Food & Drink. Travel. Est. 2005
One month in Lisbon. That’s some 90 meals. Quite a few I prepared at home. What is remarkable is how cheap fruit, vegetables, meat and fish are in Lisbon compared with Australia. Peppers and onions are sweet and cost pennies. Tuna and Swordfish are about €12-€13 a kilo. It’s a shock to the system. With cheaper ingredients, property and labour costs it is understandable that Portugal has plenty of quite cheap eats. I say quite cheap as Lisbon isn’t as […]
There’s no rushing balsamic vinegar. It’s a slow process that takes between 12 and 25 years and there are only some 48 accredited families that do it in Modena. Last year I was lucky enough to visit one of the local producers Acetae di Gorgio, in the attic of their family home. Yes, I know it seems weird but since the middle ages balsamic vinegar is made in the warm attics of family homes in small quantities. Acetae di Gorgio produces only a […]
There’s a lot to love about drinking in Lisbon. First are the rooftop bars and goldfish bowl gin & tonics infused with spices (usually cinnamon) and some fruit and citrus. The wines of the Duoro are amazing. The much maligned green wine – vinho verdhi – which isn’t actually green but sharp and refreshing is perfect for a summer’s evening. Everyone loves port but do you really want to drink a rich aged deep red port mid-summer? I became addicted […]
Custard tarts – pastel de nata – are deeply embedded in Portuguese culture. They are everywhere. Bakeries around the world try and replicate them. And even home cooks have a shot. I’ve eaten them in Melbourne but they never enchanted me like they did in Portugal. Spending a month chilling out in Lisbon, barely a day went by when I didn’t have one or two of these tarts. It became my personal mission to find the best in town. These […]
It’s now the world’s best. And as it turned out by when I booked at table at Osteria Francescana it was the world’s no.2. What’s the difference?
It’s like I’m a Martian in a strange land where, if I want a coffee, I drive 6.4km with the help of a GPS though the sprawl of Johannesburg, the world’s largest urban forest. Roads twist, turn, rise and drop through the rocky outcrops and ravines that make the landscape of this town. While there are a few urban villages in the suburbs of one of the top ten most dangerous cities in the world, most people rely of shopping […]
There’s a new trend in restaurants and cafes. Design it for Instagram sharability. Pidapipo on Chapel Street has done a reasonable job strategically placing its neon so it can be photographed with Hawker Hall’s neon in the background. Match Mylkbar takes it to the extreme, from the neon green finger in its window to… well pretty much everything about the place. The lattes come in all colours of the rainbow from regular to mushroom, pink (beetroot), green (matcha) an golden […]
On the web the winner takes all and I believe that in the takeaway food delivery business there will be one service that survives, Uber Eats. It launched today at 11am today in a limited area of Melbourne inner city suburbs. But who knows, as both Deliveroo or Foodora are worthy challengers. But Australian market is too small to support three upmarket food takeaway businesses. The fact is the biggest wins. Look at Facebook versus Twitter. AirBNB versus the other […]
Have you ever wondered about the fish you buy? Where it comes from and how it all works. The Thursday before Easter I arrived at the Melbourne Wholesale market to see it in action. The cover picture is of tuna, the tail cut so the buyers can check the colour of the flesh, the key sign of quality. In the Sydney market the fish are auctioned electronically. Here the traders set the price and haggle with the buyers via text, […]