THE CURIOUS COOK Ed Charles June 02, 2007 I’M in the Melbourne restaurant of much-awarded molecular chef Robin Wickens, who is inventing a new dish, and I’m sneaking a preview. My experience of professional kitchens so far has been through Gordon Ramsay’s Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. But in Wickens’s kitchens at Interlude (211 Brunswick St, Fitzroy), the 32-year-old British chef doesn’t stomp around and clatter pans; everything among the five chefs here is calm and hushed. In fact, the quietly spoken […]
Author: Ed
Searching for the best phố in Melbourne
It’s not something people talk about a lot but whenever I bring up phố there is enormous interest about where to eat it. People are always interested in the best places to eat in Victoria Street Richmond. When they hear I have a list of the best local phố restaurants from a phố expert in Sydney their notebooks and PDAs come out as they copy out the list. I discovered the “I Love Phố” exhibition that was held in Liverpool […]
In the trenches: The coffee business
From In The Black – May 2007:? You know that coffee is a big and profitable business when the drinks and snackfood giant, Coca-Cola Amatil, turns its attention to it. Two years ago it bought Grinders Coffee, whose founder Giancarlo Giusti is one of Australia’s coffee pioneers. Grinders was founded in 1962, when coffee in the English-speaking world, including Australia, was considered pretty awful, and the Asian market for coffee had yet to evolve. When sold it had a turnover […]
Grange Hermitage launch at Dan Murphy’s new flagship
Once upon a time there was a big wine store on Chapel St Prahran. It was called Dan Murphy’s and was pretty flash. Then it was bought by Woolworth’s and moved into a smart new warehouse building across the road – it was the flagship. It is still there but now the flagship is in East Malvern (811-823 Dandenong Rd) and it has a flash tasting room for all the posh wines it sells. I was there Monday for a […]
Sweet success in chocolates
The Australian, Entrepreneur ONCE upon a time chocolate was the preserve of the rich. That’s if you could find any decent chocolate to eat — a chocolate culture didn’t really exist in Australia. Then, inspired by their travels, local entrepreneurs began trying to replicate what they had found abroad. One of the first was Yarra Valley winemaker Peter Wilson who — seduced by the taste of Valrhona chocolate in France — started making his own in the late 1990s and […]
Herald Sun: Ed Lines
ED CHARLES dishes up the latest on Melbourne’s food, wine and bars BEER DE LUXE As the fourth owner of the Upper and Lower House space in Federation Square in two years, the Belgian Beer Cafe’s George Christopoulos is renaming it Beer De Lux. Old-fashioned burgers are on the menu and upstairs is a grill. Italian food is served downstairs and sweets are available in the atrium cafe. A beer garden is planned. DOGS DINNER Food at the Dogs Bar […]
Herald Sun: Ed Lines
ED CHARLES dishes up the latest on Melbourne’s food, wine and bars KITCHEN CRACKDOWN Nobody at Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar (66 Bourke St, city) wants to comment on the impounding of its meat slicer or the future of its kitchen table. Health chiefs at the City of Melbourne are denying any restaurant crackdown, but restaurateurs are complaining about draconian enforcement. Appeals are pending, but the days of eating at the table in the iconic Pellegrini’s kitchen could be numbered. UNCOMMONLY GOOD […]
14 ways to tell when a restaurant will close down
Together with news that Port Melbourne’s Ping has closed (via Epicure) comes, via Ruhlman, the news that 60 per cent of restaurants fail, not the popularly quoted figure of 90 per cent. According to Businessweek, banks perpetuate the myth that 90 per cent of restaurants fail, which justifies the fact that they won’t invest in them because they are high risk businesses. The story quotes research from HG Parsa, associate professor in Ohio State University’s Hospitality Management program: “about one […]
Street scenes
The Weekend Australian, Travel & Indulgence Ed Charles goes fossicking in Melbourne’s city alleys and discovers a treasure trove of dining gems April 14, 2007 MELBOURNE may recently have landed its own Rockpool Bar & Grill, but with this one exception, high-profile restaurants are not where it’s at in this city right now. Rather, central Melbourne is teeming with exciting hole-in-the-wall restaurants and basement bars hidden down tiny alleys off the city’s famous laneways. With a few exceptions, the laneway […]