brunswick

HOT: Small Block, 130 Lygon St, East Brunswick

September 21, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Small Block is a cafe particularly well suited to the urban professional/hip and arty/young parents demographic of East Brunswick. To whit: attention to coffee – the blackboard shows the single origin bean of the day and gives a description of its particular qualities; an extensive all-day breakfast menu which has the locals lining up on [...]

NOT: Miss Marmalade, 126 Union St, Brunswick

August 25, 2011 ⋅ 3 comments

This is how much I expected to love Miss Marmalade. Monday. I borrow a car to drive through choc-a-block traffic on Alexandra Parade to meet my friend A there. On arrival, my baby vomits copiously on herself and on me. The mess is so bad that I have to drive home straight away without any [...]

HOT: Green Refectory, 115 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

August 18, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

There are certain cafes that are the perfect weekend haunts for nursing a hangover. The requisite criteria? Huge servings of hearty breakfast, lashings of coffee, nothing too fancy or complicated and good value for money. I think one of the places that does ‘hangover food’ really well is Green Refectory – and judging by the [...]

HOT: Tom Phat, 184 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

September 7, 2010 ⋅ One comment

There’s so much to love on the menu at Tom Phat that I wished (a) we lived closer; (b) we were more than two diners on the night I visited; and (c) I hadn’t married a man with a relatively small appetite (sorry RM!). Tom Phat serves a mishmash of South East Asian flavours with [...]

Melbourne Neighbourhood Guides

June 5, 2010 ⋅ 4 comments

Today I’m pointing you to a guest post that I wrote for the free daily enewsletter The Agenda, which delivers the best of what’s new, unknown or inexcusably under-appreciated in and around Melbourne (they also have a Sydney version). They recently featured a series of Neighbourhood Guides and I contributed Fitzroy. You can read all [...]

Ask the Doctor: Eating itinerary for HOT new restaurants

October 24, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Help me Doctor!: I’m going to be in town for a week – could you recommend five restaurants for me to visit, one for each day, Monday to Friday? I haven’t been back to Melbourne in a while so would like to try some new places. – Miranda Your prescription: So Miranda, you want to [...]

HOT: Shop and Cook Tour, William Angliss Institute, 555 Latrobe St, Melbourne

October 10, 2009 ⋅ 8 comments

When it comes to Christmas and birthdays, I’m a pretty easy person to buy for. Anything food related, travel related, art related or music related is a sure bet. So big hugs and thank you to my high school girlfriends, who gifted me the perfect Jetsetting Joyce experience – a foodie shopping and cooking day. [...]

HOT: Mediterranean Wholesalers, 482 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

July 13, 2009 ⋅ 6 comments

I think the best way to navigate Mediterranean Wholesalers is to bring your own Italian nonna. Really, they should offer a No-Nonsense Nonna rental service along with the shopping trolleys. Since no such service exists, I was left to face the fomidable rows of dried pasta shapes on my own. The supermarket also sells pallets [...]

HOT: A1 Bakery, 645 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

July 13, 2009 ⋅ 2 comments

I remember my first visit to A1 Bakery and being astounded by the cheap prices for the freshly baked lebanese pizzas. Well, amost 5 years on and it’s still dirt cheap, mostly hovering around the $3 mark. My zaatar pizza ($1.50!) consisted of a soft pillowy base, the complete opposite of a crispy Italian crust, [...]