Melbourne Patron

I'm so glad this is the only place I'm blogging about in this post, because FAR OUT BRUSSELS SPROUT, it deserves it. Gingerboy's main room: dark bamboo and changing colour end wall It was my birthday last week, and I am fortunate enough to work for a small company that celebrates its staff members' birthdays by treating us all to lunch. Having tried to coordinate previous birthday lunches unsuccessfully at Gingerboy  (27-29 Crossley Street, Melbourne), the anticipation (on my part, anyway) had been building for months. I really wanted to see why this restaurant so frequently tops 'best restaurant' lists in Melbourne. Surely it couldn't be that great?! I was dubious. I'm happy to say I was pleasantly surprised. This place is fantastic. Or, to use an expression I'm rather fond of at the moment, it is AWSBALLZ. Again, housed on a laneway off the top end of Bourke Street (I promise I don't spend ALL my time in that part of town - sometime...

An annual homage to Vietnamese culture, the Lunar New Year Festival takes place on Victoria Street, Richmond towards the end of January. It is a colourful mish-mash of stalls, music, performance, food, and people. This year celebrated the new Year of the Snake on Sunday 27 January 2013. Highlights for me were fresh coconut juice, excited kids, lots of colour and life, and the contrasts between East and West, traditional and modern, and gaudy stalls and the faded, peeling building fronts behind them. Parade Game stall Fresh coconut juice Flowered oranges Market stall Traditional dance Modern meets traditional Did you look twice, too? Hidden Accountants Tree of tradition Food on sticks Preparing for performance Kids get Bad Lucky apples. Is that a Playboy pic on the left? Tilted ride

Yum cha! Who doesn't love it? I'm always surprised by the amount of people I come across who have never tried yum cha. Usually once they have, they're converted. It doesn't even have to be great yum cha. There's just something innately cool about being brought food on trolleys to choose from, then stuffing yourself silly, all for not-very-much-money. AND, you can drink if you want to! Bonus. I've mentioned before that I was brought up on 'going out for Chinese' as a restaurant treat in Sydney. So, you could say I've been enjoying yum cha my whole life. In Sydney, we used to go to the Marigold in Chinatown (where the hostess would, without fail, pinch my chubby cheeks with pure delight), Mathew's Peacock Gardens in Crows Nest (reliable and traditional), or the Sea Treasure, also in Crows Nest (great for seafood, but came under fire at one point for inhumane treatment of its live seafood). All were great, and when I moved to Melbourne in 2009...