Category: AUSTRALIAN FOOD

Get healthy for $15: Three Blue Ducks’ green breakfast

Three Blue Ducks poke bowl

Three Blue Ducks in Rosebery at the beloved Cannery is all about the summer shred and their menu is there to prove it. If it’s not their charmingly open space, direct line to Koskela next door, easy access to a post-brunch gin at the distillery around the corner, or their insurmountable pile of cookbooks on offer, it’s the menu of Three Blue Ducks that’ll do it for you. This summer until 10am, $15 will get your a green breakfast of avocado toast or a breakfast poke bowl along with a green juice or green tea. Easy if you’re on one of those ‘restricted diets’ that folks do. It’s chill, rustic, welcoming and easy, with a menu that’s as easy to navigate as it is to decide a bold ‘yes’ to a $15 breakfast at a good local hangout. Find them at Three Blue Ducks Rosebery: 1/85 Dunning Ave, Rosebery NSW.

Angelo’s Cabarita debuts a brand-new look for the new year

Angelos revised interior photo

Angelo’s Cabarita first came in to being as a function centre. While it was the first stop for weddings and christenings for anyone seeking a bayside view of Cabarita, it may not have been number one on your list if you were looking for an afternoon glass of bubbles or an evening meal with the family – until now.             Everything has had a re-vamp, from the interior to the menu to the wine list. While the venue has always been spacious, it’s now chic, warm, and welcoming, with bucketloads of natural light and a private dining space for those super-special occasions. A classically Australian menu takes nods of inspiration from Italy, with fresh seafood and pasture-fed cuts of meat taking prime position alongside creamy gnocchi, zucchini flowers, and the famous beetroot risotto (you really have to try it).             The bar is fully-stocked with everything you need to sip and swill your way through a long, Italian-inspired lunch: kick things off with an Aperol spritz (or a negroni if you’re in the mood) and share a bottle or two of Prosecco, before finishing off with an Espresso Martini that will give you all the energy you need to make it back to the dock to catch the last ferry home.             While Cabarita is admittedly more than a quick stroll away from the city, the journey is well worth it, especially if you’re travelling by water. Nobody in Sydney needs any excuse for a day out, especially when the weather is this good: but… Read More

What’s on at Canberra Good Food Month, March 2019

Good Food Month Canberra Adam Liaw

Canberra Good Food Month is back again and in 2019, is serving-up the goods, tastier than ever before. Following in the footsteps of its Melbourne and Sydney brother and sister, as well as its success of 2018, Canberra Good Food Month will hit the Capitol in March 2019. With all the typical Good Food Month events and happenings, this year’s iteration will be about celebrating three fine elements of cooking: cooking with fire, Asian inspiration and the young, emerging talent in Australian food. It’s all about putting Canberra on the ever-growing foodie pedestal. Here are three must-see events at Canberra Good Food Month: Adam Liaw’s Chinese-Australian Food Odyssey | Chairman & Yip | Friday 15 March, 6.30-10.30pm | Tickets $190 Adam Liaw will take food lovers on an edible history through the past, present and future of Chinese food in Australia with Kwok Keung Tung, head chef at Michelin-starred restaurant, Chairman Hong Kong. Ticket price includes a six-course dinner with matched wines. Fire at Dusk with Lennox Hastie & James Viles | Pialligo Estate | Saturday 9 March, 6.30pm-10pm | Tickets $160 Lennox Hastie (Firedoor) and James Viles (Biota Dining) will show off thier wood-fired grilling craft over the asado open fire-pit at the Asador Etxebarri (number six on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants), before opening Australia’s only fully wood fuelled restaurant. Ticket price includes a four-course dinner with matched wines, served with an arrival canape and cocktail. Young Chefs Lunch presented by Citi | Aubergine | Sunday 17 March, 12.30pm-3.00pm | Tickets $150 Three… Read More

Frank’s Cafe Melbourne has a new summer menu complete with incredible crepes

Franks Melbourne crepe

Its interior gives you Japanese chicness, its exterior is trendy but inviting and its menu is as wide ranging and varied – and the desserts! – as the best of them. This is Franks Cafe – a Bayside suburban cafe that has taken the traditional and made it better, adding-in quality coffee, forward thinking food done well and a unique take on something for the sweet-toothed that needs to be tried to be believed. Complete with a new menu for summer, starting this month, Frank’s is stepping up the food game, rolling out their usual stunners like eggs Benedict with crispy pork belly and a chicken reuben sandwich that would make a Frenchman’s toes curl. In short, it’s good. Head chef Eli Faye has added eight new breakfast and lunch dishes to the menu alongside the incredible and not-too-sweet Violet Crumble Crepe. It’s a delicious honeycomb crepe is filled with light textured, rich-flavoured chocolate mousse, topped with vanilla bean ice-cream, fresh honeycomb and chocolate floss.  Yes, it’s every bit as amazing as you’d think and the best bit? It doesn’t leave you hating yourself afterwards. Eli models the menu around a simple philosophy of good food, good produce, Instagram worthiness and a happy feeling at the end of it that means you’ll be considering going back every weekend – or more. You can find Frank’s Melbourne at 97 Cavanagh Street, Cheltenham in southeast Melbourne. View this post on Instagram Suburban brunching realness ? Frank’s in Cheltenham is a Mecca of deliciousness, complete with the most epic… Read More

Saint George by chef James Metcalfe in Chippendale is doing everything right

Saint George

James Metcalfe moved over from the UK long enough ago for it to not matter, but there’s one thing from the motherland he carries with him in everything he does: bloody good food. It’s been his calling card from his old days back at Becasse and The Bellevue and now at his newest and nicest venue, Saint George in Chippendale. The corner venue is striking to look at from the street and plays more than its hand in transforming the student-heavy thoroughfare that is Broadway than just offering a nice coffee on the way to work in the morning – which they do for tuppence. Saint George Chippendale is industrially rough on the inside, polished and urban on the outside. It offers an aesthetically cool, well-lit streetside restaurant space for literally everything from morning stop-bys, lunch time meetings and evening time dinner dates with a friggin’ good menu to-boot. Metcalfe is the dude behind W & Co catering in Pyrmont, which – if you’ve sampled before – knows how to do everything from a basic white sangga to a full-blown array of cakes and everything in-between. So, he’s taken the concept of quality food done damn well, turned it up about 250% and bought a restaurant to really show off what he can do. The menu is well-rounded, mostly comes with matched wines and features a tonne of waiters and waitresses who love the food as much as they do their wine and are happy to talk your head off about one, t’other or all… Read More

New Richmond pub, Harlow, opens in Melbourne this December

Harlow Richmond 1

There’s a new pub opening in Richmond called Harlow. It used to be the Great Britain Hotel and has taken over the place, keeping the basement bar and dining area, courtyard, deck and intimate little nooks for all your canoodling needs. Harlow is dog friendly, which is great news for Melbourne pub lovers. Just don’t bring them on Friday and Saturday nights as the DJs take to the decks to really turn things up. Harlow’s got a ground floor bar and dining area, split-level courtyard with timber decking, pergolas, festoon lighting and street art feature walls that leads to the basement bar, neon signs and all. In the kitchen, Telina Menzies is executive chef and has designed a pub menu that’s a little bit classic with a modern twist. It touts stuff like duck and bacon sausage rolls, mini crab donuts and sticky Jack Daniels and Cola pork ribs, as well as a steak sanga, served with maple bacon and bloody good BBQ sauce, topped with Swiss Cheese. It goes on. The cocktail menu will be broken down in three sections – hip hop, pop and heavy metal, with cocktails such as Boyz-N-The-Hood, made with Jack Daniels, Apple Jack, Fireball and apple juice; California Girls, made with citrus vodka, peach liqueur, pinot gris, OJ and egg white and Voodoo People, made white rum, spiced rum, orgeat and fruit juice set to feature. Harlow is set to open doors in mid-December. Harlow 447 Church St, Richmond

Toast to the bars of the world at Melbourne’s Trinket Bar

Trinket Bar

Bars from New York City, London and Paris will descend on Melbourne – sort of – in the last hit of 2018 thanks to Trinket Bar. The little speakeasy hole-in-the-wall has launched the Homage Series, a three-month long summer program that pays tribute to the international bar community. The series will let Melburnians experience a menu featuring recipes straight from the bars themselves. What to expect from each month of the homage menus: Starring snacks from five award winning New York City venues, and features: PDT’s Jon-Jon Deragon Hot Dog, served with lashings of cream cheese, scallions and the crusty debris from New York’s famous poppy seed bagels Death & Co’s Mac ‘N Cheese, decadently covered in truffle shavings the club sandwich of club sandwiches from Saratoga Springs Club, the birthplace of the club sandwich; supercharged devilled eggs, made with blended egg yolk and curry mayonnaise hickory smoked trout from Audrey Saunders infamous NYC cocktail bar Pegu Club Daddy-O’s deep-fried mozzarella sticks. If that doesn’t kill you, then December will be hosting another round of debauchery from London, that looks like: Ox cheek nuggets from Hawksmoor sausage rolls from Zetter Townhouse gourjons from Satan’s Whiskers scotch eggs from The Princess Victoria beef and horseradish buns from Bourne and Hollingsworth Buildings. And to really round-out the gastronomic explosion of calories, January takes visitors to Paris with the likes of everything from Le Train Bleu, Café des Phares and Le Bar Kebler @ The Peninsula Hotel, like: Oysters au natural a French cheese board and petit fours smoked salmon, beetroot and granny smith apple tartare from Le Train Bleu croque-monsieur from Café des… Read More

Bushmills and nel. celebrate a perfect partnership

Bushmills nel 1

Let’s be honest: there are a lot of forgettable drinks out there. The house spirits you drink at the local pub when you can’t face downing another sour red wine, the mysterious-looking amber liquid you’re passed at a house party that might be whiskey but also might be rum…we’ve all had our fair share of dodgy tipples. Bushmills Irish Whiskey, thankfully, is not one of those drinks. It’s not even in the same neighbourhood. Over a six-course dinner at nel. in Surry Hills, we were invited to try four expressions of the Bushmills range: The Bushmills Black Bush, and the 10-, 16-, and 21-year old single malts. While we can’t say that these are the kind of dishes you’re likely to recreate on a cruisey night at home – beetroot crème brulee with vinegar popcorn was a standout, as was the banoffee pie with banana-flavoured sand – the flavours are going to stick with you long after the experience of eating a savoury crème brulee out of a petrie dish will disappear. The Black Bush blend contains malt whiskey blended with batch-distilled grain whiskey, creating a fruity and intense character with plenty of smoothness. It’s easily drinkable but still feels special enough to be served up on an occasion, which is exactly what you want out of a good whiskey, if you ask us. The Single Malt expressions are just as more-ish, with flavours progressing from chocolate to dried fruit depending on the age of the bottle (the ten-year is apparently delicious when served frozen!)…. Read More

Lot. One does casual dining with refined flair in Potts Point

Lot One Potts Point front

There’s a new contender for the crown of nice Potts Point restaurants and it extends far beyond the comparatively well-walked paths forged by the likes of Cio Cio San, Billy Kwong’s and The Tilbury. Lot.One is the Sydney city, then-Italian inspired restaurant that took over three floors and a gigantic space right in the heart of the city, that downsized and moved east to what is quickly proving to be its major betterment. Co-owner Michael Bradley busies himself around the considerably smaller service floor of the inner-east restaurant, that has taken-over the stunning space inside an heritage Potts Point building. He explains it used to be a brothel, a butcher and myriad other places of interest to the area’s pretty eclectic mix of locals over the decades until now, when it’s become his baby and a restaurant operation that offers a menu like few you’ll find nearby. Lot. One does a contemporary take on the foods we all like; only more interestingly and with something that can best be described as a little more abstract. They do ‘food and fun’, in that order, and it’s easy to see why and how. From the casual-yet-refined interior, to the sideboard bar, relaxed choice of music and tasteful decorations, the restaurant is as welcoming as it is street-side flashy, taking all the best bits of what you like about an approachable restaurant, adding a bay window and turning it out on all nights of the week. The Lot. One menu is one of a lot of thought and… Read More