Melbourne Patron

Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart Popular Malaysian Sweet Tart Inspired by Japanese Cheese   You can't work in hospitality or be a food blogger and NOT have heard about the Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart . Even if you're just a regular Joe Blow, they would have been hard to avoid on social media. I'm not sure exactly how the craze started, but suddenly they were EVERYWHERE - little yellow rounds of promise. Like any good writer (!), I hot-legged it to the new Melbourne Central HBCT venue soon after its opening to try and obtain one of the cult-followed baked items, and alas, my first attempt was futile. (I stood in the queue for about 10 minutes, with over an hour left until the store's official closing time, only to see the person three ahead of me in the queue buy the last tart. So. Much. Sad.) My second attempt was better; also towards the end of the day - on a Friday, no less, when I would have thought queues for anything self-indulgent would have extended round ...

Collingwood's newest 'it' place is another one hidden in the guts of the suburb. No shiny Smith Street lights for this dark horse. Le Bon Ton  (51 Gipps Street, Collingwood), which takes its name from an old-time New Orleans phrase, laissez les bon temps rouler ('let the good times roll'), is a curiously appealing mixture of the moodily subtle and brightly obvious. Owned by two American brothers, Will and Mick Balleau (old hospitality hands, with their Richmond venture Chingon ), and assisted in the kitchen by another two American brothers, Jeremy and Christopher Sutphin (ex- Fog ), Le Bon Ton is a venture in Belle  Èpoque- e ra romanticism. The décor is impressive: exposed brick walls, polished cement floors, a bar overlaid and finished with bright copper and wood panelling, ornate touches in upholstery and lighting, and an astro-turfed courtyard with beautifully-strung fairy lights (and she's SOLD!), with the operational smoke pit to one side. ...