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.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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/ .
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/ .
Monday, March 3, 2008
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.
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.
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