The Carringbush: Stephen Downes’ Best Cheapish Restaurant 2006

Bugger the opinionated Stephen Downes, letting the cat out of the bag about my local boasting 5 open fires, The Carringbush, and nominating it the best cheapish restaurant in the Hun’s latest survey. Interestingly, he’s managed to negotiate a deal whereby his reviews are reproduced on his own rudimentary WordPress blog. Two places nearby which got into his book 100 Gastronomic Experiences to Have Before You Die are Babka in Brunchswick St (“perhaps the world’s best cafe” from a man who eschews hyperbole) and some noodle dish at Fenix, down on the Yarra near Victoria Gardens shopping centre (best restaurant in the financial year ending 2005 (why oh why in the financial year?)). Since his blog has categories for each score, one can see that The Carringbush is in fact the equal eighth best place in Victoria (well, it’s one of 7 on his blog scoring 17 and only one scores 19 and 6 score 18). You’re right. The photo has nothing to do with any of the threementioned establishments. It belongs to Rolf Strohmann whose Night in Bangkok Flickr set is seriously good.

A Fitzroy Blog and a Smith St Blog

Really, you know, it was a boring idea to write a blog about a suburb, though I still consider comendable my determination not to contribute further to the annals of published diaries yet another account of an as-yet rather unfinished pedestrian life. But believe it or not a tech journalist told me he thought I had put the first bit of putty in an empty niche of the web: the microenvironment blog, which made me think that a blog about the cavity occasioned by the slashing at an early age of my umbilical cord could be like, even cooler. But what would you say? Perhaps part of its charm could be that it would only be updated every few years, when some navel escapade or other came across the horizon. Anyway, this journo threatened to write an article on the phenomenon, but of course did not. Now he has more ammunition: Fitzroyalty has sprung up, though it must be said Brian’s relevancy criteria are being relaxed a lot faster than mine. The photo’s his. And his blog put me onto the somewhat stalled but nevertheless interesting Smith St blog.