place was received twice at Epicure by The Age and also read fantastic things about it from bloggers.Another good thing was, I wasn't alone. I have my good friend PG join me for a night out of sake and Japanese knick-knacks. Interior-wise, the place was tunnel-like and the end has a ceiling to ...

There are definitely some advantages to writing about food obsessively. Nuffnang is a blog advertising community which brings advertisers and bloggers together so that advertisers can target their products to blog readers and bloggers can make some money from the advertising – you may have noticed Nuffnang ads occasionally on MEL: HOT OR NOT. Nuffnang is also all about bringing bloggers together to share and learn from each other. After the success of their Christmas party last year, they organised the first of the category-specific meetups – a Food Bloggers Dinner hosted at the newly refurbished Collins Kitchen in the Grand Hyatt ...

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 ...

Today’s post is a bit of a mishmash – my views on a serious issue as well as a light-hearted food review. Firstly, you may or may not have been aware that last Wednesday 24 February was Vindaloo Against Violence day. Melbourne, Victoria and Australia has been subject to some shameful local and international press recently due to a spate of racially motivated crime, and Indians seems to be a particular target. Many of us, including myself, are outraged and saddened by the rise of this sort of intolerant, violent behaviour as well as the lack of positive action being taken by the ...

So nice to see such a huge crowd out to stand up for our live music scene. Glad to hear the government has back-flipped. I liked the awkward politicians milling about on the steps gawping back at the crowd and I liked the feel of being in such a crowd for such a good reason. I'm going to post a swathe of photos, so you can try to spot the people you know in each one, and good placards too. Psychedelic Freaks Vote Too! Free Colin Hay! Blunderstruck! VIVE LE ROCK 24HR LOVE!Oh, music is the meat of all who ...

It’s 2010 people. Your work-sleep-eat schtick just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Who cares if you’re a big shot executive if you can’t crochet a couch seat cover from scratch or crunk like Beyonce? These days, it’s all about learning stuff. And Melbourne’s definitely not short of ideas when it comes to improving your repertoire. Try one of these for size: The Design Sessions, Thread Den Thread Den are offering a special one-off sewing series as part of LMFF, starting 12 March. Learn how to construct a whole garment from scratch, from A-line skirts to men’s ties and cravats. Bookings are ...

Did you know that Melbourne is the world’s second UNESCO City of Literature, part of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network? So it’s fitting that the city has created a space such as The Wheeler Centre (named after Tony and Maureen Wheeler, the founders of Lonely Planet), a centre for books, writing and ideas which launched just a few weeks ago. What’s particularly fabulous about The Wheeler Centre is the series of reading and book related events in its public program – and it’s almost all free! As a result, lots of events book out quickly so you need to keep an eye on ...