The Best Ways to Get Out and Enjoy Sydney This Month
Autumn schmautumn. Seize that daylight saving time while it's still here.
The Best Ways to Get Out and Enjoy Sydney This Month
Autumn schmautumn. Seize that daylight saving time while it's still here.
It can’t be time to put actual pants on and face up to the changing seasons. March is here, but those colours aren't changing just yet. With thirty degree days, rainy afternoons and balmy evenings still on Sydney's plate, there's plenty of happenings around the city to make you forget summer ever left.
We've pulled together a few ideas to help you truly dive into the first month of autumn, from furiously jam-packed art festivals to basement bars and all the home decorating in between.
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At first glance, mid-week raving and healthy living don’t seem to go hand in hand. The energetic people behind Morning Gloryville turned that preconception on its head with their breakfast raves in Paddington Uniting Church last year. Now, Sydney’s dawn party experts are back with a brand new venue — an Alexandria warehouse. Taking over All Sorts Indoor Sports Factory from March 18, the London-founded breakfast bash will ring in its first Sydney pop-up event for 2015 with a huge warehouse party. An early, early 6.30am warehouse party. Lockouts, consider yourselves excluded from this shindig.
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Three Sydney bartenders are being total Babraham Lincolns and creating a Wayne’s World-themed pop-up bar. SCHWING. Ben Blair, Reece Griffiths, and Lee Potter Cavanagh (all ex-Victoria Room) are taking cues from Mike Myers and Dana Carvey’s immortal 1992 film for their temporary bar, Whisky Jerx — a project possible after winning 2014’s nationwide Monkey Shoulder competition, according to Australian Bartender. The prize? Stock, marketing support and cashola to start your own pop-up. Zang. Whisky Jerx will find a temporary home from February 25 until April 22, in the basement of The Unicorn in Paddington (where Easy Tiger usually resides). The whole joint will be set up like Wayne’s righteous basement. There’ll likely be much ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on the soundtrack, but no ‘Stairway’, denied. Fingers crossed for posters of total robobabe Cassandra, and a gun rack, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack. (Jokes, obvs.)
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Business is blooming at Garden Life. Founder, intrepid traveller and writer Richard Unsworth has expanded the Redfern store to a massive new location in St Peters in 2015. With the new 1100 square metre space presenting an array of outdoor plants, pots, planters, plant specimens, ceramics and accessories from around the world, you’ll not only be inspired to revamp your garden but you’ll also take a trip to countries such as Burma, India, Africa, Morocco and Italy. For the official opening weekend on March 21 – 22, 2015, Garden Life will turn on the charm with chef and provedore Martin Boetz from Cooks-Coop selling his Hawkesbury produce (plus his famous roast pork rolls), a workshop from Urban Growers’ Byron Smith and free edible plants and herbs with any purchase over $25.
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Tuesday nights are Luk nights for the next ten weeks, as celebrated chef Chui Lee Luk undertakes a guest chef spot at Surry Hills’ Italian eatery Berta. For the next couple of months, Luk will host a series of unique ‘sagra’ nights at Andrew Cibej’s laneway establishment, a Berta tradition of delving into the Italian way of celebrating a single ingredient or method of cooking. Former owner and chef of Woollhara’s long-loved Claude’s and now-closed Surry Hills joint Chow Bar & Eating House, Luk is a big pull for Berta — the sister of fellow Italian-focused Sydney joints 121BC and Vini. Luk’s newly-devised menu will see four courses not usually seen on the Berta menu, dishes that explore individual ingredients and preparation methods — from baccala (dried and salted cod) to goat, edible weeds to rabbit — in her signature Luk way.
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You’ll quickly forget any farewells to the sunnier months at the Coogee Foreshore Festival, a seaside celebration transforming Coogee Pavilion‘s ground floor into a burgeoning marketplace. It’s just one tasty, beachy adventure amongst five weeks of March into Merivale. The new Coogee Foreshore Festival arrives on Sunday, March 15, running 11am to 4pm at one of our favourite openings from 2014. The $45-a-head festival will see Merivale pop-ups such as Papi Chulo, Mr Wong, El Loco and sushi e all taking their spot along the promenade, while roaming entertainment, a Deus surfboard-shaping stand and face painting bubbles inside.
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Casual diners now have a place at waterfront Catalina, with the bar having undergone an invisible transformation. A Rose Bay waterside institution of 20 years, this award-winning destination from Michael and Judy McMahon offers diners panoramic views of the harbour, impeccable world-class service and a menu sporting much-loved dishes almost as old as the place itself. To celebrate the summer and a space so often overlooked, the bar at Catalina has had an invisible transformation with the aim to turn the formal a little more informal. The bar, to the right of the main restaurant, looks the same: it’s still its chic, light and elegant self, offering high tables and stalls to while away an hour or afternoon on the outside decking that stretches around the peripheral of the restaurant, but the menus have been developed and reworked to offer a more casual experience while still offering Catalina’s signature charm.
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Go big by going small. That’s the philosophy of a group of local artists, who’ll next month launch a brand new exhibition space of truly pint-sized proportions. No larger than a breadbox, Sydney’s Smallest Gallery will showcase works the size of thimbles. Who’d have guessed that one of the biggest highlights of Sydney Art Month would require a magnifying glass in order to view it? Sydney’s Smallest Gallery is one of many must-see exhibitions on at this year’s Sydney Art Month, which kicks off on Friday March 6 and runs until Sunday March 29. Another big standout on the program is the return of the Collector’s Space, an annual exhibit displaying pieces from private collections. This year will showcase the collection of restaurateur Kylie Kwong and her partner, multidisciplinary artist Nell, as well as Max and Gabrielle Germanos’ extensive collection of work by Australian and indigenous artists. All in all, this year’s Art Month Sydney will include more than 100 participating galleries, from the big to the very, very small. For our top ten picks of the program, head over here.
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The Alliance Francaise French Film Festival is back for its 26th year and with 49 feature films to be screened at cinemas across eight cities, you’d best prepare yourself for everything from the flirting, whimsy, mishaps and misunderstandings that come with French comedy to the passion, ennui, coming-of-age rebellion, thrilling crime and non-conformist romance that come with French drama. Highlights include: gala opening night feature Gemma Bovery, an endearing comedy starring Gemma Arterton that drops the characters of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary into a small Normandy town, and the Saint Laurent biopic exploring the inspirations and struggles of the acclaimed designer Yves Saint Laurent at the height of his career. See more of our highlights in this list of top five films to see at the French Film Festival.
