mid-range

HOT: Nuffnang Food Bloggers Dinner, Collins Kitchen, Grand Hyatt, 123 Collins St, Melbourne (Part 1)

February 28, 2010 ⋅ 17 comments

There are definitely some advantages to writing about food obsessively. Nuffnang is a blog advertising community which brings advertisers and bloggers together so that advertisers can target their products to blog readers and bloggers can make some money from the advertising – you may have noticed Nuffnang ads occasionally on MEL: HOT OR NOT. Nuffnang [...]

HOT Chat: Akisa from BeautySwatch

February 28, 2010 ⋅ 3 comments

You may remember that at the Nuffnang Christmas party I met Akisa, the brains behind a cool beauty website called BeautySwatch. I liked her idea so much (a huge colour library containing swatches for thousands of lipsticks) I thought you might be interested to hear more about Akisa and her work with BeautySwatch. Hi Akisa, can [...]

HOT: Shoya Japanese Restaurant (Part 2), 25 Market Ln, Melbourne

February 9, 2010 ⋅ 5 comments

After my previous post on dinner at the high-end Japanese restaurant Shoya, many people recommended that I try their more affordable but equally delicious lunch menu. So, to take advantage of a quiet day at the office, I joined my friends J and A for the $28 Shoya lunch set. You get a LOT of [...]

HOT: Launch of MEL: Heat Map

February 6, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment

For those of you who may not have noticed yet, there’s a new little button on the top menu of MEL: HOT OR NOT - MEL: Heat Map. What’s that, you ask? Well, I have been spending my waking hours putting every review on MEL: HOT OR NOT onto a single map. So that means [...]

HOT: Charcoal Lane, 136 Gertrude St, Fitzroy

February 5, 2010 ⋅ 12 comments

You know that Charcoal Lane is a different sort of restaurant as soon as you walk through the handsome heavy black doors. At the entrance these words mark the wall: You are part of a unique and exciting program of Mission Australia, in partnership with the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service, William Angliss Institute and employers. [...]

HOT: David’s Restaurant, 4 Cecil Place, Prahran

February 1, 2010 ⋅ 4 comments

The Age Epicure recently ran an article about the best places for yum cha in Melbourne and they named one-hat David’s Restaurant as one of the best in town (unbelievably my personal favourite Shark Fin House didn’t make the cut). Eager to try it with my other dim sum expert friends, we battled the weekend [...]

HOT: MoVida Aqui, Level 1, 500 Bourke St, Melbourne

January 30, 2010 ⋅ 8 comments

MoVida Aqui is the recently opened, expanded version of Frank Camorra’s fabulous Spanish eatery, MoVida Bar de Tapas. While it’s virtually impossible to get a booking at the original MoVida these days, and there are two timed sittings in the evenings, things at MoVida Aqui are much more relaxed. The space is airy and light [...]

HOT: Markov Place, 350-352 Drummond St, Carlton

January 25, 2010 ⋅ One comment

Today my recently Melbourne-relocated Sydney friend commented that Melbourne seems to have a particular fascination with Spanish cuisine which wasn’t evident in the Sydney dining scene. I can’t vouch for whether that’s actually true or not, but tonight I found yet another cool restaurant/bar serving Spanish-inspired food. And it was muy bueno. Markov Place is [...]

HOT: Cafe Vue at Heide, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Rd, Bulleen

January 11, 2010 ⋅ 8 comments

Shannon Bennett has expanded his empire to the suburbs with the establishment of Cafe Vue at the Heide Museum of Modern Art. It’s been open since the end of November and I think it’s still experiencing some teething problems in the kitchen and the service. We had a 12:30pm booking and had been told that [...]

HOT: Izakaya Den, Basement 114 Russell St, Melbourne

January 6, 2010 ⋅ 8 comments

The tapas trend in Australia seems to have now progressed to other forms of ‘little food’ – and in Melbourne, it has led to the growth of izakayas, or Japanese pubs. Izakaya Den (from Simon Denton of Verge fame) is the latest restaurant in the izakaya-spurt. After you descend down the stairs from the barely-there [...]

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