Melbourne Patron

The Imperial Hotel, corner of Bourke and Spring Streets, Melbourne Touted on its website as Melbourne's third-oldest pub, there's no doubting that the Bourke Street Imperial Hotel  (2-8 Bourke Street, Melbourne) is old-school. Established in 1858 and boasting red cedar doors of the same age, "the Impy" is one of those comfy drinking holes you tend to forget about, even though you pass it on the tram every day. It's on the corner of Bourke and Spring Streets, right on the 86/96 tram line, and a hop-skip-jump from Parliament Station. Red cedar doors dating back to 1858 I'd been to the Imperial a few times before. It's an easy meeting point considering its proximity to PT, and a safe haven from the unpredictable Melbourne rain when all you feel like is a drink on the way home. I've watched footy there, sipped wine at their footpath tables when I couldn't get into City Wine Shop , seen comedy upstairs, and even been through a break-up the...

Just gone two years old, The Stables of Como cafe is happily ensconced in its pretty setting. More like a lavishly decorated country barn, the cafe occupies the former stables building of the historic Como House (corner of Williams Rd and Lechlade Avenue, South Yarra), surrounded by the property's bounteous garden. It is an odd location, somewhere between the guts of South Yarra, Toorak Village and the river, and you walk up a random leaf-lined driveway to get there. But once you find it, this cafe becomes your secret: a venue for brunch that you won't really want to share, so relaxing and pretty it is - almost like an unexpected piece of the country within urban Melbourne. The theme here is farmhouse green and white (I get lots of Anne of Green Gables references, myself). The building itself is shackled in white corrugated iron, with a clear awning over the side strip of astro turf, lined with giant pot plants: an area where patrons can choose to eat 'outdoors...

The shops along Domain Road, South Yarra have a reputation for being a bit posh. It is South Yarra, after all, and the majority are cafes and restaurants that take advantage of their location (opposite Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens ) by providing some outdoor seating. Apparently The Real Housewives of Melbourne even frequent one or two venues along the strip. A little further down the road, on the corner of Millswyn Street, Entrec ô te (131-133 Domain Road, South Yarra) is having a party of its own - still refined, but with a little more colour and personality. In operation as a Parisian-style steak bistro since January 2015, the restaurant offers breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week in the former site of the infamous  Lynch's Restaurant . Business partners Jason McLaren Jones and Adam North developed the idea when they bumped into each other in Paris in late 2014. They took a meal together at the institutional  Le Relais de L'Entrec ô te : a no-booki...

I realise it's a little generic to title this post so vaguely, but my visit to Ballarat a few weekends ago has been my only experience of the place. It's just a 1.5 hour drive from Melbourne and it had been a toss-up whether to go there, or to Bendigo. (They're very near each other and both start with 'B'... it seemed like much of a muchness to the uninitiated.) It was a good decision. I was surprised at how genteel - and hilly - Ballarat is. There is some gorgeous historic architecture, which makes sense, when you consider the town's role in Australia's Gold Rush, and, with its wide streets and the central Lake Wendouree, it's quite pretty. Here are a few snaps from the weekend. I loved how some buildings were clearly built in the Art Deco period. There were several rotundas down the main street. There were also lots of statues... of whom, I couldn't necessarily say. But this dude is pretty self-explanatory: Gorgeous old ...