Hofbrauhaus Melbourne is open and has just extended its delivery service and we were invited to sample a Bavaria at Home Box. The Family Weekend Feast is an outstanding taste of Bavaria delivered to your door, and we enjoyed every element of this German offering. This was a tasty, great value feasting option delivered to your door.
You can now get their famous Bavarian classic dishes and other German inspired meals to your home in the South Eastern Suburbs from their new Caulfield pop-up store.
LUCAS RESTAURANTS comes bearing good news for Melburnians in lockdown, offering its own delivery service with the launch of ‘LUCAS RESTAURANTS Room Service’. Fans of some of our city’s most innovative restaurants including Chin Chin, Hawker Hall and Baby Pizza will be able to order direct to their door. And, for the first time ever, Kisumé – Australia’s best contemporary Japanese restaurants – will also be available for delivery.
South Melbourne’s Prince Wine Store has been acknowledged as one of the World’s Top Ten Iconic Wine Shops by American publication, Wine Enthusiast. As the only Australian inclusion ‘the Prince’ - as it is commonly known - sits alongside wine shops like London’s Berry Brothers & Rudd, Caves Augé in Paris and Trimani in Rome. According to the Wine Enthusiast, the editorial team was inspired to consider the best shops around the world after they had put together their list of the top 50 American wine.
Good news, iconic Sydney (and world class) restaurant Saint Peter in Paddington is set to re-open on July 17. In a letter Josh Niland comments that, "The lockdown period has provided us all with new perspectives. For Julie and I, being deprived of the nightly joy that is a busy, happy restaurant prompted us to reevaluate and make changes.
Fancy one of Australia's best chefs cooking for you as if you were at her home for a dinner party? This is the concept behind the exciting new menu as Annam re-launches, with food that bring authentic flavours but also crosses borders and breaks barriers. Heralded for her fine dining take on Vietnamese cooking, Jerry Mai has cut back on formality and is running with her passion to cook a playful menu that combines Australian and Vietnamese flavours (and at times American), in capturing the imagination as well as the palate. Translated simply, you will have a good time at Annam and a fun playful delicious dining experience.
Zero95 has launched in Chirnside Park in East Ridge Drive, and we were invited along for a pizza inspired dinner. Zero95 is a popular pizza destination, and this is their third opening alongside Doncaster East and Dromana. In the past we have frequented the Doncaster East restaurant as its near where we live. Always packed Zero95 is a favourite among locals. So it was with a sense of excitement that we drove to Chirnside Park to experience the new Zero95 Chirnside. With plenty of parking (just drive around the back or side), the restaurant is easily accessible. This pizza haven is also featured in our Best Pizzas in Melbourne.
With permission to host 94 guests at any one time, Melbourne’s much-loved venue Arbory Bar & Eatery is thrilled to reopen, welcoming guests back to the iconic riverside bar. Following its closure in March this year, Arbory has reopened with capacity to host 94 guests at any one time – currently the largest dining capacity in Melbourne. Its reopening will also see the venue welcome back over 90 of its staff members.
Good news for Melbourne's beer lovers from Stomping Ground! Melbourne’s own Stomping Ground Brewing Co has launched a campaign to get 5,000 Melburnians back to their favourite pub or bar from June 1 and shout them a long awaited, precious first beer. How good is that! Named the Stomping Ground 5K, the campaign will see up to 50 of our city’s best venues, including Neighbourhood Wine, Old Palm Liquor, Mt Erica Hotel, and Bar Romantica to offer customers their first Stomping Ground beer on the house.
Gaylord Indian restaurant is up there as one of the best Indian restaurants in Melbourne. In "The Voice" parlance we gave it a "four chair turn". Our palettes were singing after being invited to feast in the Melbourne CBD. Here at Gaylord, the dishes are prepared from scratch, unique sauces for each dish, and quality ingredients and premium spices are used. Each dish at Gaylord is prepared in its own pan, not something commonly seen. Therefore the curries sing and the dishes have that "freshness" about them that many other Indian restaurants do not. An experienced team is taking Gaylord to new heights. We were so impressed by our experience at Gaylord that we have included Gaylord in our article Best Indian Restaurants in Melbourne.
Vic Market’s cheesemonger Hakim Halim from RIPE Cheese has started a series of online Cheese Talks masterclasses designed to connect Aussie cheesemakers with cheese lovers all over Oz.
RIPE sells solely Australian cheeses and challenges the notion that imported cheese is best. RIPE wants Aussies to recognise that we have some of the most talented cheese producers in our own backyard and Cheese Talks is a great opportunity to learn more about them.
Get behind Paul from The City Lane and a great cause and join the award-winning SUNDA Restaurant and Opportunity International Australia for a special one- night only event to help transform the lives of families living in poverty in Asia.
For more than 40 years, Opportunity International has provided small loans to families in need so they can grow their businesses and generate sustainable incomes to lift themselves out of poverty with dignity. Connected by their collective purpose for social impact, Opportunity and SUNDA have teamed up with Melbourne food and cultural champions—and Opportunity Ambassadors—The City Lane, and Filipino food and cultural advocacy group, The Entree.Pinays to help bring this live virtual cooking lesson to life. On Friday 12 June at 6pm Chef Khanh Nguyen and his team, consisting of Chef Nabil Ansari and Chef John Rivera, will present a considered menu of Indonesian, Indian, and Filipino dishes, spotlighting the regions supported by Opportunity, and capturing the vibrant soul of Modern Asian cuisine, that are easy enough to prepare and cook at home. Everyone is invited to Cook for Opportunity. Registrations and initial donations cost $10 per household.
Exciting new food delivery platform Providoor has launched in Melbourne (with Sydney to follow). The new food delivery platform Providoor is set to jump start Melbourne’s world-class restaurant industry, bringing meals from Melbourne’s best restaurants to peoples’ door.
Providoor has launched with an impressive menu of partners, including Cumulus Inc., Supernormal, Sunda, MOVIDA, Maha, Flower Drum, Estelle, The Everleigh and Tipo 00. With more to be announced soon. Prepared by restaurant chefs and delivered via certified cold freight, the at-home meals eschew the ready-to-eat status quo, to be finished by the customer in their own kitchen, actively involving people in a premium cooking experience and giving them as close to an in-restaurant meal as possible.
To celebrate the easing of restrictions on Victoria’s restaurant industry that came into effect last night at midnight, Crown Melbourne (Crown) and Seppelt Wines treated Victorian couples to one of the very first in-restaurant dining experiences since the state’s restaurants closed down in March, hosted after the laws were relaxed at midnight.
Having announced their engagement on March 31, Johnny Graham and Emma Hosking were unable to have a traditional romantic meal at their favourite restaurant to celebrate. As such, Crown and leading Victorian winery Seppelt partnered together to give the couple their dream engagement dinner – at famed Melbourne restaurant, Bistro Guillaume complete with Seppelt’s award winning wines.
Chef Josh Niland’s first book, The Whole Fish Cook Book by Hardie Grant Books Australia, won two James Beard Awards last night in the USA; best in category Restaurant and Professional and the ultimate accolade Book of the Year. This is a significant achievement of note! We have visited Saint Peter in Paddington for rave reviews but yet to visit Fish Butchery.
The James Beard Awards are held each year and are arguably the most prestigious culinary book awards in the USA, if not the world. The awards are given in many categories recognising chefs, restaurateurs, authors, journalists and broadcast media.
Josh Niland is the only Australian to have won a James Beard Book of the Year Award. Josh Niland is widely recognised for his transformative work with fish. Josh and wife Julie Niland opened their award-winning restaurant Saint Peter in Sydney in 2016. It has been celebrated by the Australian culinary community since opening. Niland has also attracted global attention from some of the world’s greatest chefs for his respectful, groundbreaking and unique approach to working with fish.
Melbourne restaurants are getting ready to re-open but we have experienced amazing takeaway dishes from a number of restaurants during challenging times. While we are excited about the re-openings we hope many Melbourne restaurants still offer takeaway options as it's proved to be a hit. Here are a few of our favourites -
The Olympics may have been postponed, but the highest rated American single malt – Westward Whiskey – has still managed to take home gold at the 2020 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.
Are you in a rush to make dinner and don’t want to resort to fast-food or microwaveable meals? Typically, eating healthy dinners requires a little more preparation and patience than less healthy ones, but this doesn’t always need to be the case.
There are plenty of healthy andfast recipesthat you can prepare in under 10 minutes, so you have something to eat without compromising on nutrition. Even though these recipes are designed to be quick, you will still get as much nutritional value from them as you would with dishes that take longer to prepare – it’s all about the quality of the ingredients.
Melbourne Gin is a gin specifically crafted for Melbourne bringing together the best of Melbourne in a gin. Australian Distilling Company have produced a series of gins for each Australian city, and we were sent a bottle of Melbourne Gin to review. It's a follow on for us to the Adelaide Gin, which also has it's own unique character.
Tremila fresh gourmet pizzas, popular with Melbourne cafes and restaurants, are now available for home delivery at affordable prices. The good news is also that Tremila pizzas are top quality and come vac wrapped so you can store up a supply in the freezer. Tremila is about young chefs expanding their Melbourne wholesale gourmet pizza business in light of COVID-19 lockdown laws. Brilliant.
In our current world of COVID-19, with struggling or closed hospitality businesses and overworked frontline staff, the initiative OPERATION THANK YOU: FRONTLINE MEALS launches today. The goal of this initiative is to show our gratitude by feeding frontline workers dealing with the COVID-19 Pandemic while supporting Melbourne’s hospitality industry, who will provide meals paid for by the community. All donations can be made via the website (www.frontlinemealsmelb.org) that has gone live today. All monies will pay the hospitality businesses and see that the food is delivered to those who are working so hard for us on the frontline.
Recently we were sent a box of goodies from small boutique fruit & vegetables business Early 'N' Fresh, recently mentioned by Epicure at The Age. This company were supplying cafes and restaurants in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne and they got hit really hard with the closure of non essential services. In an effort to save their business and their employees who depend on them, they are now offering home deliveries of fresh fruit & vegetables to homes in Melbourne. Big point of difference - they deliver produce to order at reasonable prices not pre-made packages! For a next day delivery your order will need to be received by 10pm (that's generous!). They require a min $50 spend on a delivery which is fair enough. And amazingly there is NO charge for delivery! Ordering is easy on the website. I reckon it's a game changer.
As an example of adjustment and transformation in these times Grosvenor Hotel in St Kilda is operating as a providore. With the pub and bistro forced to close in line with government rulings, its bottle shop, Grosvenor Cellars, has taken centre stage and become the new hub for customers. As well as selling alcohol, the bottle shop is adding four new streams to its business: Premium fresh meat cuts, cheaper than supermarkets and other gourmet offerings.
