Category: Richmond

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3 of best 10 cheap eats within this blog’sosphere

The Age has helpfully identified “10 of the best” — I like the modesty of these words in a best of list — inventive cheap eats. Southern Richmond’s Pearl gets an honourable mention for $16 eggs on toast (keep it real, Cheap Eats), but I have to admit it’s one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to, and you can go there for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a drink. Then the Builder’s Arms on Gertrude Street Fitzroy comes in at number 3 for a $14 “3 mint pea soup with smoked paprika butter with steamed prawns” which sounds rather good. And Replete just down from MLC in Hawthorn, but metres away from being Kew, gets another gong at #6 for $12.50 ricotta hotcakes with lemon curd and strawberries. Thanks to Flickr’s Spin Spin for the photo of an uncommonly unpopulated image of the Builder’s Arms.

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Victoria St Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival


What are festivals coming to in this city? The Swedish Fair at the Swedish Church is what you might call a good festival, and the festivals out in the sticks which are genuine community celebrations by Buddhists, Hindus, Tibetans and Whathaveyous are beaut. But so many festivals are just so crud: the Lygon St Fiesta, the Antipodes Festival, and to a lesser extent, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival which was on yesterday. A festival is not a row of shops allowed to sell their things at outside tables, a stage with a band, and an Ikea van with some vaguely pan-Asian decorated kitchen. Am I being too harsh? Mine was a short visit. What do other people think? Continue reading “Victoria St Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival”

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Richmond folk too often hanged

Ronald Ryan, the last man executed in Australia, was a Richmond man, or at least that’s where his family lived at the time of his execution. Carlton man Barry Dickins wrote a play about the execution which occurred 40 years ago on Saturday. The outstanding Abbotsford publication Eureka Street, has an article by Jesuit prison reform advocate Father Peter Norden this week. There is to be a little gathering outside the gates of former-Pentridge-prison-future-New-York-style-loft-style- apartments on Saturday mo(u)rning.

Van Nguyen, executed in Singapore almost 14 months ago, was also a Richmond boy in the sense that he went to the parish school of St. Ignatius, where the bells tolled 25 times, once for each year of his life following his death by State homicide. That church is also where a memorial service for Ronald Ryan will be held later on Saturday. Thanks to the talented Philip Anthonie R. Cruz of Manila for the amazing image.