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: Grace Darling Hotel, 114 Smith St, Collingwood‎

There was a time when the grungy Grace Darling was the kind of pub which you’d cross the road to avoid. Now the pretty brick and stone building has been given a good clean-up and on a sunny day you’ll find the pub full of youngsters spilling out on the pavement tables and filling up [...]

HOT: The Palace by Luke Mangan, 505 City Rd, South Melbourne

Since returning to Australia after two years overseas, I’ve developed a hypothesis that Australian food trends lag behind the northern hemisphere (especially the US and UK) by 1-2 years. That means that I’m expecting to see a flurry of gastropub openings in Melbourne in the near future (probably macaron specialists and ramen stalls a year [...]

HOT: O’Connell’s Centenary Hotel, 407 Coventry Street, South Melbourne

After a brief wander through the South Melbourne Night Markets, C and I found ourselves in a South Melbourne black hole. Both of us were familiar with daytime cafes in the area, but where to go for dinner?
Fortunately, we remembered the gastropub O’Connell’s. This beautifully restored pub is in a quiet residential area of South [...]

HOT: Carringbush Hotel, 288 Langridge St, Abbotsford

My friend J was once part of a radio station competition where the audience had to call in to guess her nationality based on what she said and how she spoke. J spent 5 minutes discussing how confused she was by the popularity of chicken parma. She couldn’t understand why you’d take a perfectly good [...]

HOT: The Court House Hotel, ‎ 86-90 Errol St, North Melbourne

Every year for the past 30 or so years, a group of men have met up at The Court House on the eve of the grand final. They don’t have much to do with each other the rest of the year, but their annual catch up has been sacred through toddlers, mortgages, receding hairlines and [...]