HOT: Gingerboy, 29 Crossley St, Melbourne

For various reasons, I’ve had to cancel three successive meals at Gingerboy – now I’m half-mad at my friends that I’ve been denied for so long.
Gingerboy is awesome. The narrow space is darkly sexy and very cool, with plastic piping echoing a tunnel made of bamboo sticks and red silk threads fringing elements of the [...]

HOT: Michelle Lane of Mishy Lane

Just in time for L’Oreal Fashion Week (14-21 March), today’s HOT Chat is with fashion and product photographer and graphic designer Mishy Lane.

I came across Mishy’s work through the daily newsletter The Colour, and liked her use of colour and textures – plus we have a little in common because she has also moved from Brisbane [...]

NOT: Fifteen Melbourne, Basement, 115-117 Collins Street, Melbourne

To eat and do good? A $15 two course lunch at Fifteen Melbourne was too good to pass up.
For those who don’t know, Fifteen is a worldwide social enterprise business started by famous uber-energetic chef Jamie Oliver. Its aim is to provide apprenticeship scheme for young people, between the ages of 18 and 24, to [...]

HOT: NGV Artbus to the Yarra Valley (Part 3) – Healesville Hotel and Heide Museum of Modern Art

Click here for the first stop of the NGV Artbus Tour of the Yarra Valley at Yering Station and the second stop at TarraWarra Estate.
After two wine tastings and a gallery viewing, we were all about ready for lunch.

To my delight, the lunch venue was the lovely Healesville Hotel. Not only is this the grand [...]

HOT: Marvellous March in Melbourne

I’m all for comfort food, opaque tights and scarves (I think it’s a reaction to growing up in sunny Queensland) – yay for Marvellous March!
Marvellous March is also the name of a handy little booklet produced by That’s Melbourne with details of the big events around Melbourne that will make you love autumn. This is [...]

NOT: Min Lokal, 422 George St, Fitzroy

My friend M is moving into Fitzroy next week and for our Sunday catchup he wanted to try a place around his new hood. Min Lokal is Swedish for ‘my local’ and I thought it’d be the perfect venue for this northside newbie.
Evidently lots of other locals treat Min Lokal as their neighbourhood cafe too, [...]

HOT: Nuffnang Food Bloggers Dinner, Collins Kitchen, Grand Hyatt, 123 Collins St, Melbourne (Part 2)

As promised yesterday, here’s a blow-by-blow account of our meal at Collins Kitchen in the Grand Hyatt Hotel walking through their a la carte dinner menu. Before I start I should warn you – there is a LOT of food involved. I haven’t eaten that much in a long time!

First up, warm house-made sourdough bread. [...]

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

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 is also [...]

HOT Chat: Akisa from BeautySwatch

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 you [...]

HOT: Funky Curry and Vindaloo Against Violence, 164 Bourke St, Melbourne

Today’s post is a bit of a mishmash – my views on a serious issue as well as a light-hearted food review.
Firstly, you may or may not have been aware that last Wednesday 24 February was Vindaloo Against Violence day.
Melbourne, Victoria and Australia has been subject to some shameful local and international press recently due [...]