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Category Archives: Downtown

ORTOLANA

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

[Photographs: David Straight] Breakfast, lunch, dinner – it doesn’t matter which you go to at Ortolana, because it’s all brilliant and so we find ourselves there at odd times in search of early breakfast or late lunch. It opens at 7am and closes at 11pm and so you will never be told that the kitchen [...]

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XI’AN FOOD BAR

Thursday, October 25, 2012

[Photographs: David Straight] Such a prosaic name: such wondrous food. Xi’an is down the bottom of Anzac Avenue. It is small and plain, and about the only defining feature is the hilariously 80s ordering system, which involves pushing numbers into something that looks like an early eftpos terminal. It’s food from Xi’an, the province (better [...]

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FARO

Sunday, September 16, 2012

[Photographs by David Straight] There’s something quite appealing about cooking your own dinner, particularly when you get to do it while sitting on a red throne. Faro is a traditional Korean BBQ restaurant, huge and mostly empty. It shouldn’t be. There’s a small barbecue in the middle of the table, and an extractor tube that whisks [...]

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THE GROVE

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

[Pictures: David Straight] The Grove is a long, still room in the middle of the CBD: white-painted brick walls, timber floors, leather panelling and gentle art and pot plants. In a city that’s suddenly full of high-design restaurants, it’s a welcome respite. It is one of those restaurants that no longer needs to try very [...]

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DISTRICT DINING

Thursday, February 9, 2012

[Pictures: David Straight] We’re getting mixed messages. District Dining is a self-described combination of sophisticated food with a bistro buzz and price tag. But while the food is good – by God is it good – we didn’t really feel much of that promised energy: District Dining is just ever so slightly off, slightly too [...]

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