Taste of Melbourne

OK, so I'm about a month behind on posting, so I'm gonna keep this short. Bullet point style!

- I was at Taste of Melbourne which is a food festival based, obviously, in Melbourne, Victoria. That I went and almost exclusively spent my time tasting whiske?y is not so obvious. Unless you know me.

- Went to Maze, which is a Gordon Ramsey restaurant. Nothing that was too spectacular to talk about. Food was OK, not great. Except maybe the shitty service. Hopefully this isn't symptomatic of all Australian restaurants, but this was really shitty service. Waiting 20min+ between courses, bad attitude, etc. For AU$200/pp, that was pretty shit.

- Also checked out Nobu, which is the first time I've ever been to any of Nobuyuki "Nobu" Matsuhisa's restaurants. This was a really good meal. If you get the chance, you have to get the Crispy Oysters, which was to die for. Also the Miso Black Cod. But again, shitty, shitty service.

- Der Raum. Awesome cocktail bar. The bottles of booze hang from the ceiling behind the bar. The drinks are inventive ('Pushing up Daisies' is a whisky cocktail that comes in a mini watering can with a patch of cinnamon sugar 'dirt'). Atmosphere is cool. Except it is plagued by the same issue as I find with all Australian bars. At 10PM on the dot, the lights go off, the DJ comes on and it turns into a shitty dance club / lounge. This in turns attracts the kind of clientèle that comes to a cocktail bar to drink Heineken out of a bottle. Ugh.

- Coffee was great in Melbourne. And it's served out of tiny, hole-in-the-wall coffee houses in little alley ways. Food culture is big in Melbourne.

So in my opinion, Melbourne is closer to San Francisco than Sydney. And Melbourne is to SF what Sydney is to San Diego. One is about food and indoor culture, the other is
about sunshine and being outside. Both are nice in their own way.

THE END!