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 ailing business — or start your own — build it up, sell, then move on to something bigger and start again. Nick Kutcher is one […]
Month: October 2008
Who is Ferran Adria?
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 past three years, as the best restaurant in the world. You need to eat there and that’s difficult because his 50 seat restaurant, a two […]
Ferran Adria’s influence on food here now soon
[youtube:http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM8enrRk_1o] Yes, yes, yes, I still haven’t worked out to edit sound on video. But this, from Midsummer House in Cambridge, wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Ferran Adria who I interviewed on Monday. He gave me more than my allocated 30 minutes. At least that’s what I think. I was due to see him at 9.45 at The Langham. We started a bit late but when I next looked at my watch walking past Crown it was 10.55. It’s […]
Why I don’t review restaurants for social sites
To date I’ve been quite polite to all the people who have approached me to run competitions for bloggers to write review of restaurant review sites. I haven’t run any because I don’t believe bloggers are the people who will mainly review on these sites. The thing about this blog is that it is my copyright content and if I’m going to spend time writing for the web I want more of reward than the slight possibility of winning a […]
Evelyn Waugh: best ever food writer?
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5mEhvLT9jU] Watching the trailer for the latest adaptation of Brideshead Revisited doesn’t bode well for the film of one the Top 100 books I’ve ever read. The definitive adaptation is Granada’s TV’s 11 part series released in 1982, which is surprisingly faithful to Evelyn Waugh’s book. That series was incredibly popular. At university even my biker friends who lived like The Young Ones, with motorcycle engines in the shower and the stair rods removed with a geology hammer, became foppish; […]
30 minutes with Ferran Adria. What do you want to ask?
Ferran Adria arrives in Australia on Thursday next week for his sold-out audience on the 19th at Hamer Hall (put on by the good folk at Melbourne Food and Wine). He’s here with his translator to spruik his book “A day at El Bulli” and I’m lucky enough to have 30 minutes with him on behalf of some on the people I write for. I’ve hundreds of things I’d like to ask. But with so much written about Adria and […]
Alba Truffle Festival
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 is its white truffles, the white tuber magnatum pico or Alba truffle, the magnificantly musky, earthy scented tuber that is harvested from October to December […]
Enjoy the blood sport of criticism while they take a pound of your flesh
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVaZwJn-ZcM] It’s a mistake when visiting the UK not to enjoy the country’s media while munching on Melton Mowbray Pork Pie, potted shrimps on toast and home made blackberry and (scrumped) apple pies – especially its critics and attack dog journalists. At the top of the tree are Jeremy Paxman, AA Gill, the god Jeremy Clarkson and that rude cunt of a restaurant reviewer Giles Coren. Many Australians won’t be familiar with Paxman, the presenter of Newsnight who makes an […]