Apartment Alkira – Boutique Melbourne Short Stay Accommodation

Hungry Melbourne mouths have always found sustenance in the Hardware Lane patch of the CBD. But it’s only relatively recently that the pasta hawkers at the top end have had their oversized menus and contrived Italian accents nudged to one side by the newer, cooler kids.  Brother Buba Budan  launched the assault, Hardware Societe made [...]

      Melbourne has her fair share of artisan bakeries.  You can barely venture down one of our famed ‘laneways’ without being smacked in the face by a luscious, yeasty, briny aroma. We’re not complaining, mind, just noting. A few months ago ‘Phillippa’s’ nudged her flour-dappled nose into the CBD from her traditionally suburban [...]

Does Andrew McConnell actually sleep?  This question has been keeping us up here at Apartment Alkira since Mr McC’s stable of fabulous and very Melbourne eateries began expanding a couple of years ago.  How does he do it?  And unlike other restauranteurs whose growth spurts have dinted quality, consistency, or both, Andrew McConnell seems to [...]

Chin Chin – a new asian eatery in bubbly Flinders Lane – has been getting a lot of love from the ‘blogosphere’ since it opened in late May, so we were rather relieved to find it definitely lived up to the hype. One tinsy word of warning though – it’s not for those with hearing [...]

Nahji Chu, self-deigned, Queen of the Rice Paper Roll, brings ‘The Roll’ to Melbourne.  Not that Melbourne has been without a good supply of vietnamese eateries offering the uniquely asian morsel, but as The Queen puts it, no-one can make a rice paper roll quite like her.  Finding accommodation at the top end of the CBD in Exhibition [...]

Questions we’ve been pondering: Why is it that almost every airport on the face of the earth is the same nondescript, bland, soulless vaccuum of artificial air and plastic food?  And why are airport food prices automatically inflated like you’re suddenly on a completely different world currency? We have no answers to either, but we [...]

Gird your loins.  Shoulders back.  Chest out.  Armour on.  Ok, now you’re ready to visit Melbourne’s notorious Moroccan Soup Bar. Overplayed perhaps, but the owner of this North Fitzroy eatery seems to have appropriated the reputation of Sienfeld’s soup nazi. Not entirely fairly in my experience, but she does run a tight ship, so don’t be put off [...]

It was always going to be difficult for this new French eatery to fail. Thick with Melbourne gastronomic and savvy business talent, PM24 has awesome lineage, set to see it position itself as Melbourne’s New French in 2011. The PM bit of the name belongs to Phillip Mouchel, the French michelin starred executive chef who [...]

The highly celebrated ‘Gigibaba’ looks deceptively understated, but this modern Turkish eatery at the top end of the slightly seedy Smith Street Fitzroy has a lot going for it. That is unless you are  a) impatient, b) vegetarian, or,  c) on the pudgier side of pudgey. The no-booking policy is a test for the virgos among us [...]

The revolution is here.  Anyone noticed?   Quietly, sneakily, the ‘dead end’ of the CBD has morphed into something slightly cooler, slightly hipper, and is now routinely referred to as the ‘New York’ end. Groovy wee cafe haunts rub shoulders with design shops and specialist  ’restaurant quality sandwich outlets’.  Joining the coterie of movers and shakers [...]