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 […]
Eat streets
Where to eat on Melbourne’s and Australia’s famous eat streets.
Drink within your means
How much should you pay for wine? Or let’s put it this way: How much more than the cost of food should wine be? In Melbourne the cost of a main course in a restaurant is fast catching up with the cost of wine. If I’m feeling poor I may spend $40 to $50 on a bottle in a restaurant. Feeling rich and I may double the figure. To put this into context in the kinds of restaurants where I’m […]
Home and blogging again
I’m meant to live in the edgy side of Melbourne in St Kilda. Drunks, drug addicts street walkers. That’s saying nothing of the so-called actors and artists who hang around in the cafés all day. But everything seems very quiet and dull since returning from Vietnam. Apologies for lack of blog entries but finding a recent version of Internet Explorer was hit and miss. Now I’m home I can tell the full story.
Hot and cross, yes. Buns? Not so sure…
Now that you’ve been exposed to my technical ‘skills’, it may not be surprising to learn that my hot cross buns were lacking something, too. I followed a recipe that I downloaded from the internet – probably my first mistake! – and while they turned out perfectly edible, they had a texture more akin to a scone than a bun. Everything started out nicely enough, although I was apprehensive about using copha, or vegetable shortening, as I associate that stuff […]
Resuming normal service
Ok, it seems all is ok with the DMBLGIT picutre gallery now – but please let me know if you have any difficulties veiwing the entries via the link at the top left. I’ve uploaded a few more entries this morning… keep them coming!
Not the Barri Gòtic
There’s something about those dark back alleys that get to me. My first taste for it was in Europe, the alleyways of ancient Italian towns. The south of France. And who can resist the pull of Barcelona’s Barri Gòtic. And so it is with Melbourne a city that hides laneways off laneways, among jumbled warehouses built when the city was a Gold town. Hosier Lane is probably one of the most interesting, covered with stencil art and filled with various […]
Best chocolate in Melbourne
Monsieur Truffe found my heart with darkness. His rich dark truffles are the best in Melbourne. Artisan chocolate shops are multiplying like rabbits but all of them are to fancy and too sweet in what they serve. Monsieur Truffe is very dark and very sinful. He recommends one single truffe a day. I find it difficult to to resist a packet each day – my dark northern European (Lithuanian) genes talking. I love the 70% but the 55% will probably […]
Hop on the Krispy Kreme media bandwagon
Picture pinched from Il Fornaio. Yuk! Over at Espresso in The Age the editors are already licking their lips at the prospect of a drive through Krispy Kreme doughnut outlet in Melbourne. I’ve had the misfortune to eat these dubious sugar coated bits of dough. Double yuk! At first bite they have a pleasant crispy sugar coating but underneath is dough that does a disservice to the worst kind of white bread you can buy. Triple yuk! Soon we can […]
Reflections on beer glasses
Sure Asahi isn’t the cheapest beer on Tap. But that is more than compensated by the stylish frosted glass that this beer comes in. We’ve just popped in to recently refurbished Espy, (The Esplanade Hotel, 11 The Esplanade St Kilda 3183 +61 3 9534 0211) for a quick beer. For those of you not in the know this pub has one of the best bay views in St Kilda. It serves the beers made or marketed by Fosters which means […]