The Age gagas about local establishments

The Age‘s John Lethlean gave Lentil as Anything the thumbs up the other day. Now that same journal’s Michael Herden has given Cavallero on Smith St a decent plug. I’m dying to try the place: the assiduous Breakfast Blogger got there almost a month ago, and he’s got the whole of Melbourne to cover. He wasn’t totally convinced, but I’m calling it teething problems: I want to like the place. Mr Herdern calls Smith St a “psychotically eclectic strip”. Too many interior decor shops already I reckon, but there’s room for a few more Cavalleros (snap). According to the folk who supply their coffee, the Cavalleros have “a shiny new chrome 85 series two group”. That’s a cofee machine.

Terminus Hotel, Alison Whyte, Fred Whitlock

Today’s Good Weekend has a “2 of Us” profile by Bernadette Clohesy of the pair who own the Terminus Hotel, 39 year old Alison Whyte, and 41 year old Fred Whitlock. It’s certainly changing. Upstairs is the now mandatory fine dining restaurant, but there’s also a big party room giving out onto a large deck. Haven’t tried the restaurant, but the pub grub is superb. In fact, it’s a great pub. The place has a website which I have just discovered. Its history of the pub, which the pair purchased in 1996 — 11 years ago — is entertaining. It reveals that the original third partner is the bloke who bought and presumably did up the Healesville Hotel, another great pub, though mainly for the well heeled, unlike the egalitarian Terminus. I signed up for the mailing list so as not to miss out on events such as the 7 Culinary Disasters from the 70s for $70 dinner just gone.

Since the profile of the Whyte-Whitlock combo doesn’t seem to be available online, here are the bare bones, the bits at least not already covered by this newspaper (here and here). Whyte’s from Tasmania, Whitlock from New Zealand. They met at the Victorian College of the Arts. The class of people who transferred from Duntroon to the VCA might conceivably number one: just Whitlock. They have three children under 6: Rose, Milly and Atticus, and live in the Yarra Valley. That seems to have something to do with Whitlock getting stabbed in the head by a local: Continue reading “Terminus Hotel, Alison Whyte, Fred Whitlock”

Victoria St this is not: Hanoi’s famed Cha Ca La Vong Restaurant

My father is this blog’s first foreign correspondent. On assignment in Hanoi just the other day, his camera phone snapped these images of how I wish Victoria St could be. I tell you, if you went to many places in old South East Asia and bought the entire fitout — well, perhaps not this restaurant’s — and installed it into some shell in Melbourne, you’d make a killing. This is the yellow fish restaurant. That’s all they sell, but it’s packed out. They don’t waste this stuff on the tourists, but very expensive and increasingly-difficult-to-come-by sauce made out of the eyes of particular insects is the traditional accompaniment. You just can’t buy this stuff in Victoria St, along with so much else of Vietnam’s glorious cuisine. More photos here.