Month: July 2008

journalism

Insects: When It’s Okay to Eat Them

From SBS Food Deep-fried scorpion, silk worm pupae and wok-fried beetles – all excellent sources of protein. Ed Charles takes a look at Western food taboos and the people who break them. Cows are seen as a civilised food. Insects are not. It is a division that partly accounted for Australia’s first European settlers villifying the indigenous population for their enjoyment of strange foods and grubs. “Food intake was a very important part of situating people as not properly human,” […]

journalism

Making a brand stand

From The Australian, Entrepreneur ONE of the major challenges for small companies is to make the transition from being a small-volume product to being a brand sold in a large number of retailers. For Sydney-based Nikki Michel and Lisa Ross the challenge was to move from selling their dream Pickles and Loop pyjamas at Paddington Markets in 2005 to 120 specialist independent retail outlets today. In March last year the sisters, themselves nicknamed Pickles and Loop respectively, started by exhibiting […]

Eat streets

Truffle hunters come home victorious

Spice finds a giant Perigord truffle. The whole of Australia is Perigord truffle crazy right now. In the past few weeks alone I’ve eaten some of the best and most aromatic truffle dishes that I have ever come across. Chefs report they have never seen so many from Australia and summer ones imported from France. Today, one hour out of Melbourne about ten minutes the other side of some McBungalows I was part of a group hunting for truffles led […]

Eat streets

This chair must be stopped

Look around you. There is probably one similar near you right now. This is the New Zealand Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc ( the most popular and ubiqitous white wine in Australia) of cafe chairs. I keep tripping up over it everywhere. This picture was taken in Hamilton (worth avoiding). I’ve seen it in the Yarra Valley. It’s spread like a rash through my home suburb St Kilda – Mirka at Tolarno, Banff, Spuntino etc. Are we doomed to sit on […]

journalism

Hot hot heat

From SBS Food Chilli is an essential ingredient in many cuisines throughout the world, featuring in everything from from piping hot vindaloo to Portuguese piri piri sauce, but who started the fire? Ed Charles investigates. Christopher Columbus has a lot to answer for. He was the first European on record to find chillis, and now, together with the potato and the tomato, they are ubiquitous throughout the world, and for some reason prized for the burning sensation they produce. Historians […]

Eat streets, Restaurants

First glimpse at Andrew McConnell’s Cumulus Inc in Flinders Lane

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt writing about the opening of restaurants is that it rarely goes to plan. As a writer it is easy to be caught out. Openings can be delayed by months or even years. And so it was that on Thursday the 26th I rocked up to Cumulus Inc (45 Flinders Lane +61 3 9650 1445) for supper to find the chef (Andrew McConnell of Three, One , Two and formerly Circa The Prince) and architect, […]