The Australian, Entrepreneur ONCE upon a time chocolate was the preserve of the rich. That’s if you could find any decent chocolate to eat — a chocolate culture didn’t really exist in Australia. Then, inspired by their travels, local entrepreneurs began trying to replicate what they had found abroad. One of the first was Yarra Valley winemaker [...]

ED CHARLES dishes up the latest on Melbourne’s food, wine and bars KITCHEN CRACKDOWN Nobody at Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar (66 Bourke St, city) wants to comment on the impounding of its meat slicer or the future of its kitchen table. Health chiefs at the City of Melbourne are denying any restaurant crackdown, but restaurateurs are complaining about [...]

Ed Charles goes fossicking in Melbourne’s city alleys and discovers a treasure trove of dining gems April 14, 2007 MELBOURNE may recently have landed its own Rockpool Bar & Grill, but with this one exception, high-profile restaurants are not where it’s at in this city right now. Rather, central Melbourne is teeming with exciting hole-in-the-wall restaurants and [...]

ED CHARLES dishes up the latest on Melbourne’s food, wine and bars CHEAP EATS Check out the Tuesday night meals at Swinburne TAFE in Prahran, being run under celebrated Geelong chef George Biron from April 22. For $25 you get four courses of fresh, seasonal ingredients cooked by third-year apprentice students. Biron says the wine list is [...]

Ed Charles quenches his beer thirst in wine country April 07, 2007 AFTER a hard day of wine touring, there’s nothing like a cleansing ale. Happily, in the past few years microbreweries have started popping up in Australia’s many wonderful wine regions. The notion of running a small beer-brewing business has attracted refugees from the wine world [...]

Ed Charles dishes up the latest on Melbourne’s food, wine and bars FIFTEEN CHANGES Less than a year in and the director of the local franchise of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Foundation charity, Lauren Oliver (right), has quit. She is replaced by short-back-and-sides Peter Brown, who has a background at the Lort Smith Animal Hospital and more recently the [...]

The Australian, Entrepreneur ONCE upon a time chocolate was the preserve of the rich. That’s if you could find any decent chocolate to eat — a chocolate culture didn’t really exist in Australia. Then, inspired by their travels, local entrepreneurs began trying to replicate what they had found abroad. One of the first was Yarra Valley winemaker [...]

ED CHARLES dishes up the latest on Melbourne’s food, wine and bars BEST COFFEE Out of six Victorian baristas battling it out for the title of Victoria’s best coffee maker on Sunday, five used coffee from Veneziano Caffe in Abbotsford. David Makin, who is in sales and training for the company, won for the second year in a [...]

• THE CURIOUS COOK 
Ed Charles I AM at the new central market in Siem Reap, Cambodia, enduring the smell that pervades every market here, from Battambang and Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville on the coast. The odour comes from a red washing-up bowl filled with grey sludge in which float pieces of silver fish. The smell is [...]

Ed Charles dishes up the latest on Melbourne’s food, wine and bars FUNF FUN Popular eatery Yelza has new owners and a new name, Sentido Funf (245 Gertrude St, Fitzroy). A much-needed lick of paint has given new life to the baroque, red velvet-draped space. Friday to Sunday DJs play in the back glasshouse. The kitchen will [...]