Another year, another chance for lion dancers to molest the unwary. The risk of a lion dancer catching aflame grows each year. The hanging iceberg lettuce attracts them. Welcome to the Chinese New Year. I had a vague plan to hit up some dumpling joints but was derailed by a newish Malaysian place: Old Town… Continue reading Gong Xi Fa Cai, Rendang
Tag: Melbourne
Limca
I miss the threat posed by random drinks especially one in a bottle that has been reused until it develops a thick ring of scratched glass. Sadly, this one isn’t alcoholic. Limca tastes like stale lemonade that someone has attempted to revive with a teaspoon of powdered ginger. There is no saving it. The cap… Continue reading Limca
Red Emperor, Melbourne
Har gau from Red Emperor, Melbourne I always thought that only tourists ate on Southbank. It’s the wrong side of the river for me; that strange cultural divide that bisects Melbourne wherein both sides can say that the other is the morally and culturally wrong side. Since the Casino that dominates the south bank of… Continue reading Red Emperor, Melbourne
Little Creatures, Fitzroy: Invasion from the West
There is only one thing that can turn me off the citrus-y and floral pale ales of Little Creatures Brewery and that is the music of Collette Roberts. Her ode to campanology was blaring across the industrial Viking beer hall that brewery Little Creatures have infested in Fitzroy in Melbourne as I entered. When did… Continue reading Little Creatures, Fitzroy: Invasion from the West
Mekong on Swanston St: The meaty taste of disappointment
I’m starting to become accustomed to the sense of betrayal that I feel after eating once again at old favourites in Melbourne. Most continue to please (or at least, meet expectations). But Mekong on Swanston Street in Melbourne, to use more common language, has gone to shit. Well before I left Australia for Cambodia, Mekong… Continue reading Mekong on Swanston St: The meaty taste of disappointment
Vue De Monde, Melbourne
When Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Future Yet Come decides to take me out to dinner, he’d probably take me to Vue De Monde to wallow amongst the Baby Boomer dugongs in suits and pearls. That crystalline vision into how my life would transpire if I spent the next twenty odd years focusing upon crapulence would… Continue reading Vue De Monde, Melbourne
Usufruct in Fitzroy
Usufruct, the right to derive benefit from the property of others, is generally best (and in most societies, only) displayed by the example of picking fruit from trees that overhang the boundary of a private property into public space. A Google User named kirsten has begun compiling a map of all of the overhanging fruit… Continue reading Usufruct in Fitzroy
Does Gordon Ramsay write his own extrafood column in the Herald Sun?
Gordon Ramsay’s Humble Pie was a 2006 bestseller but it was the award-winning feature writer Rachel Cooke who quietly wore out the “f” key on her laptop. Then again, she can afford a new computer, having pocketed a rumoured £100,000 share of Ramsay’s rumoured £750,000 advance. From “Literary Haunts”, The Times, November 12, 2007. Surely… Continue reading Does Gordon Ramsay write his own extrafood column in the Herald Sun?