A few weeks ago I attended the Paris to Provence Festival as the end stop of the Melbourne Tweed Ride. It was a bright sunshiney day and perfect for strolling around the grounds of Como House eating and drinking French delights, doing a spot of shopping and apparently a great opportunity to pull out your [...]
What’s better than a pop up shop? A pop up house! Melbourne design blogger extraordinaire Lucy Feagins has brought her blog The Design Files out of the interwebs and into real life. With the help of The Project Agency’s Esther Navarro-Orejon, Lucy has turned a swoon-worthy Fitzroy warehouse conversion into an even more swoonworthy display home [...]
I didn’t realise that the Beechworth Bakery had stretched beyond to town of Beechworth to other parts of the state – but it’s pretty handy that there’s one in Healesville. Beechworth Bakery prides itself on being ‘Australia’s greatest bakery’. That’s a tall claim! But it is an old-fashioned bakery filled with old-fashioned British style bakery items [...]
A sunny weekend saw us taking a trip out to the Yarra Valley, armed with a recommendation for lunch at Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander. Unlike most of the other wineries in the Yarra Valley, Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander isn’t located on an expansive piece of green land – it’s just a straight turnoff from the Maroondah Highway [...]
Nestled in Johnston Street, in between the curry houses, Latin American restaurants and sweaty gyms is Zakkaya, a quietly beatific shop selling contemporary Japanese goods. Their wares range from clocks, clothing, jewellery, toys, storage and everything is delicate, charming and oh-so-cute. It’s the perfect place to find a unique gift for that special person with [...]
La Madre Bakery is located in Geelong but well-known in Melbourne. Their bread is sold at discerning grocery stores and delis across the city, including my nearest stockist in North Fitzroy, The Green Grocer, as well as being used in cafes such as Pope Joan. Their excellent reputation means that if you’re in Geelong or on [...]
When I worked in the CBD one of my shopping challenges was finding a good loaf of bread. I rarely had time in my lunch hour to travel to Queen Victoria Markets or battle the lines at David Jones Foodhall, which meant often I had to be organised enough to buy my bread on my [...]
Stuck for a unique, Melbourne-themed Christmas gift or holiday souvenir? Then make sure you get to Melbournalia, a series of pop up stores open now in the lead-up to Christmas. Over the next few weeks four Melbourne CBD venues and one repurposed newspaper stand will host displays of Melbourne design goodness, with HQ being at [...]
The Saturday Age recently ran a ‘Five of a kind’ article on Dandenong Market describing five stallholders in the refurbished Dandenong Market, including Sataylicious which I’d recommended previously on the blog for their noteworthy satay sauce. Obviously there’s only room for five places to be featured in that article so let me redress the omission [...]
With summer arriving my thoughts turn to the beach and the coast. To be exact, my thoughts are turning to where to eat at the beach and the coast. And one of my recommendations is Wye River General Store. As the name suggests, it’s a general store which operates for the citizens and visitors of [...]