I‘m sent a lot of stuff. In the past few weeks alone, two cookbooks, a bottle of whisky, beer x 2, prawns, wine, magazines and more. Dealing with the packaging alone is a pain as I don’t own an industrial compactor and only have a small recycling bin. But out of all the guff, I was very happy with Prana Chai, something I first tasted way back at Dr Jekyll in St Kilda. Most chai comes as a dry and […]
Recent posts
Why I love The Family Meal
We don’t see much innovation in cookbooks nowadays but The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria is as you’d expect from one of the world’s most innovative chefs. What most people don’t realise is that most book publishers don’t test their recipes properly. Yes, the chefs and celebrities that write them actually cook the dishes sometimes even in their home kitchens. But a recipe tester using crappy basic cookers and bog standard equipment aren’t used. It keeps the price […]
Lunch at Vue de Monde at $1 a minute
Each table is assigned a chef from the open kitchen at Vue de Monde At $60 for the 1 hour lunch at Vue de Monde it is not the cheapest in town by far. But it adds up to so much more than two courses and a glass of wine as an experience; I defy you to not order more or want to return. The whole experience is high theatre and extreme camp from the ornate cutlery, the colourful chaise […]
Why recipes matter in social media
Q: What’s the most competitive area for food on the web? A: recipes. In a week when NineMSN launched its new food portal, the recipe battle online just got fiercer. The competition is for which website has the most rcipes best optimised to be found in Google searches whether it be Taste, Gourmet Traveller, SBS Food or whichever. There’s a reason for this. Recipes mean traffic. People want recipes. The big traffic blogs mostly rely on recipes. Therefore if you […]
What about monitoring social media?
People always ask about monitoring tools for social media. There are plenty of very expensive solutions out there designed for big brands. But I suspect for many food and drink businesses costs are always going to be an issue simply because many aren’t that big. Luckily some of the best tools are free, although if you do feel inclined to pay for any probably Hootsuite is the best. Some of these tools have the ability to pre assign activity, but […]
The cult of the wineglass
Consult a financial adviser before drinking from a Riedel. Dishwasher tablets erode your glasses and crockery. Use liquid instead. Decant heavier reds at least 8 hours before drinking. If you want to drink champagne (usually a blend of chardonnay pinot pinot meunier and pinot noir) rather than sip it, use a pinot noir glass. I’ve spent my whole life avoiding scrapes with cults. There was the incident in London on the Tottenham Court Road where, bunking off school aged 14, […]
Diary of a food festival: day 3
Saturday 0830 Attend Barbeque Madness at Sydney Morning Herald Grower’s Market at Pyrmont Park. Join David Tanis of the legendary Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, and a stellar line up of 10 Sydney chefs including Kylie Kwong. Sessions are held every half an hour. We all stumble down to breakfast about 10ish before stumbling on to the BBQ. It’s all pretty chaotic but we get our seared meat just as they start packing-up around us. I take a look […]
Specifications for a restaurant website
If you want to see what it should look like then visit El Loco in Sydney and check it on your pc and mobile phone. 1. Front page blog like functionality with RSS feed 2. Allow multiple categories in blog with individual RSS feeds. 3. Mailchimp email sign-up form front page in sidebar. Mailchimp takes RSS feed to make email. Email send to Facebook/Twitter. 4. Twitter stream in right hand sidebar 5. Facebook open graph tags on front page so […]
A rough guide to social media for restaurants
Ed charles social media for restaurants View more presentations from Tomato Media This is a slideshow outlining a verbal presentation I gave to members of Restaurant and Catering in Melbourne last week.