Little Hunter Hosts Its First Producer Dinner

Little Hunter, the new subterranean grill house in Little Collins Street Melbourne, will host its first producer dinner on April 28th, highlighting Robbins Island Wagyu. Sustainability and ethical production is a given at Little Hunter. The monthly Producer Menu will follow each dinner highlighting the talent, personality and skill of the farmer.

John, Keith and Chauncey Hammond have been selectively breeding Japanese full-blood Wagyu on Robbins Island since the early 1990′s. On the northwest tip of Tasmania, the grass fed cattle are grazed sustainably on lush pastures of sea grass without any hormones or supplements. Robbins Island is a member of the Australian Wagyu Association and features an impressive Beef Marble Score of 5-9.

Chef Gavin Baker illustrated his talents for creative dining experiences during the recently sold out dinner during Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, “Smokin’ with Gavin Baker”. Each dish highlighted the refined smoking techniques Gavin makes his stock in trade including:

• Raw watermelon on Dashi ice, dandelion, sweetened bone fruit, umami powder
• Smoked goat’s milk custard, pickled walnuts, peas and their soots verjus
• Chatham Island blue cod, tobacco and wood smoked, native sea grasses, grapes
• Wessex saddleback roasted over orange wood, kale, cider vinegar
• Smoked burnt butter ice-cream, char-grilled corn mousse, popcorn crumb, fried silk

Garnering praise for the reserved and elegant dishes designed for anyone to feast upon, Little Hunter is being touted as a unique new addition to the Melbourne dining scene. Not following anyone’s rules, Baker’s use of the Josper oven brings smoking meats and vegetables to a refined art.

The new brunch menu features Wood Fried Eggs, Oak Roasted Pork Belly, Mushrooms on Toast with Sweetbreads and Shrimp and Grits, just to get you started.

Little Hunter draws inspiration from the land, the farmer and the finest breads in a contemporary dining with the highest quality local produce. Little Hunter sources all produce with the utmost care, supporting artisans and farmers who are committed to organic, natural and humane treatment, and will feature producer-driven menus.

Little Hunter

Producer dinner: Sunday April 28, 6pm

Price: $120 for four courses with matching wines

Bookings: 03 9654 0090

195 Little Collins St, Melbourne

www.littlehunter.com.au

Nite Art 2013: Where People, Art and the City Meet

There is a global trend changing the way people view art. In various international cities, new dynamic art event formats are being created, such as Gallery Weekend Berlin, Hong Kong Artwalk and LA Art Weekend.

Nite Art 2013 is a new event format and platform for Melbourne. For the first time on one night, Melburnians can experience simultaneous gallery openings and artwalks across 20 well-known, cutting edge and experiential galleries and artist run spaces in the CBD and North Melbourne.

The new contemporary art event will bring people, art and their city together on July 24, with the program running from 6pm-11pm. Nite Art opens the doors to discovering art, inviting everyone to experience the inner workings of Melbourne’s multifaceted arts scene, with over 30 exhibitions in one night.

Art lovers, collectors and the curious can stroll through four creative precincts in the Melbourne CBD, including Guildford Lane, Upper Bourke Street, Flinders Lane and off the grid in North Melbourne. Visitors have the opportunity to meet the artists, collectors and art enthusiasts in the art space they inhabit, and gain an insight into Melbourne’s contemporary art world.

Suggested artwalks will be offered, curated to a theme or medium, allowing the city to be creatively and independently explored. Visitors can recharge at art bars in each precinct.

Nite Art will also feature artist talks, and panel discussions on the joy of collecting art, and offers the opportunity to meet artists, collectors and other enthusiasts. Projections, public art installations and street art will link the journey between galleries.

Nite Art is founded by an influential team in Melbourne’s creative community, united by a shared passion for contemporary art. Founding partners include Deborah Stahle, founder of Artwalk Melbourne; Andrea Nixon of branding and communications consultancy, Nixon Counsel; Andrew Ashton, leading communication and creative specialist, writer and artist behind Work Art Life; and Jason McQuoid, director of new photography gallery, Edmund Pearce. The major sponsor is the City of Melbourne.

Nite Art 2013

Wednesday July 24th

Program from 6pm-11pm

Various locations in Melbourne CBD

www.niteart.com.au

St ALi Baristas to Represent Australia in the World Championships

The St Ali Group’s head coffee consigliore, Matt Perger, has won the Australian Barista Championships at the Australian Barista Competition held in Melbourne, this Sunday, March 3^rd.

Lachlan Ward, from Sensory Lab, also part of the St Ali Group, has won 1^st place in the Australian Brewers Cup. In 2^nd place was Jamie Thompson representing St Ali South.

Ben Morrow from Planation Coffee brought home the second in the Latte Art Competition. Finally, all credit must also go to Joe Tynan, Head Roaster for the St ALi Group who created the roasts specifically for the competition

22 years old, Perger is also the current World Brewers Cup Champion and should he win the World Championship he will be the youngest person ever to do so in two world events.

This result represents not only a great win for the St Ali Group, but for the Australian specialty coffee industry as Matt and Lachlan will be the only Australian’s to represent the home turf when the World Barista Championships come to Australia for the first time in 2013 to be held May 23-26th during the Melbourne International Coffee Expo.

MICE2013 will bring together the World Barista Championship, the World Brewers Cup, the inaugural Global Coffee Review Symposium and Australia’s largest dedicated-coffee trade show.

In hosting the World Barista Championships and World Brewers Cup, the MICE2013 is the culmination of decades of hard work that have seen the Australasian industry develop what is now being recognised as one of the strongest specialty coffee scenes in the world.

The four day expo provides an opportunity for an unprecedented line-up of satellite events in and around Melbourne, including roasting workshops, café tours, and endless networking opportunities to meet and greet the world’s top coffee industry personalities and decision-makers.

www.stali.com.au

www.worldbaristachampionship.com

The Duchess and the Saint

Duchess of Spotswood, 87 Hudsons Road, Spotswood

Brews, Blues and Barbecues at Gourmet BBQ Festival

The first ever Redheads Gourmet BBQ Festival in Melbourne is bringing together local providores, hardware retailers, brewers, wineries and food sellers on 1 – 3 March. Part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, this three-day extravaganza will get set the Elwood foreshore alight with a blues music line-up.

Pop-up eateries will join the festival with Phat Brats serving their gourmet hotdogs and Senor BBQ showcasing their signature South American touch. The Smokin’ Barrys food truck will dish out melt-in-your-mouth slow cooked dishes, but leave room for other foodie offerings including Tasty Treats, Grill Pro and Say Cheese.

A barbecue isn’t complete without a couple of beers. Quench your thirst by sampling beers from craft brewers from all over Victoria. The list includes: Red Hill Brewery, King Valley Brewery, Hawthorn Brewery, Hix Brewery, Temple Brewing Company, Red Duck Brewery and Mornington Peninsula Brewery. If you feel like something sweeter, don’t skip ciders on offer including Yarra Valley’s Napoleon Cider and the sweet and crisp Lucky Duck Cider.

Have a drop or two of red to accompany your red meat and try the vino range from Victorian wineries such as Robello Wines, Punt Road Wines and Hickinbotham of Dromana.

Take home grilling hardware and essential ingredients good enough for your backyard barbie. Learn how to use them at the festival’s master classes, demonstrations.

See 20-time USA Grand Champion BBQ Pit Master Andy Groneman from Kansas City, at his Beef Brisket and Pork master classes, while Perth BBQ guru Chris Girvan-Brown will share some pro secrets to firing up your grill. Foodies including Adelaide’s Gilda Ayerst and Melbournian Jess Pryles (AKA Burger Mary) will be in action across the three-day festival as presenters.

Food is the main event at the Gourmet BBQ Festival, but there’s nothing like a serving of blues music to sweeten the deal. So while you’re busy chomping your way through the festival, check out the local blues bands heating up the joint that throughout the festival.

The cool cats of Melbourne blues include Catfish Voodoo, Smokin’ Sam & Cargo Blue and the dapper gents of John Luke Shelley & High Speed Steel and the Justin Yapp Band. Performances run all day everyday, so make sure you catch Brian Fraser, Stephen Bowtell Band, Liam Gerner and the Lost Dogs, Blue Eyes Cry and Zevon and the Werewolves of Melbourne.

This is deliciously fun event is great for family days out or a blokey weekend trip. With St Kilda Beach just meters away, the festival is also a wonderful excuse to drive down to the beach. Head down to the Redheads Gourmet BBQ Festival on Jacka Boulevard, St Kilda on 1 – 3 March and get well and truly smoked!

Chef Jake Nicolson enhances freshness with Spiral’s authentic Japanese ingredients

Leading Australian health food company, Spiral Foods, has partnered up with Circa Head Chef Jake Nicolson as he takes inspiration from Asian cuisines to come up with recipes to showcase how Spiral’s products can help enhance the flavours of fresh ingredients.

Specialising in contemporary Australian dishes with influences from the Pacific Rim, Nicolson is often inspired by Asian cuisines that make the most of fresh produce using simple ingredients.

Together with Spiral, the Melbourne chef has created his Organic Soba Noodle dish with Herbaceous Leaves, Asparagus and Marinated Tofu – a cold dish prepared using Spiral’s Organic Soba, Ume Plum Vinegar, Pickled Ginger, Sesame Oil, Tamari and Mirin.

Spiral’s range of all-natural Japanese products goes hand-in-hand with Nicolson’s no-fuss approach to food. “Eating healthy is easy and doesn’t mean you have to compromise on flavours.”

Nicolson understands that no matter how good a chef is, a dish is only as good as the ingredients that go into it.

“Spiral’s Tamari and Mirin are perfect ingredients to create the fresh vinaigrette as well as enhance existing flavours from the fresh vegetables. Sometimes making a tasty dish isn’t about cooking a dish to death, it’s about using ingredients to bring the best out of your fresh produce.”

Nicolson took the helm at the Circa kitchen after three years as sous-chef under former head chef Matt Wilkinson. His resume includes stints at world-class restaurants including the two Michelin star The Square in London and Spain’s El Bulli.

Spiral believes good, safe, wholesome food is a basic human right. Spiral Foods is proud of their contribution to help slow the unnecessary changes that are occurring to our earth, climate and oceans. Spiral Foods continue to provide nourishment and wellbeing across the generations of people who care about the food they eat and our earth.

Bursaria Fine Foods presents ‘A Touch of…’

Enjoy an elegant, vintage-inspired afternoon tea at the Abbotsford Convent with Motown records and a touch of cheeky burlesque thrown in for good measure on Sunday, February 17^th.

Bursaria Fine Foods will be hosting ‘A Touch of…’, an exciting afternoon event series scheduled on the third Sunday of each month,  from 2-4pm. ‘A Touch of…’ will showcase not only Bursaria’s delicious, rustic-style catering, but also present contemporary fashion, art, culture and entertainment – all with a fun, vintage styled twist.

Held in the Abbotsford Convent’s Rosina Hall, and alongside the Convent’s popular Shirts and Skirts market – a well-established market, which draws many visitors to the convent – ‘A Touch of…’ will feature its very own Soul DJ spinning vinyl motown and disco classics. Guests will enjoy a complimentary drink upon arrival, delicious tiered savory canapés displayed on each table and followed by Bursaria’s famous ‘roving desserts’.

Other entertainment on offer will include Bravo Darling, a company of glamorous and vibrant burlesque-inspired performers who will mingle amongst the tables dazzling guests with their sumptuous costumes and extravagant acts, which include stilt-walking.

Established in 2005, Bursaria Fine Foods is the brainchild of passionate foodie and chef, Sara O’Callaghan. Sara’s vision was to create a catering company that uses only the freshest local and seasonal produce to create delicious, rustic-style dishes. Recently, Bursaria relocated from Como Historic House and Gardens to the Abbotsford Convent, an idyllic location to offer their high-quality catering service for events within the Abbotsford Convent precinct, as well as offsite.

With sensitivity and creativity, Bursaria Fine Foods caters to a wide variety of function types, including fine dining events, cocktail parties for up to 500 guests, corporate launches, festivals and intimate dinners in private homes. Sara’s carefully tailored menus are built around the finest, local ingredients to produce unique and creative, wholesome food.

Bursaria Fine Foods presents ‘A Touch of…’

Rosina Function Space, 1 St. Heliers Street, Abbotsford, Melbourne

Cost: $55.00

Time: 2-4 pm

2013 Dates (Third Sunday of every month)

17^th February, 17^th March, 21^st April

A recipe for change – or how to turn a cookbook into a cafe

STREAT’s fabulous new cookbook is just about to morph into a $200,000 cafe at Melbourne Central. How so? Pre-sales of the $45 cookbook and other items on crowd-funding site Pozible and huge public and corporate support has enabled STREAT to fund the building of its new cafe.

The cookbook, a first for STREAT, is in selected stores now and will be officially launched in February at the opening of the new cafe. The sole purpose of the cafe is to enable STREAT to provide many thousands of hours of work, plus life skills and hospitality training, for young homeless and disengaged people in Melbourne.

So, how exactly do you turn a cookbook into a café? STREAT’s co-founder and CEO, Rebecca Scott says, “I believe anthropologist Margaret Mead was right when she said – Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. We are not changing the world yet, but this cookbook is really helping us change some young lives”.

The STREAT Cookbook was conceived in 2011, when publisher, Jonette Wilton of Smudge Publishing, featured STREAT in her own cookbook and fundraising dinner. This simple act of generosity, with the help of hundreds of others raised about $4000, which was put aside to be used as seed capital for STREAT’s cookbook.

In March 2012, STREAT and a bunch of talented volunteers, graphic designers, photographers, artists, communicators, chefs and trainees all started working frantically on the book. In September STREAT launched the crowd-funding campaign on Pozible, which raised $41,406, and Melbourne Central’s owners, The GPT Group, donated $40,000. Extra corporate sales of the cookbook and other major donations pushed the total cash raised to just on $115,000. In addition, Six Degrees architects and a number of other suppliers contributed over $100,000 of amazing in-kind support to help build the café.

The vibrant 160-page hardcover cookbook is filled with delicious recipes from around the world created by STREAT’s head chef Rob Auger, as well as recipes from graduates and trainees of the STREAT hospitality-training program. The cookbook also features beautiful photography and artwork, and a foreword and recipe from celebrity chef Poh Ling Yeow of ABC’s Poh’s Kitchen.

STREAT supports and trains disengaged youth, who are at high risk of homelessness, for six-months across its café and coffee businesses. The cafes are located in Flemington, McKillop Street in Melbourne’s CBD, and the new café is in Melbourne Central. Trainees learn to prepare and serve delicious meals and coffee and upon graduation receive a Certificate I and II in hospitality from the William Angliss Institute.

Purchasing a copy of STREAT’s cookbook, or frequenting their cafes, is a great way to take part in STREAT’s crusade to stop youth homelessness and to turn a young person’s life around.

To purchase a copy of the STREAT Cookbook, simply visit STREAT’s website: http://www.streat.com.au/

Sip Absinthe Cocktails, Eat New Orleans Sliders, Buy a Taxidermy Kangaroo: Pawn & Co. Is Now Open

Pawn & Co., the first bar in the Universe where everything is for sale, from the chair you sit on to the glass you hold, to the 1940’s taxidermy albino kangaroo, has now opened its doors.

Owned by the masterminds of Big Dog Creative and Channel V personalities, Josh Lefers and Stephen Wools, as well as Steve and Keti Thomas (29^th Apartment), Pawn & Co. brings a bohemian vibe to Chapel Street with an innovative bar and retail hybrid, satiating Melburnians who relish in discovery.

A scene straight out of Boardwalk Empire, Pawn & Co. is based on the eclectic 1920’s pawnshop, where every item is for sale, and each comes with its own unique story.

Party like it’s 1912 with Pawn & Co. New Orleans Absinthe cocktails, the birthplace of the first Green Fairy cocktail and home of The Old Absinthe House Bar. Key tipples include “Arsenic and Old Lace”, a combination of traditional pre-ban style Jade 1901 Absinthe, Plymouth dry gin, Noilly Prat and Crème de Violette.

Or make like a bohemian Parisian artist with “Death in the Afternoon”, Le Mercier 45 Verte Absinthe, topped with French champagne.

The menu is pure food pawn, with a focus on New Orleans sliders, designed by Jasmine Lefers of Sis Made This, owner of Brunswick warehouse space The Baron Said.

Eccentrically shabby, the design has all the flair of the Prohibition era. The serving bar is made of antique pianos, and an unusual collection of vintage furniture and lamps feature throughout, as well as cabinets with crystal ware (all with price tags). Luscious hand-painted tiles and textured walls add to the bohemian vibe.

Pawn & Co. will hold regular furniture sales, to be announced in the coming months.

The music program will be non-commercial, featuring DJ’s who are also handy with an instrument. If Tom Waits were taking hours, he’d be on every night.

Pawn & Co.
www.pawnandco.com.au

Open Thursday – Sunday, 7pm-7am
402 Chapel Street, Prahran

St Ali North is Here

Perched on the border of Carlton North, Brunswick East and Fitzroy North, the much-anticipated St Ali North is now open. Co-owner Salvatore Malatesta of St ALi recruited Jessie Gerner (Anada, The Aylesbury) as co-owner, and with the help of Velo Cycles’ Harry Fishman, assembled an Avengers team of coffee and food specialists to lift the lid off the raw space on the Capital City Trail on the corner of Park Street and Nicholson.

Coffee consigliore and Head of Coffee, Matt Perger, will head the star studded barista team featuring Jamie Thomson as Head Barista (Three Bags Full) and Milla Vainikinen (Johan and Nyström, Finland).

The balance of St ALi North baristas have worked across Melbourne’s best cafes such as Market Lane Coffee, Seven Seeds, Dead Man Espresso, Cafenatics, Axil Coffee Roasters, Plantation and My Mexican Cousin. Wrangling as General Manager will be the unflappable Adam Del Mastro, formerly of Auction Rooms.

St Ali North has a banging Melbourne influenced café breakfast and lunch menu with some really exciting plans for a dinner offering down the track. Curating the food is Jesse Gerner, with Chris Hamburger as Head Chef and Shaun Quade as Pastry Chef.

The kitchen is curing its own bacon and other goodies as well as smoking, pickling, preserving, baking, gardening and foraging. With an amazing pastry offering by Shaun and Chris’ brilliance in the kitchen, there is also coffee and food pairing – teas, palate cleansers and of course coffee. Lunch boxes with ancient grain bars, pastries and other tasty treats will be available from the unique ride-through window, also for swift coffee collection on the run and a take away.

Designed by new design practice, Barbara & Fellows, the 188-seat venue is committed to the environment with its Gaia recycling system. This will turn 100kg of food waste a day into fertilizer with the hope of no general waste, as recycling is a key goal.

In collaboration with Velo Cycles, St Ali North is a veritable one-stop bike café, where services happen as you wait, free air at the café and a roving bike mechanic making spot repairs. Oh, and there’s a beard trimming service as well. The final touch is the post boxes. Those who get in early will be able to access their fresh coffee, roasted on site, each week, with their own post box key.

“This is the dream space for me to launch the one and only second St ALi,” says Malatesta who is the official Major of Chow Town at the 2013 Big Day Out. “I’ve been waiting for this to happen for such a long time and to have such a cracking group of people working on it with me, well, it couldn’t get any better.”

Great people, amazing coffee, creative food and a beautiful space all on one of the busiest bike paths in Melbourne, St ALi North is open seven days a week 6am to 6pm. Dinner service will follow hot on the heels of the impending liquor license.

St Ali North,

815 Nicholson St, Carlton North

www.stali.com.au