From The Weekend Australian: Travel and Indulgence Ed Charles sorts the wheat from the chaff in the wide world of food websites. Harold McGee: Not everybody wants to know how to cook an octopus. But many of us want to know the difference between cheap frying pans and expensive ones, how and what to cook [...]

From In The Black: In the trenches Achieving an effective level of management is a fairly universal story no matter what business you work in or run. Just look at the restaurant industry. It’s a microcosm of the business world, picky customers and tight deadlines. And the man who has highlighted it, warts and all, [...]

From SBS Food Five Indian restaurants have been awarded Michelin stars in the UK since 2001. Ed Charles investigates how the trend towards Indian fine diners is progressing Australia. When Chandra Kanodia opened the Phantom India restaurant in June 1979 on Swanston Street in Carlton, just outside the City of Melbourne, it claimed to be [...]

From The Australian, Entrepreneur THE cafe business is highly lucrative and has a lot in common with the game of Monopoly. There’s a vibrant trade in cafes — in Melbourne there are stories (perhaps exaggerated) of $50,000 a week businesses selling for $2 million. If you know what you’re doing you can pick up an [...]

From SBS Food As he hits Australia to promote his new book A Day at El Bulli, Ed Charles catches up with the man who is changing the way we relate to food. There is no easy way to explain the food of Ferran Adria at El Bulli, which has been unanimously voted, for the [...]

From SBS Food Sure Alba has it’s gothic towers dating back to the 12th century. Yes, there really isn’t anything else than can match the easy European charm of the town, some 75km south or Turin in Piedmont, with it’s wonderful rustic food, wines and cobbled ancient streets. But really the whole point of Alba [...]

From SBS Food Phununication Do not say foe Do not say foo And especially don’t Say the word which describes a “number two” Start with an fff To be followed by an urgh Once it become un-Pho-gettable You’ll get with the slue. An extract from Phonunication courtesey, Katie Nguyen from the I Love Pho booklet. [...]

From The Australian, Entrepreneur THE hospitality business in Australia is huge. It is jam packed full of small entrepreneurial businesses with over 40,000 restaurants, cafes and caterers alone turning over $15 billion. And they all have one massive problem: finding and retaining the correct staff. And that means it is more important than ever to [...]

From The Australian, Entrepreneur Accountant Ramez Abdulnour has calculated how to make a quid on the morning brew, reports Ed Charles YOU’D think the coffee business was about selecting and suppling the product as in any food and beverage business. But in reality it has more in common with the mobile phone business, where handsets [...]

From SBS Food For something that is more or less an underwater snail, the humble abalone has done pretty well for itself. Twenty years ago a Chinese grocer would pay a few dollars for a barrow load of the ugly blighters known as ‘Muttonfish’ picked out of Port Phillip Bay. Nowadays this mollusk, or to [...]