Archive for the ‘Eating Out In Melbourne’ Category
saturday tradition
As I was thinking about my words for this post I came to a realisation… maybe the three extra kilos I’ve stacked on are a result of my Saturday tradition? I think I will just ignore this idea and maybe just do an extra half an hour exercise each week. Yes I think this is what I will do.
My Saturday tradition involves me walking down to Movida Bakery either on my own or with one of my friends, ordering a skinny latte and an amazing donut, I usually go for berry flavoured filling, or salted caramel. This Saturdays however I specifically went to sample something new; Movida Bakery’s “Dossant”.
Before I explain it to you here are some other names that were considered for this new pastry:
Cronut, Croisnut, Crodough, Doghnets, MoDo and DoVida.
It is a donut-croissant! The idea came from someone in New York called Dominique Ansel and MoVida have adapted it to their own. Mine pictured below is filled with, i think, raspberry and rhubarb custard. Delicious. And this is another reason why Saturday tradition must go on.
MOVIDA Bakery
3 Tivoli Road
South Yarra
Gardiner and Field
What i love most is going to new places, spending time with my friends and lattes.
I spent the first day of my holidays catching up with my best friend Andrea at Gardiner and Field in Armadale.
We sipped on coffees, devoured our breakfasts; I had the asparagus and poached egg and Andrea had raspberry quinoa, enjoyed the lovely atmosphere and planned new adventures.
a stonnington adventure
Saturday past I went on a lovely adventure around Stonnington with a handful of very gorgeous and Melbourne savvy women.
It was basically a day filled with sunshine, sweetness, lattes, fashion, delicious burgers, dutch beauties, champagne, and mexican collectibles.
I know that seems like some kind of sweet talking but that’s exactly how it was. Please do admire my photography from the day.
The adventure began at Lisa Barron. Lisa kindly gave us a tour of her atelier which is located behind and above her store on High Street in Armadale. This was the first time that I had ever seen a designers studio and workroom in real life. So you can imagine how inspiring that was for me especially because I’m now a fashion design student.
Lisa was my favourite of the day because I feel like I really connected with her and she is also exactly who I aspire to become once I get into the fashion industry. Lisa explained to us how she moved to Melbourne from Perth at the age of 21 to pursue her dreams to have her own label. She began selling her dresses in some stores along Chapel Street and here she is this year celebrating 30 years of fashion creation.
I had a chance to speak to her and hopefully I will be doing some work experience with her on my midyear uni break.
Then we visited Hans at The House of Orange.
Hans brings us a wide range of Dutch inspired furniture and home wares which are all produced locally and made to order in Prahran.
The aesthetic of the furniture is simple, natural and clean. Hans was explaining to us that the idea is to start with the basics; table and couch being in neutral colours like greys, whites and then accessorising with splashes of colour.
The top picture is myself and Hans and below next to the bike is the lovely Iolanthe from Ruby Slipper Consultants.
Next we ventured over to Market Import. As you can see from the images above there are so, so, so many beautiful things to look at. Market Import is the perfect place for those interesting decorating pieces that every house needs and also great for gift ideas. I particularly appreciated the wide range of Mexican pieces available in store. I could have spent the whole day browsing around.
And then it became lunch time and we were all so hungry after our morning adventures. We stopped off at Parlour Diner on Chapel Street.
That is my burger pictured above. It was superb. I had the Parlour Burger: 8oz Beef Patty, Tomato, Lettuce, Cheese and pickles and to drink a tasty Guava Jarritos. We all shared some curly fries and onion rings. My mouth is watering no after looking at the burger. I need to go back here.
Then some dessert was totally necessary and we got our fix from ‘The Red Balloon’. Here we are introduced to Pascal the owner a fellow candy artisan. We were able to watch them make some gorgeous candy that has been ordered for a baby shower. Such an amazing process and they are so clever to be able to make hard candy like this.
In the image above you see Brittany taking part in a blindfold candy taste test, which is actually harder than you may think. And the candy is also even more amazing and flavoursome than you could ever imagine.
My favourite flavour of the day was the Sherbert.
Being in Melbourne our adventure would naturally need to end up at a coffee place. And naturally we were taken to Market Lane Coffee.
Here we sampled a Pour Over coffee. This was the second time I’d tried a pour over and even though I am a latte fan I wouldn’t mind swapping over to becoming a pour over fan. They had brewed the Juan Ticona blend for us which comes from Brazil. The best thing I think about Pour Over’s is that you can very easily make it at home and Market Lane Coffee provides everything you need to do this.
In the image above you see the lovely Sarah from Sarah’s Style Emporium talking to a staff member at the cafe, and the bottom coffee is of myself and all the beautiful bloggers who where taking part of the Stonnington ‘Discover Your Own Backyard’ Adventure.
The last place we visited was The Lyall Hotel and Spa where we began to relax and enjoyed some champagne with and finger food and reflected on our big day around Stonnington.
In between each place that I’ve mentioned we ventured in and out of boutiques and my favourite pocket would have to be between Greville Street Prahran and St Edmonds. I’m so happy I went on this adventure and it was slightly ironic because I actually live in South Yarra so I was literally discovering my own backyard. I hadn’t been to many of the places we visited and it definitely shows that sometimes one needs to look no farther than there own backyard. I will definitely try my best to pay more attention to what I come across in my day to day adventures around my neighbourhood as I’m sure this is only the beginning of what else is out there.
Ciao!
sugardough
You see food and what do you do? You Instagram it, duh!
This morning instead of doing homework I met my two lovely friends Badra and Emma at Sugardough for some coffee, some cakes and some quality time together. I actually also went to Sugardough by myself yesterday and had a latte and a chocloate doughnut because the custard ones had sold out.
Emma, Badra and I shared a raspberry chocolate brulee, a lemon and ricotta muffin and a custard croissant. My favourite was the brulee. It’s a good thing we shared them because I don’t think I could have finished the whole brulee on my own, it was quite sweet and rich.
When I went yesterday I sat inside and it was nice, but it was even nicer today because we sat out the back in the garden. The table Badra and Emma are sitting at is quite big, I think at least ten people could sit around it. On one of the walls is a collection of saucers as you can see in the last photo. I love that someone thought to do that. I think that when I have a house with a garden that the garden wiill be just like this one.
163 Lygon Street
Brunswick
spring street grocer
Never say no to some gelati after dinner. Why? Umm…because it is amazing. Especially if it’s from Spring Street Grocer. So many mouth watering flavours to choose from. Such good quality gelati. It’s open till very late so you have no excuse not to try some!
It’s at:
127 Spring Street, Melbourne
Book Club Meeting – 01
As I mentioned we had our first book club meeting last night. It was so much fun. I don’t think any of us had been in a proper book club before so it was interesting. Just before I met the girls I spent a few minutes googling ” How to start a book club”. There are some good tips. Tips that I think are important are:
Juliet’s Tips on Starting a Book Club:
- Decide who you want to be in your book club and invite them. (There are five people in the book club that we started. One of them was sick on the night 
)
- Pick a name for you Book Club. Not super important but it makes it more fun. Ours is called ” Bitches, Burgers and Books”.
- Choose a meeting place. Can be anywhere you like. Your house, other peoples house, the park, local cafe’s, restuarants etc. We met up at 1000 Pound Bend.
- Decide on how often you’d like to meet and how long to read the books for. We will be meeting monthly, so we’ll have one month to read the chosen book.
- Figure out what kinds of books you all want to read or like to read. My friends and I were lucky because we all pretty much enjoy reading the same books. We’re going with mainly Non-Fiction, Culture, Fashion, Biography, History…stuff like that.
- Decide on how to decide what books to read. We came up with one person designated each month to suggest three different books then we all vote on which book to read next. Our next book will be: Patti Smith- Just Kids.
- Then just read, read, read. We will obviously meet in a month and discuss the book, what we thought about it, did we like it, did we not…etc etc
miss chu – south yarra
Miss Chu – South Yarra
276 Toorak Road, South Yarra
website: CLICK HERE
I never know how many photos is enough. I feel like sometimes only a few are required but sometimes like now, when I want to show you something, I just want to put them all in. So I did.
Last night my friends and I went to Miss Chu in South Yarra. I’d been wanting to go to the one in the city for quite some time but our plans kept falling through and then just recently I noticed the South Yarra one had opened so we thought we’d check it out. I didn’t know much about the story behind the “Tuckshop” or who “Miss Chu” actually was but just about three minutes ago I clicked the link ‘who is miss chu’ link on the website and it’s quite cool.
Miss Chu is…”designed for the modern eater on the go.” yep that’s me most of the time. So I guess I’m classified as a modern eater. I think this is a new trend that’s catching on, all these amazing restaurants that don’t take bookings, that are so delicious and very good value, that you just want to keep going back for more, we ‘modern eaters’ don’t care that we have to wait for one hour, or forty five minutes, or luckily last night we only waited fifteen minutes to get a table for three at Miss Chu. We’ll wait because it’s totally worth it. We know we wont be dissatisfied and we’ll love the food, the quick service, the cleanliness and coolness and the fact that we get water served to us in plastic recycled coconut juice cups from thailand or somewhere because they’re just so ‘chic’. We love it.
This is Steph, one of my closest friends. I love her style, she always inspires me.
This is outside the restaurant a.k.a the tuckshop
Steph had this drink: Lychee and Cucumber Coconut Crush
We shared most of the food. This is: Warm Vermicelli Salad: Lemongrass Beef
And the famous rice paper rolls we had: Satay Chicken & Cucumber
Steamed Dumplings: Asian Vegetables with garlic chives
Andrea had the Peking Duck Pancake
Steph had the Pork Bun and I had the Mushroom Bun
This is the vegetarian fried net spring roll
My favourite of all the food we tried was the Spring Rolls. I’d definitely love to go back here. The tuckshop was much bigger than it seems from the outside. And incase you were wondering we only paid about $25 each. Oh and I don’t think I’ve mentioned that it’s Italian Cuisine!
Any suggestions? What place should I try next?
( all photos taken by me except for the last one)
Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar
Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar
66 Bourke Street
Melbourne
This is me on the left and my friend darling friend Emma next to me. This is us here at Pellegrini’s. Emma was raving about their lasagne so I told her she had to take me. It’s obviously Italian but what I didn’t realise was that it was actually old school Italian. It’s so old school, i loved it. It’s quite small. There really isn’t much room to move around. There’s basically a long bar and then there’s a bench and seats along the wall directly opposite the bar. Which is where we sat. It’s nothing fancy but when you walk in you feel like you’ve known this place all your life. Like you’re transported back to another time and place, and not at all in Melbourne’s busy CBD.
I don’t think they have any menu’s, I didn’t see any displayed and we weren’t given one. We were greeted by an older Italian man, he had an Italian accent that made him seem so interesting, who basically told us the menu. He said that we could choose lasagne or cannelloni. And he offered us a granita.
First came a chunk of buttered bread. Then the delicious lasagne and then the granita. We didn’t really have to wait much at all. It was so good. I felt like I was at my nonno and nonna’s house. No I’m not Italian, I’m just dreaming. It’s just what I imagine being at your Italian grandparents house would be like. It was great. It’s always so busy, you’re lucky if you can get a seat. We finished it all, I forgot to take a photo of my empty plate to show you.
It’s also cool because it’s located right next to Hill of Content and The Paperback Bookstore. What more could you want. Italian food and books. Perfect.
