Daily Detours for the Week of June 12

Melbourne’s unforgiving winter weather has put an end to our beloved weekend al fresco jaunts. But that said, the wintry chill makes for perfect museum conditions. Dedicate your day off for the Queen’s Birthday to a full day at the National Gallery of Victoria, and rediscover the permanent collections of 73,000 works. Peruse the many free exhibitions including Every Brilliant Eye, and when museum legs set in, take a break and head to the Garden Restaurant for lunch — though before you settle into the ground-level restaurant, peek into the Gallery Kitchen and see if it’s been styled for the Van Gogh and the Seasons exhibition. The NGV often themes the venue for big exhibitions, so you may find yourself dining among some of the artist’s provincial landscapes. Image: Vincent van Gogh, Dutch 1853–90, Orchard in Blossom, Bordered by Cypresses (1888), Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, © Kröller-Müller Museum.

When it comes to cheap, cheerful and scrumptious feeds, Moroccan Soup Bar is hard to beat. With almost two decades under its belt, the Fitzroy North eatery is the epitome of a Melbourne institution, renowned for its generous North African dishes and perma-queues of eager patrons waiting to devour them. What this comfy, no-frills joint lacks in modernity, it makes up for in flavour. It takes just a couple bites of the acclaimed chickpea bake and various share plates to see why the place is heaving every night it’s open. Guaranteed to keep tastebuds happy and wallets full, it’s a winning option for a mid-week dinner. Come hungry, and armed with a couple of takeaway beers to enjoy while you experience the time-honoured tradition of waiting for one of these prized tables. Bring a plastic container to take home your leftovers too.

Image: Nic Allchin.

Don’t worry if you haven’t yet scored tickets to The Book of Mormon, because you haven’t necessarily missed out. Try your luck in the daily ticket ballot, where a limited number of each show’s seats are sold through a lottery system for $40 a pop. Submit your entry for one or two tickets at the Princess Theatre box office two and a half hours before curtain, and wait for the big draw half an hour later to see if you’ve won. Conveniently, next door is Siglo, with its Euro-style terrace and impressive views of Parliament House. For lucky ballot winners, it’s the ideal spot to kill time with a drink and upscale snacks before the show, and for the less fortunate, a rather dandy place for drowning sorrows.

There’s dinner, and then there’s dinner. This feast — put on by Secret Squirrel Productions, the group responsible for Underground Cinema — is more like the latter. As a six-course immersive dining experience at a secret Melbourne location, this promises to be unlike any of other Thursday night dinner you’ve had this year.

Secret Squirrel, Melbourne’s kings of immersive theatre and film experiences, have flung previous audiences back in time to ancient Rome, flogged them through a crash-course in zombie apocalypse survival and set them free inside Hannibal Lecter’s debauched mind-palace. And, after a sold out launch in September last year, they are once again creating — in the words of creative director Tamasein Holyman — a “world of raw, dark beauty and absinthe-fuelled dreams” with a six-course banquet. The six-course degustation will combine game-play, problem-solving and live theatre. This one will keep you guessing — the location is secret and will only be revealed 24 hours prior to the event.

That’s right, REMI and Sampa the Great are getting back together and touring the nation. Titled Fire Sign, their adventure will bring tunes, hip hop and poetry to big cities all over the country, where every show will see a set from each artist, followed by a joint finale.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the collaborations between REMI’s Remi Kolawole and Sensible J, and Sampa The Great, you’ll know that last year they joined forces to create ‘For Good’, a single that appeared on Divas and Demons, REMI’s second album. Featuring a bunch of other special guests, the album took REMI to sold out gigs and several festivals, including Splendour, Field Day and Falls. Meanwhile, Sampa The Great has been going great guns since releasing The Great Mixtape, her debut album in 2015. You might’ve caught her at WOMAD, Laneway, Sugar Mountain or Golden Plains.

When was the last time you paused to marvel at the tower of good times that is Curtin House? This multi-level beauty is brimming with history filled with activities you’ve probably forgotten about. Built back in 1923, and once acting as the headquarters of the Communist Party, it’s now home to the much more light-hearted business of eating, drinking and shopping. In lieu of your usual Saturday night local, take time to explore one of our city’s historic gems from bottom to top — from drinking craft beers at Cookie and cocktails in a train carriage booth at The Toff, to browsing the shelves at independent bookshop Metropolis, getting into punchy Mexican eats and top-notch tequila at Mesa Verde and brews with a view up at Rooftop Bar.

If anything’s worth forgoing a Sunday sleep-in for, surely it’s cheese. More specifically, the oozy cheese of your wildest dreams: raclette. This Swiss-style cows’ milk cheese is a hot-ticket specialty of Prahan Market‘s famous Maker & Monger stall, where it’s melted into submission and scraped atop a dish of warm potatoes and pickles. Head to the fruit and vegetable hall from 7.30am, locate the cheesemonger’s distinctive French food cart and snap up one of these cheesy beauts for your weekend brekkie. Then you can work off all those delicious calories with a morning spent exploring the diverse offerings of Melbourne’s oldest market.

Personalise your next adventure via The Playmaker, driven by Mazda3.

By Matt Abotomey, Rima Sabina Aouf, Quinn Connors, Libby Curran and Jasmine Crittenden.