Veteran food writer Rita Erlich talks good sense in The Age over absurdly long wine lists. Giant wine tomes are best avoided: “Even a speed-read list would help – say, a dozen whites and reds, chosen because they’re appropriate drinking and fairly priced. The longer the list, the higher the individual bottle prices, since stocking the cellar with thousands of bottles is expensive. Neither do I have much time for the wine list full of big company wines, available at […]
Recent posts
Lucky country is unlucky for some
From IN THE BLACK May 06 Wherever you are in Australia houses are bloody expensive and have been for some time. State and federal governments have debated the issue and there has even been a Productivity Commission report. According to the Demographia International Housing Survey (using September figures) Sydney is the seventh most expensive city in the world to buy property, with the median house costing 8.5 times the median take-home pay. Still, at least you’re not living in Los […]
Food fight
Yes, there are two good fight stories out there. Cuccina Rebecca in Sydney was asked to stop taking pics of her food “because the owner does like it” as someone once tried to take a picture of the blackboard. Silly restaurant paranoi perhaps. Many chefs do take food photos for ideas but this was a bowl of pasta. But it’s not as paranoid as the restaurants that refuse the critic entry. That’s right in Melbourne they have barred the way […]
Baguette & Chocolat
We’re a short drive from the Chinese border. Chris, from Sydney, reckons Sa Pa reminds him of a French ski resort. And the more I think about it, he’s right. The hotels have that French chalet feel. Sa Pa is at 1650m, the base high of ski resorts like, um, Courchevel 1650. And then I woner up the road, up the steps with the water buffalo (see previous post) and enter Baquette & Chocolat ̣(đ Thac Bac). It is just […]
Slow train to rapacious Sa Pa
It’s 380km from Hanoi to Sa Pa near the Chinese border. The trains are as slow as trams making it an overnight trip in a sleeper to possibly the cloudiest place in Vietnam. We arrive in driving rain and hail. One travel guide tells us that the sun shines fro 60 days a year here. That’s right, for the remaining 300 odd days it’s cloudy. Somehow in six years this town has grown from only eight hotels to 233. There’s […]
Michelin and Vietnam
Well why wouldn’t there be a connection between Michelin and Vietnam? After all it was the French who colonised Indochina from 1883 to the 1950s. Ho Chi Minh – at the time just plain old Nguyễn Sinh Cun – trained as a pastry chef with Escoffier in the Carlton Hotel in London. Later he moved to Paris and founded the French Communist Party. And it was the French who trained the Vietnamese to make wonderful baguettes, paté and coffee (believe […]
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.
Eating on fried fish street
Stay in the old quarter in Hanoi. Learn to love the congestion, the buzz and honking of motor scooters. Ah, and the smells. Two stroke, food and incense. This is the place where the action is. Life is lived and transacted on the street or at least without leaving the motorcycle saddle. It is a place where street names have a meaning. Hang Gad is chicken, Hang Hahn is onion. Hang Ruoi is clam worms. And the stretch between Hang […]
Office space: rent or buy
From IN THE BLACK April06 The big debate on property is whether to rent or buy. When property values and rents are falling the market favours the renters. But when the market is in an upswing – as it is now – owning a property can shield against rent rises, an attractive option for small business owners. One option is the strata office. The fact is that 71 per cent of strata office buyers are the occupiers themselves, while the […]