Melbourne Patron

It's the place that was made infamous by the ' chopsticks incident ' last December, where a young Richmond Tigers AFL player drunkenly threatened to attack a woman dining nearby with his chopsticks. But of course, Mr. Miyagi had already developed a cult following well before that. LOOK OUT... CHOPSTICKS Opening in October 2013 on the ever-so-hip Windsor portion of Chapel Street , and tickling nostalgic fancies with its reference to 1984 classic  The Karate Kid , the restaurant has enjoyed a steady stream of customers since. I remember stopping by with a friend one Thursday night mid last year to enquire about a table, and we were told it would be a two-hour wait. Well! Either this place is really good, I thought, or really good at hype. Always a queue at the front desk I made a calculated plan with friends to score a table there on a Friday night recently. I rocked up nice and early, 6:45pm-ish, and put my name down for a table. They advised the wait would ...

One cool evening in late September, three ladies went for dinner at one of Melbourne's hot new venues: Lucy Liu Kitchen and Bar (23 Oliver Lane, Melbourne) (also known as "Lucy Liu's" around town). They trotted up the cobblestone laneway and found a red neon sign proclaiming the way. Excited with anticipation, they squished through a narrow entrance and alighted upon the buzzing, angular restaurant. Unsure of which direction to take, the girls felt momentarily lost, but after a while someone led them to their table near the open kitchen, took their coats and the fun commenced. The single-sheet menus were an immediate source of amusement with metallic, holographic images on one side, mainly of animals - a hit with one of the girls in particular, who was an animal lover. The impressive restaurant interior was also an attraction. Slimline lengths of pale Tasmanian oak, spaced out at intervals, gave the impression of a flat wall, but provided a...

My former housemate, a chef, knows a few people in the hospitality industry. From what I can see, they all hang out together, drink together when they finish service at two in the morning, and give each other silly nicknames like 'Fluffy'. So as soon as one of them branches out to open their own venue, or changes to a different role, the news spreads like wildfire. That's how the buzz surrounding a new venue starts. A coupla press releases and launch events gets the ball rolling, foodie mags and publications do their initial reviews, food bloggers get onto it, the locals flood in, and hospitality legends are born. When it's a quality new venue in a suburban location, the buzz seems even bigger. Such was the case with West 48 (48 Essex Street, Footscray), a cafe based in a quiet suburban street in Melbourne's inner west. I heard about it through my housemate - who knew someone working there or opening it or something - after which I promptly forgot about it. T...