Month: August 2006

Drinks

Five things to eat before you die

I’ve been tagged by Cucina Rebecca in Sydney to join the “Five things to eat before you die” meme. Devised by The Travellers Lunchbox, as I write this there are 103 entries, that’s 515 dishes. I know what I don’t want to eat and that’s hospital food. I’ve had this big plan just in case some dreadful disease decided to take me. It’s extreme ski-ing. Picking a steep couloir, with the big crevasse at the bottom, I would strap on […]

Chefs

Bourdain on Ronnie di Stasio

Perhaps your way here from the food issue of The Age (Melbourne) Magazine . If you haven’t seen the mag, London-based Aussie food writer Terry Durack quotes Anthony Bourdain from an interview with Tomato from a year ago. You can check out my full Anthony Bourdain archive. He says this of Ronnie di Stasio in part 3: “He’s a fucking madman. And you have to be a fucking madman to be in the reastaurant business. There should be a statue […]

journalism

A high bar for small beers

There are small but determined new businesses brewing in the heady world of beer, writes Ed Charles Entrepreneur, The Australian, August 25, 2006 THERE’S no going back. Cameron Hines, joint founder of the Mountain Goat microbrewery in Melbourne, says: “Once you start enjoying and appreciating your beer, it’s almost impossible to go back and drink crap.” The founders of Australia’s latest crop of microbreweries became beer nuts while travelling abroad. Hines acquired a taste for boutique beers as he travelled […]

Eat streets

Wine guru Len Evans RIP

One of Australia’s best known wine gurus, Len Evans, has died suddenly at the age of 75. According to a report from AAP he had suffered from heart problems and died in the car park of Newcastle Hospital while collecting a relative. Acording to Wikipedia, Evans transformed blind tastings into a competition sport through his creating and developing the options game in which competitors attempt to identify each wines tasted. In 1962 he became the first regular wine columnist in […]

Restaurants

16 ways to spot a bad restaurant

1. There is a massive queueIn that case you are either in a motorway café or a reality TV show. 2. The room is emptyWhy is nobody here on a Thursday night? Just opened? Don’t kid me, I can see the look of desperation on the staff’s faces. 3. Spruikers try and drag you inObvious really. If they have to use the pressurised tactics of Benidorm timeshare spruikers… 4. Birds on tablesIf the birds (or rats for that matter) are […]