Food & Drink. Travel. Est. 2005
There’s a lot of stuffy tradition associated with wine and what food to match it with. It stems from the 18th and early 20th century dominance of France and the rest of Europe in winemaking, and the stuffiness of the English. Plus, before food and wine traditions developed in Europe, roads and the car opened up what were often isolated regions. This meant that the food and wine regions were very localised and both developed to complement each other. In […]
These garfish, with their long beak-like noses are stunning glistening, shiny fish. There aren’t the cheapest in the markets but at under $17 a kilo right now they aren’t the most expensive fish either. The white meat is delicate and the best way to cook them is to keep it simple. Here we rolled them in seasoned flour and pan fried them. That’s all. And they were served with a squeeze of lemon, the new season’s asparagus, herbed butter and […]
Canelés: the new thing? Once it was donuts for me. Then a rainbow cornucopia of macarons. Now it’s Canelés, this particular one from Dench Bakers in North Fitzroy. To me they have the look of a barnacle or some such other marine creature that you have to chisel off a rock. But they are in fact gorgeous soft brioche-like confections soaked in custard and caramelized on the outside. They are a small snack but big enough for your partner to […]
Alex Atala is quite literally a rock star chef. A former DJ and punk musician, the tattooed Alex Atala is a Brazilian media sensation and runs what is claimed to be one of the top 50 restaurants in the world. What makes him different to many other carbon copy celebrity chefs is that he shuns high-end ingredients. He’s turning French restaurant traditions on their head and has recently taken the gourmet delights of foie gras and truffles off the menu […]
FOR Sabino Matera the goal was to have the Quoco website up and running for the Taste of Sydney event last March where he had paid to have a stand to display food products imported from Puglia in Italy. But despite having a background in writing code in the information technology industry, Matera found he was tripped up at every step in getting his website up and running for the launch, with the designers eventually missing his all important deadlines. […]
SOME companies understand social media and how to deal with negative comments about their businesses. But most small and medium-sized firms prefer to ignore the comments rather than deal with the problem head-on, as Mocks founder Lara Solomon has. Last year Solomon decided to swap PR for social media as the main marketing method for her business, which sells sock-like mobile phone covers in Australia, Britain and the US. She focused on a Facebook page but didn’t anticipate the full […]
Voice of the People at The Melbourne Wine Room. Try it. Wine, most of us drink it. Some of us love it. But many of us are intimidated by it, or the wankery that comes with labels, hundreds of grape varieties and the language of the wine critic. All we know is that we like that particular red or white while slumped on the sofa watching TV and we wouldn’t mind drinking something similar down the pub. Or wine bar. […]
AUSTRALIAN online retailers are learning that the key to online sales success is to expand their brands offline into bricks and mortar. Insightful statistics gained online make the decision a no-brainer. “Australia is a backwater when it comes to online shopping,” dStore chief executive and local pioneer in online shopping Andrew Cooper says. He says the main reasons are that high-street merchants have not gone online and because global online retailers put the relatively small Australian market at the end […]
From goat’s curd to gruyere, these cheesmakers have winning formulas sure to impress discerning cheese lovers. Holy Goat Made at the Sutton Grange Organic farm near Bendigo in Victoria, Holy Goat (at about $130/kg) is universally regarded as one of the best cheeses in Australia by top chefs, including Michael Ryan from Provenance in Beechworth. The cheeses, which include fromage frais and curd cheeses, are made using organic goat’s milk from the farm and use slow lactic acid fermentation. The […]