I would walk 100 Miles

So Saturday night we headed out for drinks and then dinner in the CBD, organised by our friend D. D is very adept at finding and locating Melbournes various trendy bars which seem to occupy the weirdest places. This one was pretty tame, occupying a basement, and it is called The Sweatshop.

We were there so early that for at least half an hour we were the only ones in the place. It's basically crates to sit on, which actually gives you a rather sore butt after a while (or at least it did for me).

The highlight of the venue (at least for some of us... I chose not to partake) was a rediscovery of the Lolly Waters of our youth, in particular West Coast Cooler. For some reason the idea of spending $5 on something that should be much cheaper was incredibly kitsch and so they were downed with much vigour. I chose a glass of Sparkling, and then a glass of some red wine which I didn't even identify, both were nice and got me in a rather happy mood.

Of course the West Coast Cooler Encounter (trying saying that repeatedly after having consumed a few) prompted discussion of various other Lolly Waters (not Alco pops as they have recently and topically become known). In particular the one that sprang to mind was "Wild Peach". The quandary of the night was "is it still available". I've been to several reputable liquor merchants and so far no dice, but then they were reputable liquor merchants. The quest continues.

Anyway after this we headed on to the 100 Mile Cafe. This little gem is literally hidden away from the world... in Melbourne Central, of all places. It's behind a door that doesn't even look like a door, we actually walked past it before realising it was the entrance.

It's a rather large space, very trendily layed out and with large full length windows that afford a view of the Latrobe/Swanston intersection.

The gimmick of the place is that all produce and drinks are sourced within 100 Miles. One of my dining partners (who happens to be my partner) actually used the GPS to confirm this in one or two cases. Though we were left with a question of who grows rice within 100 miles of the Melbourne CBD, a question for another visit.

For Entre I had oysters (of which there were three types). All delicious. Then I had a burger for main, which was simply fabulous, even the chips were nice.

Several of my friends had the dahl, which they said was less than stellar. We all had a dessert of one form or another which was very nice though a tad expensive at $14 each.

The highlight of the place however was the waitress. She was simply fantastic, you could not ask for a better hostess. When asked for advice about meals and then her advice was ignored, she promptly gave as good as she got, which was hilarious. Also, when asked why there was no West Coast Cooler on the menu, she basically said that they wouldn't lower themselves to that. Also, it's probably not from less than 100 miles away!

All in all it was a wonderful evening out. Even better when deciding to catch a train home we only had to wait 3 minutes which was fairly incredible in itself. Thanks Connex.

Lygon Street, Carlton - Revenge of the Killer Restaurant Spruikers

If there is one thing I hate, loathe, detest with every fibre of my being, it's restaurant spruikers.

I just can't stand them. If I'm walking up and down a strip and looking for somewhere to eat, I'd like to look at the menu in peace and make my own choice.

But if a restaurant spruiker comes and and tries to get me to go inside, well... I'm sorry. For me, that's an automatic Permanent Rejection.

You should not need to try and drum up custom from passing traffic. Your restaurant should be able to get people to come in simply by being there and by having a menu on the outside, and maybe a specials board. Speaking of which, if a restaurant doesn't have a menu on the outside, well that is also a little suspect as well. Also grounds for Permanent Rejection.

Case in point, Lygon Street, Carlton. It's a very touristy spot, mainly known for it's Italian cuisine. I love Italian food and Lygon Street offers plenty of choices. But half of them will never have my custom, because they have been Permanently Rejected. (see a theme developing here?)

There are however places on Lygon Street with the good sense to trade on looks alone. If a place is packed, I think it's pretty obvious that the food must be good. And the staff aren't wasting time trying to drum up more customers simply because they don't need to, they're usually lined up waiting for a table.

One such place is Papa Gino's. We go there regularly. It's not that fancy, just simple standard Italian food, nice pizzas, nice pasta. It's really a family restaurant. It's not the sort of place you linger for hours, basically we normally eat and leave. And we like it that way.

And I've never seen the staff trying to drag people inside. They're far to busy serving the hoards.

If you're on Lygon Street and feel like Italian Fare, then there are plenty of choices. You may have to wait for Papa Gino's but the wait won't be that long, it's pleasant and quick.

And remember, Permanently Reject any and all spruikers.

It's the only way they'll learn.

Earth Hour, Melbourne Style.

So last night was Earth Hour. We ate dinner in Lygon Street (to be reviewed later), and then remembered it was Earth Hour at 8pm. So we decided to go into the city and try and see what Earth Hour was going to look like.

Our Prediction was that it probably wouldn't be anywhere near as dramatic as the organisers hoped, and yep, sadly for the environment, we were right.

We went to Birrarung Marr, Melbourne's newest Park, to watch the lights go out. Although virtually deserted, it has a great view of the city skyline.

Anyway we were watching the Giant Sky Wheel and they announced they would be turning their lights off, so good for them.

They did turn their lights off. Also the Art Centre Spire lights went off, the blue neon's on the top of the Rialto Building, as well as lights on top of one or two other buildings.

However if we hadn't been looking for it we probably wouldn't have noticed. All street lights stayed on.

After standing around for five minutes we decided it was a non event, and went to catch a tram home. The trip down Bridge Road shows most stores had left lights on.

On arriving home we left the lights off, but I decided to ring my parents who had arrived home from a trip, and to see if they had their lights off.

Yep, Mum and Dad had their lights off, but were quite happy to tell me they were watching their 50" plasma.

Gotta love Earth Hour.

Grill'd - If only the whole world was like this

One of my personal favourites over the last few years has become Grill'd.

Grill'd is basically a trendy new Burger restaurant. It was first recommended to me by a work colleague. We are lucky in that we have a Grill'd in our suburb (Hawthorn).

Basically the burgers are cheap, and they are GOOD. It's as simple as that. There's a bit of a wait; but it's not to bad. There's a great choice of different juices and soft drinks in the fridge, there's even chips if you're that hungry. But I'd recommend against it. The burger itself really fills you up, and knocks all other fast food style restaurants out of the park.

We went on Monday night, I had the "Mighty Melbourne" burger, and a Cascade Sparkling Ultra C juice. Yummo. My Partner had a Garden Goodness Vegie Burger, which also looks really nice.

The food, although very nice, is not the high point of Grill'd, at least for me.

The main highlight of Grill'd is simple. The staff are all HOT.

For instance Hawthorn Grill'd... well, there is nobody ugly amongst them. They all look like they fell off a Milan catwalk or something. Even the hair looks fantastic, I'm convinced that there's a hairdresser out the back keeping them all looking fabulous. If you want hot young eye candy, this is the place to go, and they even have to be nice to you because you're the customer.

They're buffed and ripped and it's almost criminal that they're working in a burger joint.

And Hawthorn isn't alone in this, I've visited both Richmond, Prahran and Fitzroy Grill'ds and everybody is simply beautiful.

Which leads to the next concern, if you are ugly, or even worse, fat, will you get a job at Grill'd? I don't think so. I want my trendy burger with no fat whatsoever, even on the staff.

We have come to call Grill'd "emo-burger", simply because most of the staff and half the customers have emo hair cuts, but it's not really emo... this is basically the quintessential Generation Y establishment. Being 36, I almost felt like I'm invading some kids' party, but you do feel welcome believe it or not.

And to give them another free plug, Grill'd gave all Movember participants who raised more than $50 free burgers for two and a half weeks, one per day. That's a LOT of free burgers. I had a few of them as a Movember participant and have to say the generosity is pretty amazing.

So, apart from keeping fat people working at McDonalds, Grill'd really can do no wrong. It probably does have an upper age limit of 40... I just wouldn't take my parents here. But if you want a good burger, quick and cheap, you can not go wrong.

Check em out at http://www.grilld.com.au/ .

The Vegie Bar - where it's always a full moon

I'm a firm believer that the full moon has major effects on people. The proof is irrefutable really, any sane individual can see that people just go ga ga at that time of the month. But, in some places, it seems like it's a full moon virtually constantly. The Vegie Bar on Brunswick Street Fitzroy is one of those places.

Saturday was rather lovely, we had a birthday of a friend at The Standard Hotel in Fitzroy, 293 Fitzroy Street. (that's Fitzroy street Fitzroy, NOT St Kilda!). The place is just great and I might review it some other time. Anyway rather than eat there my vego partner decided we should visit the Vegie Bar as we hadn't been there for ages.

We kind of have a love/hate relationship with this place. It can be absurdly good, the food being simply outstanding value. But we have had bad experiences there in the past. It all seems to come down to a) who's working in the kitchen, and to a lesser extent b) the waiting staff.

Well Saturday day night the place excelled on both counts. The food was simply delicious. I had two samosa's for entre and then the Mexican Burrito for Main. Both dishes were simply delicious. My Partner had Kofta Balls for entre, and Vegetable Plate for main, and he said they were fantastic.

The place was packed when we arrived, a short wait however landed us a table in the non alcoholic part of the venue. I assume it's due to some vaigary of liquor licencing that the venue is required to have a drinking and non-drinking section, I could probably look it up but it really doesn't matter. The waiter quickly cleaned our table from the previous occupants, there was some friendly banter of the kind that means he likes you (either that or he's just good at his job, maybe both).

Anyway, it was upon sitting down that the full moon factor kicked in. To my left were a couple that seemed to be having an awfully serious deep and meaningful, lots of holding of both of each others hands, whispered conversations. At one point the woman put her head down on her table and her partner gave her a head massage (hell I could have used one). The other issue was that I wasn't sure if he was a guy or a girl, it could easily have been lesbians, he had very long hair and a few random piercings. All in all very strange, if I was wanting a deep and meaningful conversation with my partner I can think of about a million other places I'd rather have it than the Vegie Bar.

But the fun didn't stop there. a young couple arrived sitting to my right. Partner thought they were Swedish... they didn't seem to be talking at all but anyway the guy ordered a pizza. When it arrived he seemed to think it wasn't big enough so it got taken back and later a bigger one came out. When this arrived however something was wrong with it (not sure what) and it got taken back as well. Sadly we didn't see the conclusion of this but both pizza's looked fine to me. Ah well.

After all this, I was still tempted by the bread and butter pudding but was simply to full so had to leave it for another time.

Anyway, the Vegie Bar rarely disappoints for a variety of reasons, though I wouldn't guarantee it, I once had some particularly nasty nacho's which kept us away from the place for six months, though it does seem to have made up for that as the food on saturday was great. But we won't go back for a while, just in case.

The Vegie Bar is at 380 Brunswick Street Fitzroy, you might have to wait for a table, you might have to share a table, but that's half the fun.

Myer Melbourne. Can a renovation save it?

Anyone who has walked through Myer Melbourne in recent times can't help but notice that the place is drastically changing, almost every day. But is it a change for the better, or the last desperate fight for survival?

For me, the rot set in quite some time back, when the 6th floor Lonsdale closed to the public. You can't get up there any more. It used to be the toy department, which has since moved to the Bourke street store. (For any non-Melbournian reading this, Myer Melbourne is split into two stores, Bourke and Lonsdale Street, separated by Little Bourke Street and a three level pedestrian bridge).

This to me was a sign that Myer was simply giving up. You don't close a whole floor of your flagship department store. The only explanation is that the place isn't profitable, and really it's the beginning of the end.

There are many reasons for this of course. Like it or not, retail shops are on borrowed time, which is sad but unavoidably true, and the obvious explanation why is The Internet. Almost everything you can buy at Myer you can probably buy online cheaper, or at least research an alternative retailer that sells it cheaper. There are a multitude of online retailers that sell everything from underwear to vaccuum cleaners and everything in between. I don't have to leave my house or my desk to make a purchase, and why should I? The only real risk you take is buying something that's the wrong size in case of clothing, or it might look crap on you when it looked fabulous on the online model.

Anyway now, Myer Melbourne has basically moved departments around all over the place, and a large section of the Bourke Street store is closed off on all floors from the basement up as they start the renovation. Once the renovation of Bourke Street is finished, the Lonsdale Street store will close permanently, and then who knows what will happen to it. I predict that the Melbourne Central shopping Centre will expand into it, but that's just a guess.

The thing is, they really don't get it. A renovation is all well and good. Go over to the New Myer Melbourne Site to see what's going on.

They can build a wonderful new store with atriums and escalators and all sorts of things like that but it doesn't solve the underlying problem. Stuff is more expensive here, and the service you get isn't worth the premium you pay for it. The only thing that's keeping Myer afloat is that a large percentage off the population don't realise that there's a better way than going out shopping.

But, sadly for Myer, eventually they will, and even atriums and glass lifts probably won't end up saving them.

In the meantime if you are walking through Myer as I often do, go through the Basement as it's much quicker!

The Sidney Myer Music Bowl - It's been there for some time

Let us review the residents of "The Melburnian". The Melburnian Apartments are on St Kilda Road, a mere stones throw away from the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. I'm not sure of the construction date, but I seem to recall it being built in the early 2000's... maybe 02/03? Doesn't really matter.

What I do know is that the Sidney Myer Music Bowl was opened by Sir Robert "I was in office longer than Johnny and even twice!" Menzies on February 12, 1959, so it's just under a year away from it's 50th anniversary.

The Music Bowl is perhaps most famous for a massive Seekers Concert with well over 200,000 people in 1967, but it's also known for Carols by Candlelight each year, as well as a series of free concerts by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. It's also hosted a myriad of other events, from Pearl Jam to The Doors. So in other words its very well known that it's a popular concert venue, and yes, concerts tend to generate sounds and even noise. I doubt anyone would dispute this.

Which is why I'm totally flabbergasted about this story in today's Age, about residents complaining about loud noise from the Bowl. The story is incredibly biased because it does not even suggest that the residents may be in the wrong. Instead it suggests that events perhaps move to Flemington or elsewhere.

Newflash, people... you perhaps should have done some research before buying your inner city dog box and checked to see if, oh, perhaps, a major outdoor venue was just across the street!

And, in fact, the Melburnian Sales Website even mentions proximity to The Music Bowl as one of the highlights of the complex.

You're living in the inner city for Q's sake. Cities are large, noisy places. Perhaps if you don't like that, go buy an apartment on the Murray or something.

The stupidity of some of these moron's is beyond belief. This is the Melbourne Reviewer, reporting on a bunch of absolute knobs.