Summer is over for now and spring is still almost half a year away. But if you want to start thinking ahead, Surfers Paradise is set to welcome a brand new attraction that'll keep you busy when the warm weather hits. Do you like hanging out by the beach? Splashing around in several pools? Enjoying a few games of volleyball on the sand? Watching a movie under the stars? If you answered yes to all of these questions — and you also like to spend your sunny days and starry nights kicking back in a cabana, hopping between multiple restaurants and bars, dancing to DJs and gathering the gang on a rooftop with a view — then you'll want to add Cali Beach Club to your must-visit list. First announced late in 2020 and originally scheduled to open this past summer, Cali Beach Club will feature all of the aforementioned facilities and activities in the one spot. Yes, it's going to be more than a little jam-packed with things to do when it launches just in time for spring this year. Although an exact opening date hasn't yet been revealed, the new precinct will officially open on the corner of Surfers Paradise Boulevard and Elkhorn Avenue sometime in August — perched four levels about the street, sprawling across more than 5000 square metres, and boasting vantages over both the ocean and the Surfers' skyline. The Gold Coast might be known for its theme parks, but this is shaping up to be the boozy adult alternative, as run by Australian hospitality group Artesian Hospitality. Whether you're a Brisbanite heading down the highway, a Sydney or Melbourne resident enjoying the lack of border restrictions, or hail from elsewhere in the country, you'll find quite the spread awaiting once you step inside. That includes four pools to swim in, and plenty of daybeds, sun lounges and cabanas where you can while away the hours. There'll also be exercise areas and sports facilities, such as the aforementioned beach volleyball court, and a dance floor as well. In terms of food and drink, you'll have options, thanks to two restaurants and four bars. Exact details of what they'll be serving, and what'll make them different from each other, haven't yet been revealed — but one eatery will sit right by the ocean. Come evening, a moonlit cinema will screen flicks by the water — again, though, no other details have been revealed. Showing Jaws and Point Break seems like a must, however, because everyone likes catching movies about the sea while they're literally right next to it. [caption id="attachment_793063" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Map of Cali Beach Club[/caption] All the other questions you're currently pondering — such as opening hours, cost, capacity and social distancing measures — haven't been answered yet either. But, while it looks perfect for spring and summer shenanigans, Cali Beach Club plans to operate year-round. The Gold Coast does have the weather for it, after all. And, although the precinct will officially welcome in the general public in August, it'll actually be completed sometime in June. Over that two-month gap, it'll let a few exclusive corporate functions and events — and even weddings — have the run of the place. If you or someone you know are currently looking for a space for a up to 150 guest for a special occasion, take note. Cali Beach Club will open on the corner of Surfers Paradise Boulevard and Elkhorn Avenue, Surfers Paradise, sometime in August 2021 — we'll update you when an exact date is announced.
The shock of unkempt hair, the Irish brogue, the misanthropic attitude: there's no mistaking Dylan Moran for anyone else. It was true in beloved British sitcom Black Books, when his on-screen alter ego abhorred mornings, ate coasters and claimed that his oven could cook anything (even belts). And it's definitely true of the comedian's acerbically hilarious live shows. Moran is no stranger to Australia and New Zealand, but if you haven't guffawed at his bleak wit live, he's coming back in 2023 to give you another chance. As always, expect the kind of deadpan gags, wine-soaked insights and blisteringly sharp one-liners that've kept him in the spotlight since 1996, when he became the youngest-ever winner of the Edinburgh Fringe's Perrier Award. [caption id="attachment_729089" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Andy Hollingworth[/caption] From mid-April to late May, Moran will tour Down Under with his latest show We Got This, bringing his grumpily lyrical musings on love, politics, misery and the everyday absurdities of life to 11 Aussie cities and four spots in NZ. Kicking off in Hobart and ending up in Auckland, this marks his first full standup show since 2019's Dr Cosmos, which also came our way — and was available to stream earlier in the pandemic, too. Given this tour's title, it's hardly surprising that Moran will be reflecting upon these chaotic times. That might sound like a standard comedy gig these days, but nothing about Moran's comedy is ever standard. "We are bruised. We are fucked up. We are all sore," he said, announcing the tour. "It's not just the pandemic. It's the times and how we've got through it." As well as his stint as the world's worst bookshop owner in Black Books, Moran has popped up in films such as Notting Hill and Shaun of the Dead, should you been keen to get watching (or rewatching) before his new gigs. Nabbing tickets early is recommended — his shows usually sell out quickly. DYLAN MORAN 'WE GOT THIS' 2023 DATES Wednesday, April 19 — Wrest Point Entertainment Centre, Hobart Thursday, April 20 — Princess Theatre, Launceston Friday, April 21 — Hamer Hall, Melbourne Tuesday, April 25 — Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide Thursday, April 27–Friday, April 28 — Canberra Theatre, Canberra Saturday, April 29 — Civic Theatre, Newcastle Tuesday, May 2 — HOTA, Home of the Arts, Gold Coast Thursday, May 4–Friday, May 5 — QPAC Concert Hall, Brisbane Monday, May 8 — Perth Concert Hall, Perth Thursday, May 11 + Monday, May 15 — State Theatre, Sydney Saturday, May 13 — Town Hall, Wollongong Saturday, May 20 — Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch Monday, May 22 — Regent Theatre, Dunedin Tuesday, May 23 — St James Theatre, Wellington Thursday, May 25 — Auckland Town Hall, Auckland Dylan Moran's 'We Got This' tour will head around Australia and New Zealand in April and May 2023. Ticket pre-sales start at 11am on Thursday, October 13, with general sales from 9am on Tuesday, October 18. For more information, head to the tour website. Updated November 25.
Not too long ago the only place to eat at Flinders Street Station was Lord of the Fries. Then Arbory opened right next to platform 13 and made killing time while waiting for the train not a horrible proposition. And now the station has scored another actually good food offering — and it's located in the Swanston Street-facing Clocks space. If you're familiar with Clocks then you're probably thinking RSL vibes and pokies noises right about now. But, after a renovation that took nine months and $3 million, the place is looking pretty different. Unfortunately the pokies are still out the back as the venue is still owned by Doxa Social Club, but the bistro has been replaced with Green Light Diner, an American-themed joint run by Steve Schreuder and Darran Smith (the ex-owner of Carlton's Roving Marrow). The duo took inspiration from the late-night diners of Los Angeles and have created their own day-to-night venue with all-day breakfast and a 1am license on weekends. The impressive fit-out has been designed by Studio Nine Architects, and looks like Edward Hopper's Nighthawks come to life. Think marble counter tops, leather booth seating and brass and copper fixtures, along with restoration of the building's original windows that haven't been used in decades. "The interior has a 1920s train station feel, like Grand Central in New York," says Smith. It certainly has an old-world vibe, one that works particularly well within the setting of the historic station, which was built in 1909. "[The clientele] is really a cross section of people who come through the station, from old locals who came in before the renovation to business folks and tourists" says Smith. Smith took inspiration from LA diners and their "brekkie sandwiches that you can eat all-day or late at night", as well as the salt beef bagels from Brick Lane in London. The breakfast menu is egg-centric, and accompanied by pub staples like porterhouse steaks, pork schnittys (with a fried egg if you so fancy) and parmas. For drinks, it'll start slinging pre-batched cocktails in the coming weeks, including negronis, espresso martinis and cosmos. The transformation isn't done yet, either, with a late-night whisky bar also in the works. Miss Guns will be located downstairs and is slated to be completed by the end of the year. This June, Green Light will also roll out monthly after-midnight feasts for hospitality folk, which will run on Sunday nights from midnight till 3am. "It's a chance to get people in the hospo industries together at the end of their work week for some networking, music and good food," says Smith. "There will be guest chefs each month, along with a few seats reserved for non-hospo people to come along and see what we get up to."
Put down your Kit Kat, for we've discovered a break that's even better than snappable chocolate-covered wafers: smashing stuff. To be more specific, we mean smashing stuff with a baseball bat — and it's a legitimate, all above-board activity at new Collingwood venue The Break Room. Currently housed in the Collingwood Mastercraft warehouse after an initial pop-up at Brunswick's Kines, an appointment at The Break Room is a five-minute, sweaty task that puts you behind thick, plastic walls, wields you with a pink baseball bat and some protective headgear and lets you go to town on some very satisfyingly smashable items. For the moment, they're using plates and glasses as collateral. But if anyone can produce it, our 'ultimate smashable' would be a ceramic Matryoshka filled with glitter. The Break Room was born in a moment of frustration (and through the efficacy of podcasts) by founder Ed Hunter, after he realised that everybody wants to blow off steam in their own way. And while some might prefer to hit the gym, Hunter is inviting you to hit some crockery off a stool instead. Speaking of the stools, notches of pink residue from the so-coloured bats have been passionately left on them; reminders that other members of the baseball bat cathartic club (do I hear badges?) have bashed their way to sanity before you. For anyone studying their swatch patterns, the pink is Baker-Miller, and has been used in correctional facilities across America to help calm violent inmates. Yet Hunter heeds that The Break Room's goal isn't violence, but rather to reduce stress and harness those destructive tendencies in a controlled and fun way. At $50 to smash your way to calmness for five minutes, this emotional outlet may seem a bit on the spenny side, but the beauty is in the fact that you're not breaking your own stuff — and some other guy will be picking up the pieces after you. These pieces are, in fact, added to the pile that hides further out back, where both shattered crockery and snapped pink swords from liberated brethren lay, which is a good indicator that the allocated time is probably ample. So wait until the shutters go down, don your best Joaquin Phoenix impersonation and swing away at those inner aliens of yours by taking your aggression out in some organised chaos.
These days, Easter promises a whole lot more than just generic choccy eggs and old-school hot cross buns. Bakeries, chocolate brands and dessert shops across the city are getting more inventive with each passing year, whipping up all sorts of creative treats worthy of a spot in your own personal Easter hunt. Here, we've rounded up some of the coolest grown-up goodies to seek out, from decadent cocktail-filled Easter rabbits to hot cross bun-inspired bao and even giant gelato eggs. Which of these creations will the Easter bunny be bringing you this year? HOT CROSS CRUFFINS FROM LUNE CROISSANTERIE The croissant masters at Lune have brought back their legendary hybrid Easter treat, to the delight of anyone with a penchant for buttery glazed pastry. The Hot Cross Cruffin is the limited-edition love-child of the croissant, the muffin and the hot cross bun, and features a spiced fruit creme encased within a flaky golden shell. With a cross on top, of course. They're always hot property, but this year you'll need to be especially on the ball if you want them in your life — Lune is releasing a fresh batch of pre-orders each day for its Easter products, starting from Friday, April 8. Check the website for more details, or simply race in-store to nab whatever stock's available. HOT X DOUGHNUTS FROM RUSTICA It's no secret the pastry chefs at Rustica know their way around a brioche doughnut, having served up some of the city's finest. So you can imagine the goodness in store for you when you secure a six-pack of their latest seasonal release — the hot cross bun doughnut. It features a ball of that signature fried dough, filled with a creme patissiere of brandy, vanilla and cardamom, and spiked with dried fruit. A liberal dusting of cardamom sugar and a white chocolate cross over the top, and you've got yourself a pretty plush alternative to the usual fruit bun. You'll just need to remember to order yours two days before delivery or pick-up. MORK X BUNS FROM MORK CHOCOLATE These hot crossed creations from Mork Chocolate are fast becoming an annual favourite, reimagining the humble Easter bun as an orange-scented Swedish-style cinnamon roll. The Mörk X Buns are sticky and buttery, crammed full of the kitchen's secret spiced fruit blend, along with extra hits of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Best enjoyed warmed up, the signature treats are available now to pre-order and pick-up from the North Melbourne Brew House or the CBD store. And if you prefer your Easter treats in choccy form, Mork's also released a couple of new bean-to-bar eggs and 'morsels' that are well worth a taste test. BOOZY BUNNY HAMPERS FROM KOKO BLACK Renowned Aussie chocolate brand Koko Black has always had strong game when it comes to Easter treats. But this year, it's going one step further for its grown-up fans, adding a series of boozy hampers to its seasonal range. Each box comes packed with a selection of signature choccy eggs, plus a couple of hollow chocolate bunnies and a pack of jarred espresso martinis from Melbourne Martini. Combine the latter two, pop in a straw and you've got yourself an adult Easter concoction to beat them all. Choose from a dark chocolate pack, a milk chocolate version, or one starring three different varieties. GELATO EASTER EGGS FROM PICCOLINA Piccolina Gelateria is celebrating Easter in signature style — marking the occasion with a line of limited-edition gelato treats. Only this year, it's unveiled some brand new varieties of its much-loved, giant gelato Easter eggs (Uova di Pasqua). Available now in-store and online, you'll find the Caramello — filled with caramel popcorn semifreddo, crunchy chocolate pearls and sea salted caramel gelato — the hazelnut-centric Ferrerolina with its gianduja ganache core, and a riff on the classic Easter bun featuring hot cross bun gelato and raspberry jam. They're hand-wrapped and presented in cute retro tins, with each egg clocking in at $39 and designed to feed two to three people. If you can manage to share, that is. EASTER BONBONS FROM YUGEN TEA BAR South Yarra's contemporary tea bar Yugen has channelled its talents into creating a trio of limited-edition Easter-themed bonbons that are almost too pretty to eat. The dainty chocolates include a hot cross bun-inspired creation crowned with a tell-tale white cross; a lemon and vanilla treat decorated like an adorable baby chick; and a carrot, ginger and walnut bonbon emblazoned with a tiny carrot. A box of nine comes in at $31. If you're quick, there's also the Lily Tart ($16), crafted with spiced milk chocolate, coconut and mango jam, and created in the shape of a delicate Easter egg-filled nest. HOT CROSS BAO FROM DIN TAI FUNG Dumpling house Din Tai Fung is celebrating Easter with a multicultural mash-up that's sure to delight any sweet-toothed folk — these rather charming hot cross bun-inspired bao. A nod to the traditional Easter bun, the pillowy little beauties are made with steamed bread and filled with oozing molten Nutella, each one finished with a sweet white cross. Available for a limited time on the menu at Din Tai Fung's Emporium restaurant, they'll set you back $6.80 for a serve of two. Otherwise, you can extend the Easter vibes well into May by stocking up on a bag of three frozen hot cross bao, delivered to your door for $10. HOT CROSS DOUGHNUTS FROM SHORTSTOP One of Shortstop's best-loved seasonal treats is the one that makes an appearance every Easter — the smash-hit hot cross doughnut. A hole-y riff on the traditional bun, it's made using a spiced dough that's spiked with loads of brandy-soaked fruit, with each doughnut dunked in a sweet honey glaze and topped with the all-important cinnamon sugar cross. As always, these return favourites are here for a good time, but not a long time — the ovens are churning out fresh batches on the daily, only until Monday, April 18. Stock up in-store, or head to the website to pre-order a few for pick-up or home-delivery. Top Image: Mork X Buns
In the high-stakes game of crispy bird, you might argue that Korean-style fried chicken rules the roost. Which means local chicken fiends are really winning this month, with the launch of the first Aussie store from much-loved Korean brand Guljak Topokki Chicken. Just a couple of weeks after fellow international chicken stars Bonchon landed Down Under with a new restaurant in Craigieburn, Guljak Topokki has also made its Aussie debut, opening its latest outpost in Emporium. Taking the group's stable to nine, the restaurant is out to deliver Melburnians an authentic taste of Korean street food culture. Chicken is one of the main events here, with the menu featuring variations like sweet chilli, kanpung (spicy garlic) and soy nurungji (Korean scorched rice) alongside a classic OG crispy number. Sharing the spotlight however, is a range of soup topokki — the traditional Korean dish of spicy rice cakes. Here, you can try it in a swag of different ways, from a sausage soup creation to a topokki paired with charcoal bulgogi. You can also customise the heat of these babies to suit your style, with the spice levels topping out at 'hot spicy', aptly labelled 'for spicy mania'. But if you're a sucker for sides, your favourite part of all this will be the dedicated self-serve 'banchan' station, heaving with a spread of classic Korean side dishes. We're talking seaweed-wrapped noodle bites, rice balls, fried shrimp, hot chips and soondae (a type of blood sausage). A bunch of combination sets let you sample from both offerings at once. And of course, there are plenty of crisp brews and fun-looking canned Korean bevs with which to wash it all down. Find Guljak Topokki Chicken at 08/287 Lonsdale St, Melbourne CBD. It's open 11am–7pm Sunday to Wednesday, and from 11am–9pm Thursday and Friday.
That next Japan trip might be a little further off than anticipated, but there's nothing stopping you from diving into regular bowls of hot, aromatic ramen in the meantime. And new delivery service Gomi Boys Ramen is making it even easier to score a weekly fix of that Japanese soup...minus the cooking and kitchen clean-up. Melbourne chefs Ryan Maher and Ben Reardon launched their ramen drop-off business back in June, delivering handmade, ready-to-heat soup kits to select suburbs each Thursday. They followed it with a couple of pop-ups at Thornbury bar Nasty's when restrictions eased, but are now back solely on delivery runs while the city's in lockdown 2.0. The duo's ramen skills are the result of regular travels to Japan, while their business name is a reference to the Japanese word for rubbish or trash. "We are basically nodding to the fact that we are two white boys making ramen," explains Reardon. "Hence the tag line 'rubbish humans, excellent ramen'". And, with a couple hundred orders flowing in each week, it seems that last part rings especially true. [caption id="attachment_776659" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Michael Oulton[/caption] Currently on the Gomi Boys menu, you'll find eight ramen varieties, with plenty of vegan, gluten-free and allergen-friendly options among them. All kits feature a mix of top local produce and premium Japanese ingredients, with fresh handmade noodles, toppings, broth and seasonings ready to be heated and assembled in your kitchen. The boys' signature soup is a Shinjuku-inspired niboshi tonkotsu shio ramen, starring a pork and chicken broth elevated with anchovy and fish sauce. Or, you might fancy shaking things up with the szechuan-spiced cauliflower tantanmen, featuring a mushroom-based broth with tahini and gochujang. Each kit clocks in at $19.45, with add-ons like pork belly chashu and extra noodles available for a few more dollars. While they're on the hunt for a permanent space, Maher and Reardon are operating out of West Footscray, so the Gomi Boys delivery area currently covers a range of northern and western suburbs. Kits are dropped off between 2pm and 7pm on Thursdays only, but they can be kept in the fridge to be used within three days. Orders are taken through the website between 12pm each Friday and 8pm on Mondays — or until they've sold out. Gomi Boys Ramen delivers to a range of suburbs each Thursday. Head to the website to check the delivery zone, see the menu and place an order (Friday to Monday). Delivery is free, but there's a minimum order of $38. Images: Michael Oulton
The Archibald Prize isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of artistic gadgetry. This coveted national portrait prize is often full of celebrities, sure, but they're usually rendered in expressionistic swathes of paint or meticulous photorealism. It's rare that we get treated to something on the vanguard — and even rarer to have someone deem Wil Anderson's familiar one-liners worthy of a place in one of the nation's best galleries. The portrait, which has been submitted for consideration of the Archibald Prize this week, is the work of Canberra artist Luke Cornish (aka E.L.K.). Predominantly known for his stencil work, Cornish has stepped out into unfamiliar territory creating an interactive artwork of the much-loved comedian that comes to life with the help of a video app. While the piece that hangs on the wall appears as a regular stencilled portrait, when you point a tablet of smartphone at the artwork, the image turns into a real-time video within the frame. A creepy virtual reality version of Wil Anderson leaps forth from your device and starts riffing on religion and Steve Jobs. It's as excellent as it is terrifying. The result of a collaboration with augmented reality specialist — aka the person with the coolest job ever — Amber Standley, this work looks like the start of something very exciting not only for the Archibald itself, but for art in general. "My plan is to start doing some large-scale mural portraits," the artist told The Herald Sun. "You can imagine walking down Elizabeth Street and holding your phone up to a mural and it just comes to life." A far cry from the unsightly QR codes that we still don't quite know how to figure out, this is some gadgetry we can definitely get behind. Instead of walking down the street flipping mindlessly through Instagram and Facebook we could now be interacting with the street art around us — while still firmly affixed to our phones, of course. As far as Cornish's portrait goes, we won't know if it's a finalist for the prize until July 10, and we won't be able to see it until the exhibition opens in Sydney on July 19. But, suffice to say, we have a good feeling it'll get through. Get your smartphones at the ready — this is definitely one to check out (even if you can't stand Wil Anderson). Via Herald Sun and Citynews.
What happens when New Zealand's own Rose Matafeo (Baby Done) takes on British romantic comedies? In 2021, the answer was Starstruck. It's the rom-com sitcom that doesn't just fit the genre, but also loves it, unpacks it, and knows how to adapt its tropes in a smart and hilarious way. In fact, it was a delight in its first season, and then again in its second run in 2022. Here's hoping that when September rolls around, it'll prove the same once more in season three. One of the best of new shows of its debut year and best returning series of its second year, Starstruck was renewed for a third shot of love in London last year — and now the latest season arrives when romance is usually in the air, aka spring Down Under. This time, Matafeo's Jessie is single after breaking up with famous actor Tom (Nikesh Patel, Four Weddings and a Funeral), and now navigating what that all means. No matter who's starring in them, when and where they're set, and whether they're showing on the big or small screen, romantic comedies do adore telling tales about trying to hold onto a good thing. Two people meet, fall for each other — whether immediately or eventually — and work through whatever it takes to enjoy their romantic bliss: that's it, that's the genre's familiar formula. It's a setup that TV series Starstruck has been both adhering to and interrogating over its run so far, too, but the show is branching out narrative-wise when it returns in Australia via ABC iView from 9.30pm on Wednesday, September 6 and in New Zealand via TVNZ+ from 8.30pm on Saturday, September 2. If you're new to the series, New Zealander Jessie didn't realise that Tom was so well-known when they met. Once she was aware, that fact was inescapable as they tried to make their fairy tale relationship work. And yes, before the show entered its post-Tom era (although he still pops up) as its just-dropped season-three trailer notes, Matafeo — who stars, writes and created the series — well and truly knew that Notting Hill got there first. To-date, the series has proven a wonderful showcase for Matafeo, and also a savvily smart exploration of rom-com tropes as well, embracing and subverting them as needed. Nodding to romantic comedies such as The Graduate, Love Actually and Bridget Jones' Diary has also come with the territory, amusingly, affectionately and astutely so. Matafeo co-writes Starstruck with fellow comedians Alice Snedden and Nic Sampson, with Matafeo and Snedden also directing the third season. Check out the trailer for Starstruck season three below: Starstruck season three will stream in Australia via ABC iView from 9.30pm on Wednesday, September 6 and in New Zealand via TVNZ+ from 8.30pm on Saturday, September 2. Starstruck's first and second seasons are available to stream in Australia via ABC iView and in New Zealand via TVNZ+. Read our full review of Starstruck's first season — and our full review of its second season, too. Images: Mark Johnson/HBO Max.
A CBD joint that provides those living room vibes when your own home is too full of empty pizza boxes and you need to clear the grey matter from your brain. Venture down a street (Little Lonsdale) and scurry down a lane (Hardware) and hop up a level (one) to La La Land, where a lavishness of brown Chesterfield-style couches awaits. Inside this neighbourhood haunt, the Brooklyn warehouse-esque windows provide the light, and around you, a motley of suits, casuals and dates are a spatter. A good place to bring a mate or just a book for a boozy read. The drinks menu is vast and colourful, with beers available on tap and in the fridge by the pint or jug. Wines cover every end of the spectrum, with red, white, rosé and sparkling varietals from Australia and France all appearing. Cocktails come in signature and classic forms. The former includes Bounty, which recreates the chocolate bar we all know and some of us love, with 1800 Coconut and Joseph Carton Creme de Cacao, and Who Shot Tom Collins, which sells itself as a Bloody Shiraz spin on the classic. There are also some nifty drink specials for the thrifty, with beers and wines for $6 and spirits prices down to $15 from 4–6pm. Better yet, between 6 and 7pm, you can get two classic cocktails for just $30. Settle in, order a grazing board and enjoy the space however you please. Images: Kristoffer Paulsen.
If you’ve been to the Himalayas lately, you’ll know just how big a problem plastic water bottles are. Rubbish left by trekkers ends up in villages, where waste treatment systems are often non-existent. What’s more, about 50 billion plastic bottles are produced globally each year and, in Australia alone, 373 million or so become landfill. So, a bunch of Spain-based design students have invented a water vessel that leaves no waste behind whatsoever — because you can eat it when you’ve finished drinking. Named ‘Ooho’, it’s actually more a sphere than a bottle, and it’s made of brown algae and calcium chloride. While that might not exactly sound like a MasterChef creation, it is digestible. And there’s every chance it’s good for your teeth. The ingredients are cooked to form a double gelatinous membrane that protects the water inside, keeping it hygienic and well-sealed. "Liquid forms drops because the liquid exhibits surface tension," designers Guillaume Couche, Pierre Paslier and Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez explain. “Bounded completely, or almost completely, by free surfaces. Ooho replicates this behaviour, encircling the water in an edible membrane of algae.” Spheres cost just 2 cents a pop and can be made in various sizes. None of the serious infrastructure involved in PET plastic manufacturing is necessary. In fact, the designers are pretty certain that it won’t be long before everyone will able to cook their own Oohos in their kitchen. The Ooho was one of 12 winners in the 2014 Lexus Design Award. ‘Curiosity’ was the theme, and other awarded inventions included an innovative time-telling device from India, an e-wheel from Vietnam and a den-building kit from the UK. Via Inhabitat.
Cafes are no longer just serving great coffee. They're serving great locally roasted coffee in many forms (from cold drip to batch and single origin espresso), great fare that caters to all dietaries. They also boast interesting decors and are passionate about sustainability and the ethical sourcing of ingredients. And our favourite cafes of the year do an impressive job at covering it all. From vegan croissants and cakes baked by 'Mum', to all-day eateries and a mini eatery pumping out top-notch breakfast banh mi, these six cafes are doing it all. At Concrete Playground we encourage exploration and showcase innovation in our city every day, so we thought it fitting to reward those most talented whippersnappers pushing Melbourne to be a better, braver city. And so, these six new cafes, opened in 2018, were nominated for Best New Cafe in Concrete Playground's Best of 2018 Awards. You can check out all the winners over here.
These days, Easter promises a whole lot more than just generic choccy eggs and old-school hot cross buns. Bakeries, chocolate brands and dessert shops across the city are getting more inventive with each passing year, whipping up all sorts of creative treats worthy of a spot in your own personal Easter hunt. Here, we've rounded up some of the coolest grown-up goodies to seek out, from beer-infused Easter eggs to hot cross bun rum and even decadent chocolate cocktails. Which of these creations will the Easter bunny be bringing you this year? [caption id="attachment_892129" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Peter Dillon[/caption] HOT CROSS CRUFFINS FROM LUNE CROISSANTERIE The croissant masters at Lune have brought back their legendary hybrid Easter treat, to the delight of anyone with a penchant for buttery glazed pastry. The Hot Cross Cruffin is the limited-edition love-child of the croissant, the muffin and the hot cross bun, and features a spiced fruit creme encased within a flaky golden shell. With a cross on top, of course. They're always hot property, so you'll need to be on the ball if you want them in your life. A limited number are available in-store at Lune's Fitzroy, Armadale and CBD sites, though if you get in quick, you can wrangle a pre-order. BEER EASTER EGGS FROM MOLLY ROSE AND PLANET COCOA If you like beer as much as you like chocolate, you're going to love the Easter goodies these two local favourites have dreamed up. Collingwood brewery Molly Rose has joined forces with ethical chocolate shop Planet Cocoa to create a couple of spiked choccy eggs for your Easter wish-list. First, there's the dark s'mores-inspired version, made using Molly Rose's stout, and loaded with vanilla marshmallow, crunchy biscuit bits and a beer caramel. Or, you can try the white chocolate egg, filled with a sour jelly made from the brewery's Summer Holidays apricot sour ale, then finished with honeycomb pieces. Each flavour comes in a six-pack, with a limited number of boxes available to buy from Molly Rose up until Sunday, April 9. BOOZY BUNS FROM ROCHFORD WINES The classic hot cross bun is already pretty darn close to perfection, but this Yarra Valley winery has found a way to make it even better. Rochford Wines has developed a limited-edition Easter bun with a fun, boozy twist, tweaking the usual recipe by soaking the raisins in its signature chardonnay and finishing each bun with a glaze made from its legendary moscato. They're being baked fresh daily onsite at Isabella's Restaurant right through Easter weekend, available to buy from the winery's gift shop. The buns will set you back $22 for a six-pack — you can pre-order online to avoid any disappointment. [caption id="attachment_894933" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Julian Lallo[/caption] EASTER HIGH TEA AT THE TERRACE CAFE Why stop at just one Easter treat when you can sit down to a whole table of them? That's the scene that awaits you at this one-off high tea at The Terrace Cafe on Sunday, April 9. Against the leafy backdrop of the Royal Botanic Gardens, it's serving up a generous Easter spread of sweet and savoury goodies for $95 per person. Expect to tuck into the likes of lemon myrtle cheesecakes, fresh scones, and mini bagels with smoked salmon and horseradish cream. Your ticket also includes a glass of Pommery champagne to sip elegantly while looking out over the lake. SAKURA HOT CROSS BUNS FROM TOKYO LAMGINGTON The masters of inventive sweet treats at Tokyo Lamington are doing something a little bit different for Easter this year. They've taken inspiration from the cherry blossom season that's currently blooming over in Japan and created sakura-infused hot cross buns. This version of the classic features juicy sultanas and yuzu through the dough, with a sakura cross on top and more sakura incorporated into the sticky salted glaze. You can pick them up for $5 a pop, or $27 for a six-pack, online or from the Carlton store. Or, try the team's other Easter invention — a hot cross lamington starring cinnamon sponge, spiced cream and a coating of crumbled hot cross bun. CACAO HUSK LIQUEUR FROM MÖRK AND THE GOSPEL A grown-up Easter offering with a sustainable edge, this innovative cacao husk liqueur is a joint effort from two Melbourne-based makers — award-winning Brunswick distillery The Gospel and artisan chocolate label Mork. The limited-edition drop is crafted using Mörk's leftover single-origin cacao husks, which would normally be thrown out. Here, instead, they're macerated in a blend of the distillery's Straight Rye and Solera Rye Whiskeys to create a complex sip with rich fruit notes. The drink isn't overly sweet, as the husks carry a savoury profile that complements the whisky's aromatics, leaving flavours of roast hazelnut, dried orange and cranberry. There's a limited number of bottles available — grab yours from The Gospel's website. BOOZY BUNNY ESPRESSO MARTINIS FROM QT MELBOURNE This Easter sees QT Melbourne teaming up with local artisan chocolate brand CACAO to deliver a hotel-wide takeover your sweet tooth's gonna love. The chocolate-based festivities are happening from Friday, April 7–Sunday, April 9, kicking off each morning with fresh choc-chip hot cross buns served at Pascale Bar & Grill. But for something extra special, head on up to the 11th floor, where the Rooftop at QT is shaking up limited-edition Boozy Bunny Espresso Martinis right through the weekend. This exclusive Easter concoction features a rich blend of coffee, Diplomatico rum, Chambord and CACAO dark chocolate, coming in at $25 a pop. HOT CROSS RUM FROM THE GROVE DISTILLERY Off the back of a popular 2022 debut, family-run Margaret River distillery The Grove has gone and whipped up a new edition of its beloved Hot Cross Rum. Once again, the small-batch sip has been hand-crafted using The Grove's four-year barrel-aged dark rum, then housed in a former bourbon barrel made of American oak. Raisins, oranges and a bunch of warm spices are left to steep, before the rum is given a final infusion of classic hot cross bun flavours including cinnamon, cloves and vanilla. At the end, you've got a warm, rich, festive-tasting spirit, packed with notes of caramelised raisin, vanilla and cinnamon, with a lingering fruity finish and a hit of molasses to round it all out. A 40-percent ABV hot cross bun in a glass, if you like. The Grove team recommends you sip their new creation neat — with a hot-buttered Easter bun on the side for full effect, of course. Grab yours from the website. HOT CROSS BAO FROM DIN TAI FUNG Dumpling house Din Tai Fung is celebrating Easter with a multicultural mash-up that's sure to delight any sweet-toothed folk — these rather charming hot cross bun-inspired bao. A nod to the traditional Easter bun, the pillowy little beauties are made with steamed bread that's infused with cocoa and filled with oozing molten chocolate, each one finished with a chocolatey cross. Available for a limited time on the menu at Din Tai Fung's Emporium restaurant, they'll set you back $8.90 for a serve of two. Otherwise, you can extend the Easter vibes well into May by stocking up on a bag of three frozen hot cross bao ($12) delivered to your door. CHOCOLATE HOT CROSS BUNS FROM BLACK STAR AND KOKO BLACK Easter is a time for gorging on sweet things — so it's only fitting that two of Australia's best-loved dessert spots team up to release something special in honour of the occasion. The pastry masters at Black Star have come together with chocolatier Koko Black and launched their own dreamy take on the traditional hot cross bun. These beauties are spiked with Koko Black's 60-percent dark chocolate, topped with a lightly spiced glaze and finished with that all-important cross — reimagined with more chocolate, of course. They're available by the single serve, in a six-pack or by the dozen, to pick up from any of Black Star's Melbourne stores up until Monday, April 10. You can also order a box online. DIY COCKTAILS IN EASTER EGGS FROM COCKTAIL PORTER What's way more fun than eating your Easter egg haul the regular way? Filling those chocolate shells with booze and enjoying a grown-up sweet-tooth fix, of course. This DIY kit from Cocktail Porter lets you do just that, stocked with all the ingredients you'll need to whip up your own decadent salted caramel Easter cocktails at home. Each pack features some of Gelato Messina's cult-favourite dulce de leche salted caramel, cold-drip coffee, Mr Black Coffee Liqueur and Baileys. You'll also get chocolate Easter eggs to serve your boozy creations out of, plus salted caramel popcorn to use as a garnish. A small pack contains all the fixings to make five drinks for $80, while the large version comes in at $145 for 12 cocktails. Top image: Rochford Wines
If you want to learn how to whip up sensational pizza, you should probably learn from the best. And someone who's got that title pretty much wrapped up is Johnny Di Francesco — the pizza-twirling maestro behind Melbourne's renowned 400 Gradi stable, which has taken out the gong for Best Pizzeria in Oceania multiple times. Di Francesco was the first Aussie ever to nab the True Neapolitan Pizza Association certification, giving him the right to sell traditional Neapolitan pizza. And now, he's sharing his skills and secrets at a fresh series of hands-on pizza-making masterclasses. With upcoming Saturday sessions on March 18, May 6 and May 27, held at 400 Gradi's Brunswick restaurant, participants will learn how to make a primo pizza from scratch. You'll be guided through mastering the perfect dough, before cooking up a pizza feast to enjoy right there with your class — paired with a glass of Italian vino, of course. Tickets come in at $200, which also includes a pre-class coffee, all your course notes and extra pizza dough to take home. [caption id="attachment_819505" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kristoffer Paulsen[/caption]
Something delightful has been happening in cinemas in some parts of the country. After numerous periods spent empty during the pandemic, with projectors silent, theatres bare and the smell of popcorn fading, picture palaces in many Australian regions are back in business — including both big chains and smaller independent sites in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During COVID-19 lockdowns, no one was short on things to watch, of course. In fact, you probably feel like you've streamed every movie ever made, including new releases, Studio Ghibli's animated fare and Nicolas Cage-starring flicks. But, even if you've spent all your time of late glued to your small screen, we're betting you just can't wait to sit in a darkened room and soak up the splendour of the bigger version. Thankfully, plenty of new films are hitting cinemas so that you can do just that — and we've rounded up, watched and reviewed everything on offer this week. THE GRAY MAN It's been four years since Ryan Gosling last graced screens, rocketing to the moon in First Man. No, Barbie set photos pored over on every internet-connected device don't count. Since he played Neil Armstrong, much has happened. There's the obvious off-screen, of course — but then there's Chris Evans farewelling Captain America, and also appearing in Knives Out with the scene-stealing Ana de Armas. After co-starring in Blade Runner 2049 with Gosling back in 2017, she leapt from that Evans-featuring whodunnit to palling around with 007 in No Time to Die. Also during that time, Bridgerton pushed Regé-Jean Page to fame, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood earmarked Julia Butters as a young talent to watch. This isn't just a history lesson on The Gray Man's cast — well, some of them, given that Billy Bob Thornton (Goliath), Jessica Henwick (The Matrix Resurrections), Dhanush (Maaran), Wagner Moura (Shining Girls) and Alfre Woodard (The Lion King) also pop up, plus Australia's own Callan Mulvey (Firebite) — for the hell of it, though. Back in 2018, before all of the above played out, it's unlikely that this exact film with this exact cast would've eventuated. But plenty of action-thrillers about attempting to snuff out hyper-competent assassins already did flicker across celluloid — both John Wick and Atomic Blonde had already been there and done that, and the Bourne and Bond movies, and countless other predecessors. Still, the combination of this collection of current actors and that familiar setup isn't without its charms in The Gray Man, which makes the leap from the pages of Mark Greaney's 2009 novel to the big and streaming screens. Reportedly Netflix's most expensive movie to date, it lets its two biggest names bounce off of each other with chalk-and-cheese aplomb, and isn't short on globe-hopping action spectacle. The off-the-book spy versus off-the-book spy killer flick is knowing amid all that box-ticking formula, too, although not enough to make its cheesy lines sound smart and savvy. Gosling plays Court Gentry, aka Sierra Six; "007 was taken," he jokes. Before he's given his codename — before he's paid to do the CIA's dirty work as well — he's in prison for murder, then recruited by Donald Fitzroy (Thornton). Fast-forward 18 years and Six is a huge hit at two things: being a ghost, because he no longer officially exists; and covertly wreaking whatever havoc the government tells him to, including knocking off whichever nefarious figure they need gone. But one stint of the latter leaves him in possession of a USB drive that his arrogant new direct superior Carmichael (Page) will ruthlessly kill to destroy. Actually, to be precise, he'll pay Lloyd Hansen (Evans) of Hansen Government Services to do just that, and to do the dirty work that's too dirty for the criminals-turned-government hitmen in the Sierra program, with Six the number-one target. If you've seen one espionage-slash-assassin flick that sends a shadowy life-or-death fight bounding around the planet — here, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Azerbaijan, Germany and Austria all feature, among other spots — then you've seen The Gray Man's template. Directing duo Joe and Anthony Russo helmed the Marvel Cinematic Universe's versions with Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War, so they know the drill. That they've seen a heap of other entries in the genre is never question, either. That feeling radiates from the script, which is credited to Joe Russo with seasoned Marvel scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: End Game), and clearly styles its one-liners after superhero banter. Having Gosling and Evans sling it, one playing bearded, silent and virtuous and the other moustachioed, jabbering and unhinged, makes a helluva difference, however. Read our full review. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPEN If The Phantom of the Open was part of a game of golf, rather than a movie about the club-flinging, ball-hitting, bunker-avoiding sport, it wouldn't be a hole in one. It couldn't be; perfection doesn't suit the story it's telling, which is as real and as shaggy — as so-strange-it-can-only-be-true, too — as they can possibly come. That other key factor in spiriting dimpled orbs from the tee to the cup in a single stroke, aka luck, is definitely pertinent to this feel-good, crowd-pleasing, happily whimsical British comedy, however. Plenty of it helped Maurice Flitcroft, the man at its centre, as he managed to enter the 1976 British Open despite never having set foot on a course or played a full round of golf before. It isn't quite good fortune that makes this high-spirited movie about him work, of course, but it always feels like a feature that might've ended up in the cinematic long grass if it wasn't so warmly pieced together. When Maurice (Mark Rylance, Don't Look Up) debuts on the green at the high-profile Open Championship, it doesn't take long for gap between his skills and the professionals he's playing with to stand out. In the words of The Dude from The Big Lebowski, obviously he's not a golfer — although what makes a golfer, and whether any sport should be the domain of well-to-do gatekeepers who reserve large swathes of land for the use of the privileged few, falls into The Phantom of the Open's view. So does a breezily formulaic yet drawn-from-fact account of a man who was born in Manchester, later settled in the port town of Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria and spent much of his life as a shipyard crane operator, providing for his wife Jean (Sally Hawkins, Spencer), her son Michael (Jake Davies, Artemis Fowl), and the pair's twins Gene (Christian Lees, Pistol) and James (Jonah Lees, The Letter for the King). Maurice had never chased his own dreams, until he decided to give golfing glory a swing. For audiences coming to all this anew, director Craig Roberts (Eternal Beauty) clues viewers in from the get-go, via a recreation of an 80s TV interview with Maurice. The film's key figure chats, looking back on his sporting efforts after his attempts at golf have clearly earned him a level of fame, but he'd also rather just sip a tea with six sugars. That's an easy but pivotal character-establishing moment. He's a cuppa-coveting everyman accustomed to finding sweetness in modest places, which aptly sums up his whole approach to his middle-aged pastime. The jovial humour of the situation — in caring more about his beloved tea than talking on the television — is also telling. Using a screenplay by Simon Farnaby (Paddington 2) based on the actor and writer's 2010 biography of Maurice, Roberts laughs along with and never at his protagonist. He affectionately sees the wannabe golfer's eccentricities, and also values the new lease on life he's eagerly seeking. That quest starts while watching late-night TV, after Michael advises that the shipyard where both men work — and Jean as well — will be making layoffs. With Bridge of Spies Oscar-winner Rylance dripping with sincerity and never cartoonish quirkiness, Maurice eyes the game on-screen like a man having a life-altering and surreal epiphany. Befitting anyone who's ever had a sudden realisation, he's instantly convinced. That he has zero know-how, nor the cash for the right attire, equipment and membership to the local club to practice, doesn't put him off. Neither does filling out the Open entry form, where he instructs Jean to tick the 'professional' box because that's what he wants to be. On the ground at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, he swiftly attracts attention for hitting 121 — the worst score ever recorded — with the press, as well as tournament bigwigs Keith Mackenzie (Rhys Ifans, The King's Man) and Laurent Lambert (Farnaby, Christopher Robin). Read our full review. If you're wondering what else is currently screening in Australian cinemas — or has been lately — check out our rundown of new films released in Australia on April 7, April 14, April 21 and April 28; and May 5, May 12, May 19 and May 26; June 2, June 9, June 16, June 23 and June 30; and July 7. You can also read our full reviews of a heap of recent movies, such as Fantastic Beasts and the Secrets of Dumbledore, Ambulance, Memoria, The Lost City, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Happening, The Good Boss, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Northman, Ithaka, After Yang, Downton Abbey: A New Era, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Petite Maman, The Drover's Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Firestarter, Operation Mincemeat, To Chiara, This Much I Know to Be True, The Innocents, Top Gun: Maverick, The Bob's Burgers Movie, Ablaze, Hatching, Mothering Sunday, Jurassic World Dominion, A Hero, Benediction, Lightyear, Men, Elvis, Lost Illusions, Nude Tuesday, Ali & Ava, Thor: Love and Thunder, Compartment No. 6 and Sundown.
With a booming five-year stint and loyal crowd of regulars under its belt, unique party place Pawn & Co shocked plenty when it announced it was getting turfed from its Chapel Street home — at the hands of developers, no less. But, as promised fiercely to its fans, the bar-pawn shop hybrid has returned with a vengeance, moving to impressive digs around the corner, at 177 Greville Street. The new iteration is bigger and better than ever, with the original hidden bookshelf entrance now leading punters to a heftier two-level space, complete with cosy booths, a courtyard, and three separate bars. This time though, co-owner and designer Josh Lefers has dialled up the steampunk aesthetic to a whole new level, with the retro-futuristic reboot boasting such random treasures as a cryogenic chamber, a steampunk throne, and an old Victorian tram you can sit in. There's also a church organ mixing cocktails, a talking vending machine taking drink orders, and a host of bonus extra features, glimpsed only through special glasses given to patrons. Of course, Pawn & Co has stuck with the bar concept that put it on the map (it was once featured by Forbes back in 2013), so absolutely everything inside the space is up for sale. Best keep that credit card on a short leash though, unless you really want a cryogenic chamber for your house. Images: Eugene Hyland.
A standard midweek office lunch can sometimes consist of an unholy conglomeration of all the leftover bits and pieces you had in the pantry from the night before. No judgement here; we're down with bulk tuna salad paired with leftover curry and microwave rice, or the off packet of years-old mi goreng. Sometimes meal prep has to take a back seat in between clearing that Netflix backlog and trying to squeeze in some actual fun around work. This is all fine and dandy until you have to sit down for lunch with your colleagues and eat your Frankenstein bento box in front of them. It's times like these that you may be wise to suggest lunch out, and we've partnered with American Express to arm you with some killer venue suggestions that will gain the goodwill of the work fam (which you'll reap, come Secret Santa time). So leave your lunch to go mouldy in the work fridge, whip out your Amex and forget about your inbox at these prime CBD spots. Got yourself in another dining situation and need some guidance? Whatever it is, we know a place. Visit The Shortlist and we'll sort you out.
Dining out is back in — and it's back with a vengeance. As we cruise to the mid-way point through this gloriously lockdown-free year, Australia's wining and dining scene is returning to its former glory. And it seems the rest of the world is taking notice, too. The esteemed World's 50 Best Restaurants awards unveiled their annual 51-100 list overnight, with one Aussie restaurant named among them — celebrated chef Andrew McConnell's Melbourne diner, Gimlet at Cavendish House. [caption id="attachment_860200" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Ben Moynihan[/caption] The CBD restaurant took out the number 84 spot in the Top 100 longlist, on its World's 50 Best debut. It was in good company, too, ranking alongside a diverse spread of lauded venues from Singapore to São Paulo, and Munich to Marseille. If you're plotting an overseas food holiday, this lineup is well worth a look. The awards' 51-100 list was unveiled at a ceremony in the UK yesterday, with the restaurant world now holding its breath for the Top 50 lineup, set to be announced on the evening of Monday, July 18 (UK time). Just two Aussie restaurants claimed spots in last year's awards, both of them Victorian, with Dan Hunter's Brae placing 57th and Ben Shewry's Ripponlea fine diner Attica coming in at number 97. [caption id="attachment_826376" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Jo McGann[/caption] Running annually since 2002, the World's 50 Best awards are chosen by a panel of over 1000 culinary experts, guided by a strict voting procedure. They're now hosted by a different country each year, with Melbourne playing host city back in 2017. To check out the full World's 50 Best Restaurants Top 100 list, see the website. Top Image: Earl Carter
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest through to old and recent favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from December's haul. BRAND NEW STUFF YOU CAN WATCH FROM START TO FINISH NOW CAROL & THE END OF THE WORLD Mental health professionals counsel against catastrophising; however, that advice clearly doesn't apply to the film and TV industry. Assuming that the worst is on its way is such a go-to that it's always doomsday somewhere on-screen. In 2023 alone, The Last of Us, Good Omens, Silo, No One Will Save You, Leave the World Behind and animated series Carol & the End of the World are among the examples, but that doesn't mean that every instance — and the list goes on — serves up more of the same. Grappling with the fact that life is finite inspires a wide array of responses, which is one of the ideas at the heart of The Onion writer and Rick and Morty producer Dan Guterman's dance with the apocalypse. Few musings on existence being snuffed out are as meditative, surreal and thoughtful as his ten-part effort, though, which finds beauty in the mundanity and monotony of being human while facing mortality head on. If your days and the entire planet's were numbered, how would you react? What would you spend your final months, weeks, hours, minutes and seconds doing? Who would you want to be with? What would matter? So also asks Carol & the End of the World, while embracing routine — so, embracing everyday reality. The eponymous 42-year-old (Martha Kelly, Sitting in Bars with Cake) is well-aware that everything she's ever known, herself included, will soon be extinct when Carol & the End of the World kicks off. There's only seven months and 13 days left until a planet called Keppler crashes into earth — an event that cannot be avoided, nor is anyone trying to thwart it (this isn't Armageddon, Deep Impact or Don't Look Up). Most folks attempt to cope by indulging their wildest dreams. Carol's daredevil sister Elena (Bridget Everett, Somebody Somewhere) sends videos from her adventurous travels around the globe. Their parents Pauline (Beth Grant, Amsterdam) and Bernard (Lawrence Pressman, Reboot) have ditched clothes and become a throuple with the latter's carer Michael (Delbert Hunt, Monster High). But Carol isn't sure what to do until she discovers The Distraction, aka an accounting office where others — such as mum-of-five Donna (Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Craig of the Creek) and first-time employee Luis (Mel Rodriguez, Made for Love) — find solace in the patterns and repetitions of the nine-to-five grind. As anyone who saw Melancholia and These Final Hours will understand, it's the connections between people that linger when the end is tangible. And as anyone who watched Baskets will instantly recognise, Kelly is perfectly cast as the woman facing the apocalypse with matter-of-fact malaise. Carol & the End of the World streams via Netflix. EVERYONE ELSE BURNS End Times are here again in Everyone Else Burns — except to David Lewis' (Simon Bird, Sandylands) disappointment, they haven't quite arrived just yet. The dutiful Order of the Divine Rod member starts this British sitcom's six-episode first season by ushering his wife Fiona (Kate O'Flynn, Landscapers), high-schooler daughter Rachel (Amy James-Kelly, Gentleman Jack) and pre-teen son Aaron (debutant Harry Connor) out of bed in the middle of the night, grabbing their go bags, and hightailing it to high ground as he shouts about the apocalypse descending and the rapture beginning. It's just a drill, however, with Aaron devastated but Fiona and Rachel relieved. David is certain that being prepared for doomsday will help him become one his cult-like church's elders. A parcel-sorting courier company worker by day and dedicated to his family's piety always, he's desperate for the approval of their chapter's leader Samson (Arsher Ali, Funny Woman), plus the congregation as a whole. Such strict devotion isn't quite the path to family harmony that he thinks it is, though — especially when Fiona is struggling with being the compliant homemaker, as aided by newly divorced neighbour Melissa (Morgana Robinson, Stuck), while Rachel wants to study medicine at university and finds a new friend in expelled Order member Joshua (Ali Khan, A Haunting in Venice). It's been almost a decade since Bird was last The Inbetweeners' stuffy suburban teenager Will McKenzie (the fellow TV comedy ran from 2008–10, with movies in 2011 and 2014). Now, he's the stodgy dad in another comic quartet — and, sporting a bowl cut made with an actual bowl, he's equally suited to the part. Bird's casting is just one stroke of mastery by Everyone Else Burns creators and writers Dillon Mapletoft (BBC3 Quickies) and Oliver Taylor (a small-screen first-timer). Skewering patriarchal religion's extremes, evangelical sects, power dynamics, mindless obedience in the name of faith and the conflicts of all of the above with 21st-century existence within a family sitcom is a divine concept, as it keeps proving across the show's initial run. The series' witty scripts deliver a flurry of jokes and pitch-perfect one-liners in every episode, but this is also a sitcom with heart and excellent performances across the board. See: Fiona's quest for fulfilment, Rachel's yearning to be herself, plus the portrayals — with O'Flynn a deadpan delight and James-Kelly expertly relatable — that bring both to life. Everyone Else Burns streams via SBS On Demand. SQUARING THE CIRCLE (THE STORY OF HIPGNOSIS) Art design can change the world, and Hipgnosis has the story to prove it. Five decades back, the English studio created the most-famous album cover ever — an image that is still as well-known now as it was then, becoming shorthand for the psychedelic and experimental both in music and life in general in the process. Everyone knows The Dark Side of the Moon's artwork. When it comes to triangular prisms, only the Great Pyramids of Giza top the black-hued illustration with a three-sided shape at its centre, a single beam of light hitting its left side and a rainbow of disbursed hues filtering out its right surface. How it came to be, and Hipgnosis' tale as well, is the focus of the Colin Firth (Empire of Light)-produced Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis). While that's a fascinating tale anyway, with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Paul McCartney and Noel Gallagher among the talking-head interviewees — plus Hipgnosis' Aubrey Powell chatting to camera, and his fellow co-founder Storm Thorgerson featured via archival discussions — it benefits from having Anton Corbijn as the documentary's director. In two of Corbijn's best features, music and imagery receive his attention. The Dutch director made the leap from music videos for Depeche Mode, Nirvana, U2, Nick Cave, Roxette, Metallica and Red Hot Chili Peppers to cinema with the Joy Division-centric Control, one of the finest music biopics there is. After thrillers The American and A Most Wanted Man, he then honed in on the friendship between James Dean and American photographer Dennis Stock in Life. Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) is his first doco and, as well as proving an outstanding fit for his career and interests, it's as rich and detailed as the filmmaker's work always is. Come for some of the foremost examples of album art — Wings' Band on the Run, Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy and 10cc's Look Hear? are also featured, on a lengthy list — and stay for the insider accounts behind capturing those visuals, and the folks who made them happen, as well as a reminder that masterpieces don't just hang on gallery walls, and of the importance of album art to begin with. Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) streams via Docplay. DR DEATH Late in the second season of Dr Death, the concept of trust in healthcare fuels a rousing speech. In a plea for a hospital to make the right choice about the titular practitioner, the importance of doctors doing their utmost to earn, deserve and uphold the faith that patients put in them — and that the entire medical industry is based on — is stressed like it's the most important aspect of being in the healing business. It is, of course. That anyone with an ailment or illness can have confidence that they're being given the best advice and treatment, and that whether they live or die matters to the doc caring for them, is the most fundamental tenet of medicine. It's also why this anthology series keeps proving shiver-inducing nightmare fuel, initially in its debut season in 2021 and now in its Édgar Ramírez (Florida Man)- and Mandy Moore (This Is Us)-starring eight-episode follow-up. Season two of Dr Death again explores the actions of a surgeon who threatens to shatter humanity's shared belief in doctors. The first time around, Texas neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch was sparking terror. Now, the series tells of Paolo Macchiarini, whose tale hops across the 2010s, and between Sweden, the US and Russia. Where Duntsch specialised in operating on spinal and neck injuries, often with heartbreakingly grim results, Macchiarini was dubbed 'Miracle Man' for his pioneering research into synthetic organs and regenerative medicine. In 2008, he was among the team that undertook the world's first-ever windpipe transplant aided by using the patient's own stem cells — a procedure that he hailed as a ground-breaking step forward, then kept building upon. Even without knowing the specifics of Macchiarini's life and career when sitting down to binge Dr Death's can't-look-away second season, it's obvious that everything that the Swiss surgeon claims can't be true. If it was, he wouldn't have been the subject of the third season of the Wondery podcast that originated the Dr Death moniker, or of this TV adaptation. Hospital horrors are one strand of true-crime's trusty go-tos. Another: romantic scandals. So, when the audio network that's also behind Dirty John learned of Macchiarini, it must've felt like it had hit the jackpot. With devastating results that are chilling to watch, his patients did when he offered them hope, too, as did investigative journalist Benita Alexander when she made him the focus of a gushing report, then fell in love. Dr Death streams via Stan. Read our full review. NYAD When most sports films bring real-life exploits to the screen, they piece together the steps it took for a person or a team to achieve the ultimate in their field, or come as close as possible while trying their hardest. Nyad is no different, but it's also a deeply absorbing character study of two people: its namesake Diana Nyad and her best friend Bonnie Stoll. The first is the long-distance swimmer whose feats the movie tracks, especially her quest to swim from Cuba to Florida in the 2010s. The second is the former professional racquetball player who became Nyad's coach when she set her sights on making history as a sexagenarian — and reattempting a gruelling leg she'd tried and failed when she was in her late 20s. It helps that Annette Bening (Death on the Nile) plays the swimmer and Jodie Foster (The Mauritanian) her offsider, with both giving exceptional performances that unpack not only the demands of chasing such a dream, but of complicated friendships. Also assisting: that Nyad is helmed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, directors making their feature debut beyond documentaries after The Rescue, Meru and winning an Oscar for charting Alex Honnold's El Capitan climb in Free Solo. Extraordinary efforts are this filmmaking pair's wheelhouse, clearly. Nyad and Stoll fit that description easily, as do Bening and Foster. With the latter, who brings shades of Michael J Fox (Still: A Michael J Fox Movie) to her portrayal, Nyad also provides a reminder of how phenomenal the Taxi Driver, The Silence of the Lambs and Panic Room star is on-screen, how charismatic as well, and how missed she's been while featuring in just four films in the past decade (from January 2024, the fourth season of True Detective thankfully places Foster at its centre). Understandably, the movie's main actors have been earning awards attention. The picture around them never stops plunging into what makes both Nyad and Stoll tick — and keep shooting for such an immense goal, even as setback after setback comes their way — with Chin and Vasarhelyi experts in conveying minutiae. Whether or not you know the outcome, Nyad is rousing and compelling viewing, floating on excellent work by its four key creative talents. Nyad streams via Netflix. MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK Documentarian Mark Cousins knows how to delight cinephiles: turn his attention to a chapter of movie history, or the whole subject itself, then talk his way through it over a deftly spliced-together compilation of clips. So unspooled the mammoth 915-minute The Story of Film: An Odyssey in 2011, plus 2013's A Story of Children and Film and 2021's The Story of Film: A New Generation since. With 2018's Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema, he took the same path but with the likes of Jane Fonda (Book Club: The Next Chapter), Thandiwe Newton (Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget) and Tilda Swinton (The Killer) on narration duties. His current focus is one of the greatest filmmakers to ever tell tales using a camera — who, 43 years after dying, chats through his life's work. That said, My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock obviously hasn't enlisted the real Master of Suspense from beyond the grave. Rather, it gets mimic Alistair McGowan (Creation Stories) pretending. That approach is a gimmick; however, after it worked well-enough for Cousins' also-2018 effort The Eyes of Orson Welles (with The English's Jack Klaff doing the voicing), it does again in the latest in a long line of his informative and passionate filmic explorations. If you've ever wanted a Hitchcock director's commentary track spanning his entire career, My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock is as close as you're ever going to get. Cousins has his faux Hitch dig into his work via six themes, examining how escape, desire, loneliness, time, fulfilment and height ripple through everything from silents such as The Pleasure Garden and The Ring, plus his British talkies like The 39 Steps and Young and Innocent, through to Rebecca, Spellbound, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain and Family Plot. Finishing the two-hour doco with a massive Hitchcock to-watch or to-revisit list goes with the territory. So does taking a close, shrewd and playful look at recurring ideas, motifs and obsessions in the famed filmmaker's fare, with meticulously examples and evidence to illustrate every point. Accordingly, it's classic Cousins, then — as once again filled with snippets of classic cinema. Indeed, My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock is so engrossing in its clips and insights that it didn't need to cheekily pretend that Hitchcock is voicing them. My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock streams via Binge. RICK AND MORTY Long before Rick and Morty's seventh season arrived — 11 months before it wrapped up its ten-instalment run in mid-December, in fact — the beloved animated series with one of pop culture's most-intense fandoms had everyone talking about its latest instalments. When Adult Swim dropped co-creator Justin Roiland due to domestic violence charges in January 2023, it cut ties with the voice of Rick Sanchez and his grandson Morty Smith. New vocals would be deployed, of course. Still, how the necessary change would impact the sci-fi sitcom lingered over the show's return. Solar Opposites, which Roiland was also behind and loaned his tones to, opted to work the swap into its storyline — and enlisted Dan Stevens (The Boy and the Heron) to do the new honours. The answer for Rick and Morty? With the largely unknown Ian Cardoni (Dead of Night) and Harry Belden (Christmas… Again?) providing sound-alike replacements as Rick and Morty's titular madcap scientist and high-schooler offsider, the switch in actors couldn't be more inconsequential. That's exactly how it should be; the series might've made Roiland a household name, and not only for his on-screen efforts, but blending the gleefully silly with the astutely insightful — and finding endless riffs on its Back to the Future-esque premise on the time-, universe- and galaxy-hopping journey — has always been its biggest drawcard. New voices, same tune: that's Rick and Morty season seven, then. Now 71 episodes in, the show isn't non-stop perfection, but that isn't a new development. Also, its best instalments remain must-see gems. So, while an entire 20-minute stretch based around warring factions of letters and numbers falls flat, even with Ice-T (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) as a T-shaped letter called Water-T, that underwhelming effort is surrounded by anarchic, absurd, creative and contemplative delights. Rick's ongoing search for the source of his misery fuels two of Rick and Morty's finest-ever episodes, in fact — and hilarious surprises still abound second by second, scene by scene, in the whip-smart dialogue and hidden in almost every pixel of every frame. Rick and Morty streams via Netflix. BUMP Four festive seasons, four Bump seasons: whenever the end of one year and beginning of the next has rolled around since 2020 became 2021, this Australian dramedy has arrived with it. Not just starring Aussie national treasure Claudia Karvan, but co-created by the Love My Way, The Secret Life of Us and The Clearing actor (with Scrublands writer Kelsey Munro), it has now become a December-January tradition. Also a constant: within its frames, the Davis-Chalmers-Hernández family remains its focus. Everyday ups and downs both big and small keeps fuelling its storylines, too. And, no matter which bumps are faced by matriarch Angie (Karvan), her ex-husband Dom (Angus Sampson, Insidious: The Red Door), their daughter Oly (Nathalie Morris, Petrol), the latter's partner Santi (Carlos Sanson Jr, Sweet As), and Oly and Santi's own daughter Jacinda (TV first-timer Ava Cannon) — back when the show began, an unexpected teen pregnancy that only announced its existence when Oly went into labour at school was the first — this is one of the best-cast and most-heartfelt local productions in recent years. Bump's fourth go-around has a favourite recurring theme in its sights: the constant struggle for balance. Never one to back away from her ambitions, Oly has a dream job in politics, but for demanding boss Shauna (Steph Tisdell, Total Control), who thinks nothing of expecting her to front up to a meeting on a Saturday mere hours after getting off the plane from a week-long conference overseas. At work, Oly is even lying about Jacinda's existence. At home, Santi is frustrated with the changed status quo's impact on the couple's relationship and his attempts to chase his artistic dreams. As for Angie, she's decamped to a protest site to save trees that Shauna wants to bulldoze to build social housing, which helps distract her from her own romantic situation. In its first ten-episode season and its returns since, Bump has always felt like a sibling to Heartbreak High. Initially debuting before that beloved favourite made a 2022 comeback, it explores the out-of-hours chaos surrounding a teacher's family — with Karvan as an educator again after The Heartbreak Kid, the movie that sparked the OG Heartbreak High in the first place. That isn't a fresh insight but it keeps proving true, including in a new run of Bump that adds Dylan Alcott (Scarygirl) to the mix. Bump streams via Stan. CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET In 2023, the factory that made the modelling clay that film and television viewers have seen shaped into inventors, dogs, chickens, sheep, pirates and more closed down. With it came reports that Britain's Aardman Animation might not be able to keep fashioning its beloved claymation movies after 2024, when its next Wallace and Gromit feature is due. The studio nixed those claims, thankfully, amid delivering its first flick in four years: Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. A return to the clucking world of its first-ever full-length release, this 23-years-later sequel still boasts much of Aardman's usual magic. It's a caper with cute creatures, contraptions, heists and puns, and it has clearly — and literally — been crafted with the utmost care. The one unavoidable struggle if you've also seen the big screen's Migration, with both films arriving in the same month: demonstrating how formula has become far too prevalent among family-friendly animation, given that that duck-focused picture from Minions creators Illumination and Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget follow almost the exact same storyline. This chook version reteams with the poultry that escaped from Mr and Mrs Tweedy's farm back in 2000's Chicken Run, albeit with changed voices. Instead of Julia Sawalha (Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie), Thandiwe Newton (Westworld) now lends her vocals to Ginger, the British bird that masterminds the flock's breakouts — and, in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, break-ins — while Zachary Levi (Shazam! Fury of the Gods) does the same for her American husband Rocky, not Mel Gibson (The Continental: From the World of John Wick). The pair are now parents to Molly (Bella Ramsey, The Last of Us), who they've brought up on an island away from humans, but the 11-year-old wants to know more about the world. Enter a chicken processing factory on the mainland, with ads that pique Molly's curiosity because she knows nothing of the food chain's horrors. Even when the writing isn't as smart as previous Aardman movies — or the sight gags up to Shaun the Sheep Movie and A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon's standards — this is a likeable escapade from one of the best in the animation business. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget streams via Netflix. A NEW TV SHOW TO START THE FAMOUS FIVE What do Enid Blyton and the filmmaker behind the Pusher trilogy, Bronson, Drive, Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon have in common? The answer is one of the wildest swings in pop-culture history, plus a move on Nicolas Winding Refn's part that absolutely no one could've anticipated. At home making small-screen fare in the seven years since his last film, the Danish director hops from the overtly Winding Refn-esque Too Old to Die Young and Copenhagen Cowboy to a new TV adaptation of The Famous Five. Yes, that The Famous Five. Yes, he's created a series based on the children's novels about four kids and their dog Timmy, which rank alongside Noddy and The Secret Seven franchise as one of English author Blyton's best-known creations. Yes, it instantly seems an unlikely fit, and makes getting nostalgic with the first of three movie-length episodes set to result across 2023–24 a must-watch. In debut instalment The Curse of Kirrin Island — with chapters two and three due in 2024 — Game of Thrones' Jack Gleeson also adds another rare post-Joffrey role to his resume after season four of Sex Education. Still present, as readers will remember from the page: a 1940s time period, spirited tomboy George (Diaana Babnicova, Don't Breathe 2) at the centre of the action, plus her cousins Julian (Elliott Rose, The Northman) Dick (Kit Rakusen, Foundation) and Anne (newcomer Flora Jacoby Richardson) helping her solve mysteries. Among the thoroughly Winding Refn touches, even though he isn't doing the helming (The Pentaverate, Brockmire and Fleabag alum Tim Kirkby directs The Curse of Kirrin Island): neon and candy-coloured hues over both the opening and closing credits, plus a synth-heavy score any show or movie would love to have. This is no bloody reimagining, however. The man behind The Famous Five's new guise isn't killing anyone's darlings — or, not that he's ever belonged in such company or ever will, going all Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey on a childhood staple. Rather, as co-created with Matthew Read (The Pursuit of Love), co-starring Ted Lasso's James Lance and Moon Knight's Ann Akinjirin as George's parents, he's crafted a lushly shot new take on a favourite that starts with an Indiana Jones-style caper involving a dusty goblet and the Knights Templar. The Famous Five streams via Stan. STANDOUT MOVIES FROM THE LAST FEW YEARS THAT YOU NEED TO CATCH UP WITH ASAP SOMETHING IN THE DIRT The pandemic's stay-at-home era gave rise to Bo Burnham's Inside, Zoom horror effort Host and Steven Soderbergh thriller Kimi, three ace examples of creatively adapting to and exploring unexpected circumstances. Add Something in the Dirt to the list, which Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead direct, star in and produce — as well as co-edit with their regular collaborator Michael Felker, while Benson wrote the script and Moorhead lensed the entire picture. Made during lockdown, it was also shot in Benson's own Los Angeles apartment. In their latest mind-twister, there's no missing the Resolution, Spring, The Endless and Synchronic filmmakers' fingerprints all over every millimetre of this movie. It's another unnerving sci-fi-tinged puzzle, too, as they've also pursued via the small screen's Archive 81, The Twilight Zone, Moon Knight and Loki. In other words, Something in the Dirt is exactly what Benson and Moorhead fans should expect from two of the most-interesting cinematic forces today riffing on being stuck in one location, virtually in isolation, while everything feels eerie, unsettling and otherworldly. Moorhead's John Daniels and Benson's Levi Danube both live in the same Hollywood Hills apartment complex, but bond over a series of unusual and seemingly linked paranormal occurrences. Their swift response to strange symbols, crystals, lights and levitating objects is to team up on a documentary, hoping that Netflix might snap it up — and down the rabbit hole the duo eagerly tumble. Paranoia, alienation, coincidences and conspiracy theories all swirl, plus uncertainty about how much they can actually trust each other. As the feature flits between interviews and experts, proving a film within a film, whether Something in the Dirt's viewers can trust what they're being told also swells. Benson and Moorhead dedicate the picture "to making movies with your friends", but could've also shouted out humanity's easy willingness to clutch onto anything and everything to attempt to make sense of chaos. This is a movie about where the brain spirals and, as it parodies and puzzles, it's another standout from its inventive filmmaking pair. It'd also slip nicely into two stellar triple bills, either with Under the Silver Lake and Mulholland Drive, or Pi and Eraserhead. Something in the Dirt streams via Shudder and AMC+. ANNETTE Dreamy and dazzling from its first moments, rock opera Annette bursts onto the screen with a question: "so may we start?". "Please do", fans of Holy Motors director Leos Carax should think to themselves, and devotees of Ron and Russell Mael as well — and yes the later, aka art-pop duo Sparks, have clearly been having a moment since 2021 (see: documentary The Sparks Brothers, their 2023 album The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte and their first tour Down Under in two decades). Carax and the Maels all appear on-screen in Annette's opening, joined by Adam Driver (65), Marion Cotillard (We'll End Up Together) and Simon Helberg (Poker Face). In a glorious, song-fuelled, sing-and-walk scene, no one is playing a character yet, but they're all still playing a part. They're setting the vibe in a sensational way, and the tune is pure Sparks, with the pair both composing the movie's music and writing the feature itself with Carax. The tone bubbles with the duo's avant-garde sensibilities, too, and the whole song echoes with the promise of remarkable things to come. In 2012, Carax gave the world a once-in-a-lifetime gem. Annette is a different film to Holy Motors, obviously, but it gleams just as brightly and with the same beguiling, inimitable, all-encompassing allure. There's an ethereal, otherworldly quality to Carax's work — of heightening reality to truly understand how people feel and act, and of experimenting with artforms to interrogate them — and that sensation seeps through every second of his gleefully melodramatic musical, which deservedly won him the Cannes Film Festival's Best Director award. Everything about Annette has been turned up several notches on every setting, from its lush and lavish imagery to its cascade of toe-tapping, sung-through tunes that keep propelling the narrative forward. Every detail of that story has been amplified, too, as this tragic fairy tale follows standup comedian Henry McHenry (Driver), opera star Ann Defrasnoux (Cotillard), their mismatched but passionate and all-consuming love, and their titular daughter — with the latter played by a marionette. Annette streams via SBS On Demand. Read our full review and our interview with Sparks. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November this year. You can also check out our running list of standout must-stream shows from this year as well — and our best 15 new shows of 2023, 15 newcomers you might've missed, top 15 returning shows of the year, 15 best films, 15 top movies you likely didn't see, 15 best straight-to-streaming flicks and 30 movies worth catching up on over the summer.
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time. Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?". Hundreds of titles are added to Australia's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest through to old and recent favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from April's haul. Brand-New Stuff You Can Watch From Start to Finish Now Ripley Boasting The Night Of's Steven Zaillian as its sole writer and director — joining a list of credits that includes penning Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York and The Irishman, and also winning an Oscar for Schindler's List — the latest exquisite jump into the Ripley realm doesn't splash around black-and-white hues as a mere stylistic preference. In this new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 book, the setting is still coastal Italy at its most picturesque, and therefore a place that most would want to revel in visually; Anthony Minghella, The Talented Mr Ripley's director a quarter-century back, did so with an intoxicating glow. For Zaillian, however, stripping away the warm rays and beaches and hair, blue seas and skies, and tanned skin as well, ensures that all that glitters is never gold or even just golden in tone as he spends time with Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers). There's never even a glint of a hint of a travelogue aesthetic, with viewers confronted with the starkness of Tom's choices and actions — he is a conman and worse, after all — plus the shadows that he persists in lurking in and the impossibility of ever grasping everything that he desires in full colour. On the page and on the screen both before and now, the overarching story remains the same, though, in this new definitive take on the character. It's the early 60s rather than the late 50s in Ripley, but Tom is in New York, running fake debt-collection schemes and clinging to the edges of high-society circles, when he's made a proposal that he was never going to refuse. Herbert Greenleaf (filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan, who has also acted in his own three features You Can Count on Me, Margaret and Manchester by the Sea) enlists him to sail to Europe to reunite with a friend, the shipping magnate's son Dickie (Johnny Flynn, One Life). As a paid gig, Tom is to convince the business heir to finally return home. But Dickie has no intention of giving up his Mediterranean leisure as he lackadaisically pursues painting — and more passionately spends his time with girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning, The Equalizer 3) — to join the family business. Ripley streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Fallout A young woman sheltered in the most literal sense there is, living her entire life in one of the subterranean facilities where humanity endeavours to start anew. A TV and movie star famed for his roles in westerns, then entertaining kids, then still alive but irradiated 219 years after the nuclear destruction of Los Angeles. An aspiring soldier who has never known anything but a devastated world, clinging to hopes of progression through the military. All three walk into the wasteland in Fallout, the live-action adaptation of the gaming series that first arrived in 1997. All three cross paths in an attempt to do all that anyone can in a post-apocalyptic hellscape: survive. So goes this leap into a world that's had millions mashing buttons through not only the OG game, but also three released sequels — a fourth is on the way — plus seven spinoffs. Even with Westworld' Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy as executive producers, giving Fallout the flesh-and-blood treatment is a massive and ambitious task. But where 2023 had The Last of Us, 2024 now has this; both are big-name dystopian titles that earned legions of devotees through gaming, and both are excellent in gripping and immersive fashion at making the move to television. Fallout's vision of one of the bleakest potential futures splits its focus between Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell, Yellowjackets), who has no concept of how humanity can exist on the surface when the show kicks off; Cooper Howard aka bounty hunter The Ghoul (Walton Goggins, I'm a Virgo), the screen gunslinger who saw the bombs fall and now wields weapons IRL; and Maximus (Aaron Moten, Emancipation), a trainee for the Brotherhood of Steel, which is committed to restoring order by throwing around its might (and using robotic armour). The show's lead casting is gleaming, to the point that imagining anyone but this trio of actors as Lucy, Howard-slash-The Ghoul and Maximus is impossible. Where else has Walton's resume, with its jumps between law-and-order efforts, westerns traditional and neo, and comedy — see: The Shield, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, The Hateful Eight, Vice Principals and The Righteous Gemstones, as a mere few examples — been leading than here? (And, next, also season three of The White Lotus.) Fallout streams via Prime Video. Read our full review, and our interview with Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten. Heartbreak High When Heartbreak High returned in 2022, the Sydney-set series benefited from a pivotal fact: years pass, trends come and go, but teen awkwardness and chaos is eternal. In its second season, Netflix's revival of the 1994–99 Australian favourite embraces the same idea. It's a new term at Hartley High, one that'll culminate in the Year 11 formal. Amerie (Ayesha Madon, Love Me) might be certain that she can change — doing so is her entire platform for running for school captain — but waiting for adulthood to start never stops being a whirlwind. Proving as easy to binge as its predecessor, Heartbreak High's eight new episodes reassemble the bulk of the gang that audiences were initially introduced to two years ago. Moving forward is everyone's planned path — en route to that dance, which gives the new batch of instalments its flashforward opening. The evening brings fire, literally. Among the regular crew, a few faces are missing in the aftermath. The show then rewinds to two months earlier, to old worries resurfacing, new faces making an appearance and, giving the season a whodunnit spin as well, to a mystery figure taunting and publicly shaming Amerie. The latter begins their reign of terror with a dead animal; Bird Psycho is soon the unknown culprit's nickname. Leaders, creepers, slipping between the sheets: that's Heartbreak High's second streaming go-around in a nutshell. The battle to rule the school is a three-person race, pitting Amerie against Sasha (Gemma Chua-Tran, Mustangs FC) and Spider (Bryn Chapman Parish, Mr Inbetween) — one as progressive as Hartley, which already earns that label heartily, can get; the other season one's poster boy for jerkiness, toxicity and entitlement. Heightening the electoral showdown is a curriculum clash, with the SLT class introduced by Jojo Obah (Chika Ikogwe, The Tourist) last term as a mandatory response to the grade's behaviour questioned by Head of PE Timothy Voss (Angus Sampson, Bump). A new faculty member for the show, he's anti-everything that he deems a threat to traditional notions of masculinity. In Spider, Ant (Brodie Townsend, Significant Others) and others, he quickly has followers. Their name, even adorning t-shirts: CUMLORDS. Heartbreak High streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Such Brave Girls If Such Brave Girls seems close to reality, that's because it is. In the A24 co-produced series — which joins the cult-favourite entertainment company's TV slate alongside other standouts such as Beef, Irma Vep, Mo and The Curse over the past two years — sisters Kat Sadler and Lizzie Davidson both star and take inspiration from their lives and personalities. Making their TV acting debuts together, the pair also play siblings. Josie (Sadler) and Billie (Davidson), their on-screen surrogates, are navigating life's lows not only when the show's six-part first season begins, but as it goes on. The entire setup was sparked by a phone conversation between the duo IRL, when one had attempted to take her life twice and the other was £20,000 in debt. For most, a sitcom wouldn't come next; however, laughing at and lampooning themselves, and seeing the absurdity as well, is part of Such Brave Girls' cathartic purpose for its driving forces. If you've ever thought "what else can you do?" when finding yourself inexplicably chuckling at your own misfortune, that's this series — this sharp, unsparing, candid, complex and darkly comedic series — from start to finish. Creating the three-time BAFTA-nominated show, writing it and leading, Sadler plays Josie as a bundle of nerves and uncertainty. The character is in her twenties, struggling with her mental health and aspiring to be an artist, but is largely working her way through a never-ending gap year. Davidson's Billie is the eternally optimistic opposite — albeit really only about the fact that Nicky (Sam Buchanan, Back to Black), the guy that she's hooking up with, will eventually stop cheating on her, fall in love and whisk her away to Manchester to open a vodka bar bearing her name. Both girls live at home with their mother Deb (Louise Brealey, Lockwood & Co), who also sees a relationship as the solution to her problems, setting her sights on the iPad-addicted Dev (Paul Bazely, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves) a decade after Josie and Billie's father went out for teabags and never came home. With actor-slash-director Simon Bird behind the lens — alongside first-timer Marco Alessi on one episode — if Such Brave Girls seems like it belongs in the same acerbically comedic realm as The Inbetweeners and Everyone Else Burns, there's a reason for that, too. Such Brave Girls streams via Stan. Read our full review. Baby Reindeer A person walking into a bar. The words "sent from my iPhone". A comedian pouring their experiences into a one-performer play. A twisty true-crime tale making the leap to the screen. All four either feature in, inspired or describe Baby Reindeer. All four are inescapably familiar, too, but the same can't be said about this seven-part Netflix series. Written by and starring Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, and also based on his real-life experiences, this is a bleak, brave, revelatory, devastating and unforgettable psychological thriller. It does indeed begin with someone stepping inside a pub — and while Gadd plays a comedian on-screen as well, don't go waiting for a punchline. When Martha (Jessica Gunning, The Outlaws) enters The Heart in Camden, London in 2015, Donny Dunn (Gadd, Wedding Season) is behind the counter. "I felt sorry for her. That's the first feeling I felt," the latter explains via voiceover. Perched awkwardly on a stool at the bar, Martha is whimpering to herself. She says that she can't afford to buy a drink, even a cup of tea. Donny takes pity, offering her one for free — and her face instantly lights up. That's the fateful moment, one of sorrow met with kindness, that ignites Baby Reindeer's narrative and changes Donny's life. After that warm beverage, The Heart instantly has a new regular. Sipping Diet Cokes from then on (still on the house), Martha is full of stories about all of the high-profile people that she knows and her high-flying lawyer job. But despite insisting that she's constantly busy, she's also always at the bar when Donny is at work, sticking around for his whole shifts. She chats incessantly about herself, folks that he doesn't know and while directing compliments Donny's way. He's in his twenties, she's in her early forties — and he can see that she's smitten, letting her flirt. He notices her laugh. He likes the attention, not to mention getting his ego stroked. While he doesn't reciprocate her feelings, he's friendly. She isn't just an infatuated fantasist, however; she's chillingly obsessed to an unstable degree. She finds his email address, then starts messaging him non-stop when she's not nattering at his workplace. (IRL, Gadd received more than 40,000 emails.) Baby Reindeer streams via Netflix. Read our full review. Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV One of the most difficult episodes of documentary television to watch in 2024 hails from five-part series Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. It's also essential to see. In its third chapter, this dive into the reality behind Nickelodeon's live-action children's TV success from the late-90s onwards gives the microphone to Drake Bell, who unravels his experiences while first working on The Amanda Show (led by Amanda Bynes, Easy A) and then on Drake & Josh (co-starring Josh Peck, Oppenheimer) — specifically his interactions with dialogue coach Brian Peck, who became immersed in Bell's life to a disturbing degree and was convicted in 2004 of sexually assaulting him. The case wasn't a major scandal at the time, incredulously. Even with Bell's name withheld because he was a minor, it was the second instance of a Nickelodeon staff member being arrested for such horrendous crimes in mere months, and yet widespread media coverage and public awareness didn't follow. Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV marks the first time that Bell talks about it publicly. Witnessing him speak through the details is as harrowing as it is heartbreaking. Originally releasing as four episodes, then adding a fifth hosted by journalist Soledad O'Brien to reflect upon the revelations covered, this docuseries has much that's distressing in its sights — much of it under television producer Dan Schneider. From sketch series All That onwards, he was a Nickelodeon bigwig; Kenan & Kel, Zoey 101, iCarly and Sam & Cat are also among the shows on his resume. Former child actors such as Giovonnie Samuels, Bryan Hearne, Alexa Nikolas, Katrina Johnson, Kyle Sullivan, Raquel Lee and Leon Frierson talk about the pressures on set, and the inappropriate jokes that they didn't realise were inappropriate jokes worked into their material. Ex-The Amanda Show writers Christy Stratton (Freeridge) and Jenny Kilgen step through the misogynistic environment among the creatives; that they were forced to split a salary between them but do the same amount of work as their male colleagues is only the beginning. Parents, including Bell's father Joe, share their unsurprisingly upset perspectives. Bynes' post-Nickelodeon fortunes also get the spotlight. Clips and behind-the-scenes footage are weaved in throughout, too, and looking at any of the network's shows from the era the same way again is impossible. Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV streams via Binge. Scoop What did it take to get one of the most important interviews with a member of the royal family that has ever aired on British television (and most important interviews in general)? That's Scoop's question — and not only do director Philip Martin (The Crown) and screenwriters Peter Moffat (61st Street) and Geoff Bussetil (The English Game) ask it while adapting Sam McAlister's 2022 book Scoops, but their compelling journalism thriller answers it in detail. The bulk of the feature is set in 2019, spending its time among the BBC staff at news and current affairs show Newsnight as they first try to lock in and then attempt to execute a chat with Prince Andrew. The end result, aka the program's 'Prince Andrew & the Epstein Scandal' episode, will go down in history; even if you didn't see it then or haven't since, everyone knows of that discussion and its ramifications. Getting it to the screen was the result of hard work, dedication and smarts on the parts of booker and producer McAllister, host Emily Maitlis and editor Esme Wren — and a tale that deserves to be just as well known. Billie Piper (I Hate Suzie) plays McAllister as whip-smart, fiercely determined and indefatigable when she's chasing a story, but undervalued at her job, so much so that her colleagues regularly accuse her of wasting time following up the wrong guests instead of simply complying with their requests. She's certain that a class clash isn't helping — and just as confident that she knows what she's doing, including when she begins corresponding with the Duke of York's (Rufus Sewell, Kaleidoscope) private secretary Amanda Thirsk (Keeley Hawes, Orphan Black: Echoes) about getting him on-camera to discuss his connection to Jeffrey Epstein. She needs backup from both Maitlis (Gillian Anderson, Sex Education) and Wren (Romola Garai, One Life), as well as the entire team's support, in bringing the chat to fruition. Just like the IRL interview itself, this polished how-it-happened procedural is riveting viewing as it slides into its genre alongside Spotlight and She Said. Scoop streams via Netflix. New and Returning Shows to Check Out Week by Week Sugar Colin Farrell's recent hot streak continues. After a busy few years that've seen him earn Oscar and BAFTA nominations for The Banshees of Inisherin, collect a Gotham Awards nod for After Yang, steal scenes so heartily in The Batman that TV spinoff The Penguin is on the way and pick up the Satellite Awards' attention for The North Water, Sugar now joins his resume. The Irish actor's television credits are still few — and, until his True Detective stint in 2015, far between — but it's easy to see what appealed to him about leading this mystery series. From the moment that the Los Angeles-set noir effort begins — in Tokyo, in fact — it drips with intrigue. Farrell's John Sugar, the show's namesake, is a suave private detective who takes a big Hollywood case against his handler Ruby's (Kirby, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off) recommendation. He's soon plunged into shadowy City of Angels chaos, bringing The Big Sleep, Chinatown, LA Confidential and Under the Silver Lake to mind, and loving movie history beyond sharing the same genre as said flicks. Softly spoken, always crispy dressed, understandably cynical and frequently behind the wheel of a blue vintage convertible, Sugar, the PI, is a film fan. The series bakes that love and its own links to cinema history into its very being through spliced-in clips and references elsewhere — and also foregrounds the idea that illusions, aka what Tinseltown so eagerly sells via its celluloid dreams, are inescapable in its narrative in the process. Twists come, not just including a brilliant move that reframes everything that comes before, but as Sugar endeavours to track down Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler, Don't Worry Darling). She's the granddaughter of worried legendary film producer Jonathan (James Cromwell, Succession); daughter of less-concerned (and less-renowned) fellow producer Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris, Better Call Saul); half-sister of former child star David (Nate Corddry, Barry), who is on the comeback trail; and ex-step daughter of pioneering rocker Melanie (Amy Ryan, Beau Is Afraid). Trying to find her inspires heated opposition. Also sparked: an excellently cast series that splashes its affection of film noir and LA movies gone by across its frames, but is never afraid to be its own thing. Sugar streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. The Sympathizer Fresh from winning an Oscar for getting antagonistic in times gone by as United States Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr gets antagonistic in times gone by again in The Sympathizer — as a CIA handler, a university professor, a politician and a Francis Ford Coppola-esque filmmaker on an Apocalypse Now-style movie, for starters. In another addition to his post-Marvel resume that emphasises how great it is to see him stepping into the shoes of someone other than Tony Stark, he takes on multiple roles in this espionage-meets-Vietnam War drama, which adapts Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name. But Downey Jr is never the show's lead, which instead goes to Australian Hoa Xuande (Last King of the Cross). The latter plays the Captain, who works for South Vietnamese secret police in Saigon before the city's fall, and is also a spy for the North Vietnamese communist forces. It's his memories, as typed out at a reeducation camp, that guide the seven-part miniseries' narrative — jumping back and forth in time, as recollections do, including to his escape to America. As the Captain relays the details of his mission and attempts to work both sides, The Sympathizer isn't just flitting between flashbacks as a structural tactic. The act of remembering is as much a focus as the varied contents of the Captain's memories — to the point that rewinding to add more context to a scene that's just been shown, or noting that he didn't specifically witness something but feels as if he can fill in the gap, also forms the storytelling approach. Perspective and influence are high among the show's concerns, too, as the Captain navigates the sway of many colonial faces (making Downey Jr's multiple roles a powerful and revealing touch) both in Vietnam and in the US. Behind it all off-screen is a filmmaker with a history of probing the tales that we tell ourselves and get others believing, as seen in stone-cold revenge-thriller classic Oldboy, 2022's best film Decision to Leave and 2018 miniseries The Little Drummer Girl: the inimitable Park Chan-wook. He co-created The Sympathizer for the screen with Don McKellar (Blindness) and it always bears is imprint, whether or not he's directing episodes — he helms three — with his piercing style, or getting help from Fernando Meirelles (who has been busy with this and Sugar) and Marc Munden (The Third Day). The Sympathizer streams via Binge. Loot Across ten extremely amusing initial episodes in 2022, Loot had a message: billionaires shouldn't exist. So declared the show's resident cashed-up character, with Molly Wells (Maya Rudolph, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem) receiving $87 billion in her divorce from tech guru John Novak (Adam Scott, Madame Web), then spending most of the sitcom's first season working out what to do with it (and also how to handle her newly single life in general). That she had a foundation to her name was virtually news to her. So was much about everything beyond the ultra-rich. And, she was hardly equipped for being on her own. But Loot's debut run came to an entertaining end with the big statement that it was always uttering not so quietly anyway. So what happens next, after one of the richest people in the world decides to give away all of her money? Cue season two of this ace workplace-set comedy. Created by former Parks and Recreation writers Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard, in their second Rudolph-starring delight — 2018's Forever was the first — Loot splices together three popular on-screen realms as it loosely draws parallels with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his philanthropist ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. At her charity, as Molly's staff become the kind of friends that feel like family while doing their jobs, shows such as 30 Rock and Superstore (which Hubbard also has on his resume) score an obvious sibling. As its protagonist endeavours to do good, be better and discover what makes a meaningful life, The Good Place (which Yang also wrote for) and Forever get company. And in enjoying its eat-the-rich mode as well, it sits alongside Succession and The White Lotus, albeit while being far sillier. Loot streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. The Big Door Prize If there was a Morpho machine IRL rather than just in The Big Door Prize, and it dispensed cards that described the potential of TV shows instead of people, this is what it might spit out about the series that it's in: "comforting". For a mystery-tinged dramedy filled with people trying to work out who they are and truly want to be after an arcade game-esque console appears in their small town, this page-to-screen show has always proven both cathartic and relatable viewing. Its timing, dropping season one in 2023 as the pandemic-inspired great reset was well and truly in full swing, is a key factor. Last year as well as now — with season two currently upon us — this is a series that speaks to the yearning to face existential questions that couldn't be more familiar in a world where COVID-19 sparked a wave of similar "who am I?" musings on a global scale. The difference for the residents of Deerfield in this second spin: their journey no longer simply involves pieces of cardboard that claim to know where the bearer should be expending their energy, but also spans new animated videos that transform their inner thoughts and hopes into 32-bit clips. When the Morpho first made its presence known, high-school teacher Dusty (Chris O'Dowd, Slumberland) was cynical. Now he's taking the same route as everyone else in his community — including his wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis, The Upshaws) and daughter Trina (Djouliet Amara, Fitting In) — by letting it steer his decisions. But whether he's making moves that'll impact his marriage, or his restaurant-owning best friend Giorgio (Josh Segarra, The Other Two) is leaping into a new relationship with Cass' best friend Nat (Mary Holland, The Afterparty), or other townsfolk are holding the Morpho up as a source of wisdom, easy happiness rarely follows. Season two of this David West Read (Schitt's Creek)-developed series still treats its magical machine as a puzzle for characters and viewers to attempt to solve, but it also digs deeper into the quest for answers that we all undertake while knowing deep down that there's no such thing as a straightforward meaning of life. As well as being extremely well-cast and thoughtful, it's no wonder that The Big Door Prize keeps feeling like staring in a mirror — and constantly intriguing as well. The Big Door Prize streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review. An Excellent Recent Film You Might've Missed Showing Up Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams are one of cinema's all-time great pairings. After 2008's Wendy and Lucy, 2010's Meek's Cutoff and 2016's Certain Women, all divine, add Showing Up to the reasons that their collaborations are an event. Again, writer/director Reichardt hones in on characters who wouldn't grace the screen otherwise, and on lives that rarely do the same. With her trademark empathy, patience and space, she spends time with people and problems that couldn't be more relatable as well. Her first picture since 2019's stunning First Cow, which didn't feature Williams, also feels drawn from the filmmaker's reality. She isn't a sculptor in Portland working an administration job at an arts and crafts college while struggling to find the time to create intricate ceramic figurines, but she is one of America's finest auteurs in an industry that so scarcely values the intricacy and artistry of her work. No one needs to have stood exactly in Showing Up's protagonist's shoes, or in Reichardt's, to understand that tussle — or the fight for the always-elusive right balance between passion and a paycheque, all while everyday chaos, family drama and the minutiae of just existing also throws up roadblocks. Showing Up couldn't have a better title. For Lizzy (Wiliams, The Fabelmans), who spends the nine-to-five grind at her alma mater with her mother (Maryann Plunkett, Manifest) as her boss, everything she does — or needs or wants to — is about doing exactly what the movie's moniker says. That doesn't mean that she's thrilled about it. She definitely isn't happy about her frenemy, neighobour and landlord Jo (Hong Chau, Asteroid City), who won't fix her hot water, couldn't be more oblivious to anyone else's problems and soon has her helping play nurse to an injured pidgeon. Reichardt spins the film's narrative around Lizzy's preparations for a one-night-only exhibition, including trying to carve out the hours needed to finish her clay pieces amid her job, the bird, advocating for a liveable home, professional envy and concerns for her alienated brother (John Magaro, Past Lives). The care and detail that goes into Lizzy's figurines is mirrored in Reichardt's own efforts, in another thoughtful and resonant masterpiece that does what all of the filmmaker's masterpieces do: says everything even when nothing is being uttered, proves a wonder of observation, boasts a pitch-perfect cast and isn't easily forgotten. Showing Up streams via Netflix. Need a few more streaming recommendations? Check out our picks from January, February and March this year, and also from January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023. You can also check out our running list of standout must-stream shows from last year as well — and our best 15 new shows of 2023, 15 newcomers you might've missed, top 15 returning shows of the year, 15 best films, 15 top movies you likely didn't see, 15 best straight-to-streaming flicks and 30 movies worth catching up on over the summer.
With vegan options galore, locally made gluten free bases available and a solid lineup of Victorian beers and wines, Brunswick's latest pizzeria is sure to please the whole family (and friendship group too). Located on Victoria Street, across the road from Small Axe Kitchen, Green Acre was scheduled to open right when the COVID-19 lockdown hit. Instead of hitting pause, though, co-owners Rob McKenzie (Hard Pressed Coffee) and Phil Gijsbers (Burnley Brewing, East End Wine Bar, Small Print Pizza in Windsor) ran a Small Print Pizza pop-up in the space until restrictions eased on June 1. Now, the duo has unveiled the OG idea for the space: Green Acre. Designed by Sash Design and built using mostly salvaged and upcycled materials, the space has cosy leather booths, a fairy light-lit courtyard, polished timber tables and rustic golden light fittings. Wherever you choose to sit, you'll be digging into stone-fired sourdough pizzas. Vegans will find joy in The Grass is Greener (roast zucchini, spinach, chilli and smashed peas) and the Shroom (flat and enoki mushrooms, truffle oil and rocket), as well as the various pizzas topped with dairy-free cheeses and vegan salami. Meat-eaters also have plenty to choose from, including the controversial ham and pineapple, a chilli chicken number and one topped with prosciutto and pear. If you prefer your pizza topped with neither vegetables nor meat but, in fact, sweets, we suggest you go straight for the dessert pizza, which comes with Nutella, smashed Oreos and strawberries. Plus, pizzas are just $15 on Tuesdays. As well as being built relatively sustainably, the pizzeria has a commitment to low waste and locally sourced produce. Wines are almost exclusively soured from Victoria — with a few numbers from across SA and WA — while beers feature Burnley (understandably) and other Brunswick locals, such as CoConsiprators and Foreigner. While the duo encourages dining in where possible (to help minimise packaging waste), if you do takeaway, you can do so knowing your pizza box is made from recycled cardboard and can itself be recycled thanks to a piece of 'sacrificial' paper that catches the grease.
Each year, the esteemed World's 50 Best Restaurants awards do exactly what's on the box: names the top eateries around the world. Actually, the accolades go a step further, doubling that number thanks to a 51–100 longlist. That's 100 top-notch restaurants singled out every year, giving diners globally plenty of places for their culinary bucket lists. For 2023, the results are now in, as announced on Tuesday, June 20 in Valencia in Spain. In number one spot: Central, with chefs Virgilio Martinez and Pía León taking the honours for their restaurant in Lima, Peru. It earned the prestigious top ranking from 2022's winner Geranium, after coming in second to the Copenhagen venue last year. Perhaps helping its fortunes: the fact that Geranium isn't named in this year's list at all because it's been elevated to the Best of the Best hall of fame, which means that it's no longer in the running for the regular rankings. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Worlds 50 Best Restaurants (@theworlds50best) This who's who of worldwide restaurants does lack one big thing in 2023, however, and on both its 1–50 and 51–100 rankings. In 2022, only Andrew McConnell's Melbourne diner Gimlet at Cavendish House earned a place on either list from Australia, coming in at 84 for its World's 50 Best debut. This year, neither it nor any other Aussie venues got the nod. Australia's hospitality scene hasn't ever dominated the World's 50 Best Restaurants gongs, but not placing at all for 2023 hasn't escaped attention. Just two Aussie restaurants claimed spots in 2021's awards, both of them Victorian, with Dan Hunter's Brae placing 57th and Ben Shewry's Ripponlea fine diner Attica coming in at number 97. There were no awards in 2020, but Brae and Attica also placed in the longlist in 2019. In 2018, Attica came in 20th and Brae 58th. Australia has had up to four restaurants in the top 50 before, including three when the awards debuted in 2002. [caption id="attachment_860199" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Gimlet, Earl Carter[/caption] The World's 50 Best awards are chosen by a panel of over 1000 culinary experts, guided by a strict voting procedure. They're now hosted by a different country each year, with Melbourne playing host city back in 2017. Alongside Central, 2023's picks included Disfrutar in Barcelona in second, Diverxo in Madrid in third, Atxondo's Asador Etxebarri in fourth and Copenhagen's Alchemist in fifth. Next came Maido in Lima, Lido 84 in the Gardone Riviera, Atomix in New York, Quintonil in Mexico City and Table by Bruno Verjus in Paris to round out the top ten. [caption id="attachment_906576" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Central, Winedirector via Wikimedia Commons[/caption] Geranium joins El Bulli, The French Laundry, The Fat Duck, Noma's original and current location, El Celler de Can Roca, Osteria Francescana, Eleven Madison Park and Mirazur in the Best of the Best hall of fame, so you won't see any of them on the main lists. Wondering about the best places to eat Down Under, even if Australia has been snubbed by the World's 50 Best Restaurants? Check out our picks for the best Sydney and best Melbourne restaurants. [caption id="attachment_884417" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Noma[/caption] To check out the full World's 50 Best Restaurants Top 50 and 100 lists, head to the awards' website. Top image: Alchemist, City Foodsters via Wikimedia Commons.
After first closing its border with Victoria at the beginning of July, then warning residents against travel to and from regional towns in the area, New South Wales is implementing a strict new border zone between the two states. Announced on Sunday, July 19 and coming into effect from midnight on Tuesday, July 21, the border zone will start at the Murray River — placing tighter restrictions on residents of NSW border towns, as well as on Victorians looking to head north. As part of a new permit system — which will replace all currently issued permits, as well as any issued between now and the commencement of the border zone, with those needing permits required to reapply — folks living in NSW border towns will only be able to travel to the Victorian side of the border zone for a limited number of reasons. And, if they venture past the zone into the rest of Victoria, they'll be required to self-isolate for 14 days upon their return. Also, any other NSW resident who crosses the Murray River, otherwise enters Victoria or has been in the state in the past fortnight will be required to self-isolate for 14 days on their return to NSW. Residents of NSW border towns looking cross into the Victorian section of the zone will only be able to do so for three designated reasons: going to work or attending an education institution (if you can't do so from home), and to obtain medical care, supplies or health services. The same "extremely limited purposes" will apply to Victorian border town inhabitants looking to enter the NSW section of the zone. Victorians who receive a permit to enter NSW will also need to carry a copy of their permit with them, and produce it when directed — and abide by a number of other conditions. Those entering the state for child access or care arrangements, or freight workers, will need to have their own COVID Safety Plan; critical service workers will have to self-isolate when not providing their critical services; and Victorians will only be able to head to NSW for medical or hospital services if those services are not available in Victoria or can't be accessed remotely. [caption id="attachment_775275" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] A town near the NSW-Victorian border by Denisbin via Flickr.[/caption] Announcing the changes, the NSW government reiterated its standard current advice for the state's residents regarding visiting Victoria: "all NSW residents are strongly urged not to travel to Victoria". The tightened border restrictions were revealed on the same day that the NSW government urged the state's inhabitants to avoid non-essential travel in general, as well as non-essential gatherings. Until the start of July, New South Wales hadn't closed its borders to domestic travellers during the COVID-19 pandemic — and, when it did shut its border with Victoria, it was the first time in 100 years (since 1919 during the Spanish Flu), that the border between the two states has closed. For more information about the new border restrictions and the status of COVID-19 in NSW, head to the NSW Government website. Top image: Mulwala Bridge by Yun Huang Yong via Flickr.
Melbourne rooftop bar Blossom is celebrating its first birthday with a huge three-day pizza party in February. From Friday, February 9–Sunday, February 11, the sky-high bar will combine its birthday celebration with World Pizza Day, slinging woodfired pizzas, shucking fresh oysters, running mini gin masterclasses and hosting a heap of DJs. For the pizzas, the Blossom Rooftop Bar team is using its massive woodfired oven that was shipped over from Italy and will be pumping out a heap of different gourmet options to punters. Live oysters will also be shucked to order, adding some luxe theatrics to the whole affair. Some reps from Malfy Gin will also be setting up a space for gin masterclasses, teaching guests a little bit about the brand's flavoured gins while turning them into a few bespoke cocktails. A welcome Malfy and Fever-Tree spritz will even be included in the $10 ticket price. For a little extra fun, those who attend Blossom's World Pizza Day party will also have the chance to win some prizes. We don't know what these are, but who doesn't love free stuff?
Melbourne's CBD has no shortage of rooftop bars, with plenty packed out every time the sun decides to grace us with its presence. But The Q at the Quincy Hotel still manages to fly under the radar most days, even though it has such a prime location on the corner of Flinders Lane and King Street. To find it, you'll need to head into the Melbourne hotel and make your way to the 28th floor. Here lies the hotel pool (sadly, only available to hotel guests) and The Q, with its large indoor drinking and dining area and narrow wrap-around terrace. The indoor dining space is great, but you really come here for the views. When entering, make a beeline for the few benches located outside in the sunshine, boasting sweeping views over the city skyline and the Yarra. While many Melbourne rooftop bars are still within the city skyline, The Q rises above most other towers in the area. You really feel high above it all up here. Booze-wise, The Q is more of a luxe cocktail haunt than a casual beer and wine spot. And you'll realise this the moment you walk through the door, as you're greeted by the rhythmic sounds of cocktail shakers. Seasonal signature sips cover a broad range of spirits and flavour profiles, and you can count on the classics to be top-notch. Bar food comes courtesy of the downstairs Salted Egg restaurant, which champions elevated Southeast Asian street food. Everything is portioned out for snacking, including the fresh oysters topped with red nahm jim; fluffy pork baos; raw tuna in prawn rice cups; chicken ribs with garlic chilli fish sauce; and wild mushroom lettuce cups. Many of these options are one-bite snacks, perfect for when you're juggling a cocktail in your other hand. And to coax local workers and hotel guests up to the rooftop, the team even offers a wicked happy hour deal. From 4–6pm, Thursday to Saturday, you'll get 20% off all food and bevs. Alternatively, take advantage of the The Q's semi-regular bottomless cocktail package. The inclusions of this unlimited booze deal change from time to time, but from April–June 2024, it's all about free-flowing margaritas. If you needed an excuse to head skyward, this should do the trick.
UPDATE Monday, July 19: During Lockdown 5.0, Kickin' Inn is relocating its messy mixed seafood feasts to your house, with pick-up and delivery available via Menulog. Your food even comes packed with butchers paper, bibs and gloves, so you can recreate the signature Kickin' Inn experience at your own kitchen table. Plus, right now you'll score 25 percent off a range of special items (peeled prawns, baby octopus and mussels, included) when you use the code 'KICKIN25'. For more details on Victoria's current restrictions, see the Department of Health and Human Services website. If you thought seafood was best suited to sultry summer days, Port Melbourne's newest restaurant might change your mind. The Aussie-born chain Kickin' Inn already has eight NSW restaurants under its belt, and now it's adding its first Melbourne venue to the family. Kickin' Inn takes over the former Rose Hotel site this Friday, June 18 and promises to cure those lingering winter blues with a signature offering of seafood tossed through punchy house-made 'Kajun' sauces. For the uninitiated, Kickin' Inn offers an all-in, bibs-and-gloves experience, where diners do away with cutlery and get their hands messy with bags full of prawns, mud crab, pipis and shellfish using only the tools that Jesus gave you. The Cajun-inspired house sauces — here, dubbed 'Kajun' — are more than mere support acts, with the venue boasting five flavour-charged secret recipes. If feasting is on the agenda, you'll find an abundance of snacks to kick things off including battered squid tentacles, jalapeno cheese bites, freshly-shucked Sydney rock oysters and wings. After that, you've got some big decisions to make. Choose your main event from a slew of ocean-fresh goodies including whole crayfish, pounds of peeled prawns, a pile of baby octopus, blue swimmer pieces, or a mess of mussels and pipis. Pick a matching sauce, whack in some additions like corn or chorizo, and dial up the heat level as high as you dare — keeping in mind the 'inferno' option is only halfway up the scale. Meanwhile, a separate lunch menu features more solo-friendly feeds from a prawn spaghetti to a mini mixed bag of seafood served with rice. Kickin' Inn Melbourne is launching with some opening specials this Friday, June 18 — for one day only, enjoy 10 percent off all mixed seafood bags, and a tasty two-for-one offer when you order a half-pound of prawns. Find Kickin' Inn Melbourne at 309 Bay Street, Port Melbourne, from June 18. It's open 11am–9pm Sunday to Thursday, and 11am–11pm on Fridays and Saturdays.
Coburg Night Market is gearing up for another massive year, returning to Bridges Reserve from Thursday, December 11—Saturday, December 13. After drawing record-breaking crowds in 2023 and 2024, the beloved summer event is expected to deliver its biggest edition yet, with three evenings of food, music, makers and community under the open sky. Shifting to a Thursday–Saturday format, the 2025 program brings together a vibrant mix of local talent, curated experiences and family-friendly activities. This year's music lineup has been handpicked by MzRizk, one of Melbourne's most influential DJs and creative producers, whose deep ties to the city's north are reflected in the rich and diverse roster of artists taking the stage. The event kicks off with Triple R's DJ Systa BB setting the tone ahead of powerhouse sets from Miss Katalyna and Kee'Ahn, delivering soulful vocals and plenty of heart. On Friday, DJ General Feelings opens the night before Kazaband follows with irresistible rhythms. Then, Miss Emilia brings her silky-smooth sound while Teymori closes things out with his signature genre-blending energy. Saturday starts early at midday, bringing a fresh slate of creative, family-friendly activities. Kids can join the Counihan Gallery for postcard-sized art-making or jump into a jewellery workshop hosted by Creed Custom Designs. Later in the evening, PBS DJ Mike Gurrieri and Triple R's Pebbles, featuring Noongar sister duo Bumpy and Emmy, keep the energy high between live performances curated by Amped Up! — Merri-bek's Amplify youth live music committee — showcasing emerging acts Soundmakrz and Lily Hallawell. Last but not least, Wild Gloriosa serves up seductive R&B tunes before Amaru Tribe ends the weekend with a Latin-infused, joy-filled party set. Across all three days, visitors can expect a lively atmosphere filled with moving performances by Sanctum Studio, community art-making sessions with Bee-longing in Merri-bek, and guidance from MCs Callum Padgham (Thursday and Friday) and Hawraa Kash (Saturday). And of course, it wouldn't be Coburg Night Market without the food. This year features a vast selection of food trucks, artisan stalls and local makers, offering everything from street eats to handmade goods, perfect for pre-Christmas shopping, late-night snacking, or simply soaking up the summer vibes. Free, family-friendly, dog-friendly and fully accessible, Coburg Night Market transforms Bridges Reserve into a vibrant gathering place for the whole community.
Vivid Cafe and Lounge has been up and running on Glenferrie Road in Hawthorn since March 2023, originally only serving up classic Melbourne cafe fare. But a few months after opening, Chef Nobphadon Kaewkarn (AKA Chef Bird) started slowly introducing more and more Thai eats to the menu — until the lunch offerings were dominated by curries, noodles and spicy seafood dishes. And as of February this year, the team took the leap into becoming an all-day venue, transforming into a Thai restaurant once breakfast is over — and it's now running a booming dinner trade from Wednesday–Sunday. On the menu, you'll find classics like soft-shell crab bao, spicy coconut prawns, fish cakes, roti and chicken satay to start, as well as bigger dishes like hot and spicy tom yum soup, a stack of salads, curries, pad thai, pad kra pow, slow-cooked lamb and a crispy prawn (or crab) omelette. Come weekend lunchtime, Vivid is serving one of the most affordable all-you-can-eat meals in town. For just $29 per person, you'll get 90 minutes of unlimited red, green and massaman curry, plus endless amounts of spring rolls, pad thai, pad see ew, fried rice and roti. And you get to choose what protein goes in each. We're all about bottomless brunch deals, whether it's the luxe Conservatory buffet at Crown or the old Smorgy's offerings (RIP), so this new addition to Melbourne's all-you-can-eat scene is firmly on our radar. And to top it all off, Vivid now has an alcohol license — you've got $10 wines by the glass, plus happy-hour deals on beers and cocktails. Shit's expensive these days. But Vivid is serving up genuinely good eats for so little. Get on it. You'll find Vivid Cafe and Lounge at 616 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn. It's open for breakfast from Monday–Friday, lunch from Monday– Sunday and dinner from Wednesday–Sunday. For more information, visit the venue's website.
Off the back of its dazzling debut exhibition dedicated to the works of Van Gogh, digital art gallery The Lume is gearing up to launch its second dynamic art experience, this time deep-diving into the French Impressionist era. Kicking off Wednesday, October 26, Monet & Friends Alive invites visitors back in time to 19th-Century Paris, celebrating the famous works of Impressionist icons from Monet to Renoir, and Cézanne to Manet. As with its predecessor, the multi-sensory exhibition will display its artworks via supersized projections splashed across its sprawling surfaces, and paired with a curation of tastes, aromas and sounds. Here, that means you'll be able to wander over a bridge and right into a recreation of Monet's famed 1899 work, Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies. Other interactive experiences will include a studio space where visitors can have a go at creating their own replicas of Monet's best-known paintings. Further tapping into the French bohemian spirit will be The Lume's own take on a 19th-Century Parisian cafe, Cafe Lumiere, which will be serving up a menu of small bites, share plates and desserts to enjoy after your artistic adventures. 'Monet & Friends Alive' will launch on October 26, with tickets available from August 26. Head to the website for more details.
It's not hard to believe that delicious Italian cuisine and persistent ball jokes are a recipe for success. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the Meatball and Wine Bar is extending their wildly successful restaurant franchise to a third location. Complementing the CBD flagship on Flinders Lane (Cityballs) and the southside follow-up on Swan Street (Richballs), the northern eatery will sit on the ever popular Smith Street — affectionately dubbed Smithballs. Sadly, this great gain comes with a small loss. Smithballs will be taking over the former location of much loved head-to-toe eatery, Josie Bones. But all is not lost. The former owners, Julia Jenkins and Chris Badenoch (of Masterchef fame) will now be turning their attention to a microbrewing venture in North Melbourne called Boneyard Brewing. And if any carnivores who haven't got the memo stroll into the old location, I doubt they'll be disappointed by the hearty ball-based foods on offer. For those not yet familiar with the meatball madness that has now officially taken over Melbourne, the Meatball and Wine Bar is your premier destination for innovative decadence and ball-shaped indulgence. Think truffle salami (aka small slices of heaven), meatball sliders and Tuscan Sangiovese. But this new location is about to take things one step further. Not only will they be serving a stellar dinner and lunch menu (think sandwiches with pea, mint, fregola salad and chicken balls), Smithballs will also be upping the stakes at their bar. A new pilsner and ale, appropriately named Balls Beer, have been created for the venue by Mildura Brewery and — ready yourself for this one — the bar will have Negroni cocktails on tap. Freshly made cocktails at the same speed and convenience of a pint of draught. We're sold. Smithballs will be officially opening its doors tomorrow: Friday, April 18. But get in quick. If there's one thing Melbournians love it's a new restaurant opening on Smith Street (and being the first ones to wrap their mouths around its balls).
Rooftop season has arrived and with it comes a brand-new sky-high drinking spot, complete with views across both the bay and the city. This one (sunny, openair space) sits atop the newly revamped Hobsons Bay Hotel — the latest venture from the mind behind Rustica Sourdough, Brenton Lang. Along with partners Drew Gibbs and Matt Cook, Land has transformed the former site of George Calombaris' Hellenic Hotel into a three-storey neighbourhood pub for the bayside suburb of Williamstown. Inside, a dapper fit-out by Fiona Drago gives a warm, elegant nod to the building's past, fusing custom-made tartan carpets, tan leather banquettes and splashes of green. A lofty ground-floor dining room centres around the open kitchen, while one level up, you'll find a private dining space and wraparound balcony overlooking the street. Venture further for the crowning glory: a roomy rooftop deck complete with its own bar and space for up to 100 people. With Head Chef Ben Pigott (formerly Supernormal, Cumulus Inc and Stokehouse) heading up the kitchen, you can expect big things from the venue's offering of polished Aussie pub classics. Heroing an impressive woodfire grill and rotisserie, the kitchen is plating up both a brasserie-style menu and a selection of more casual public bar eats. Hit either for elegant snacks and shares, like the crisp fried artichokes teamed with celery salt and romesco sauce, fish finger sandwiches and, of course, some Rustica sourdough served with cultured butter. [caption id="attachment_794162" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Kate Shanasy[/caption] In the dining room, you'll find yourself sitting down to the likes of a half rotisserie chicken with salsa verde and roast chook sauce, a side of charred heirloom zucchini finished with stracciatella, or one of three premium steak options. That rotisserie is turning out more meaty delights come the weekend — porchetta on Saturdays and roast beef on Sundays — and for dessert, expects treats like the house-made doughnuts with rum custard and pineapple jam. Otherwise, keep it casual and pair a few pints with the likes of a cheeseburger, hot chook roll, or dukkah-roasted cauliflower steak with smoked hummus and fried capers. Brews from Balter and Cricketers Arms star throughout the 11-strong tap list, backed by an expansive selection of vino. Up on the roof, however, it's all about the tap wines and cocktails, including espresso martinis and margaritas to enjoy alongside the view. Find Hobsons Bay Hotel at 28 Ferguson Street, Williamstown. It's open from 12pm–late daily. Images: Kate Shanasy
If you eagerly drink your way through the taps at most craft beer bars, then a host of tell-tale signs await the next day: headaches, cold sweats, dehydration, a queasy stomach and a strong craving for greasy food, usually. That won't be the case at BrewDog's latest venture, however, with the Scottish brewery opening up the world's first alcohol-free craft beer joint. Called BrewDog AF — with the final two letters standing for "alcohol-free", rather than the other term that instantly popped into your head — the bar launches in London on Monday, January 6. Every one of its 15 taps will pour booze-free brews, focusing on draught craft beer sans alcohol. That includes both zero-percent and 0.5-percent tipples, with the latter also officially classed as alcohol-free. On the menu: BrewDog's 0.5-percent pale ale Nanny State, as well as the alcohol-free version of their flagship Punk IPA, Punk AF. It's also creating two new booze-free brews: a coffee stout called Wake Up Call, and Hazy AF, an alcohol-free version of its New England IPA, Hazy Jane. Alcohol-free spirits and cider will be available too, as will burgers, salads and buffalo wings — and if you're looking for something to do over your booze-free pint, get ready for karaoke and bingo, among other activities. While BrewDog has been busy opening bars and breweries around the globe over the past decade — launching its first Australian site in Brisbane late in 2019, in fact — BrewDog AF marks its first fully alcohol-free venue. It's not London's first booze-free bar, or the world's, but it is the first to focus on alcohol-free (and hangover-free) craft brews. To celebrate that fact, as well as the new range of booze-free beers, the brewery has also dubbed the entire month 'drink all you can Jan' — when it comes to alcohol-free beers, that is. Not only at BrewDog AF, but at all of BrewDog's bars and breweries worldwide, drinkers can score free refills of all alcohol-free beers throughout January. BrewDog AF and its increased non-alcoholic craft brew range forms part of the company's mission to whip up a craft beer for everyone, including folks who like their brews sans booze. As brewery founder James Watt explains, "drinkers opting for low or no alcohol are in danger of compromising on quality, taste and experience. And that's just the beer – forget about places in which to enjoy it. We are going to change that. We exist to be a point of difference, and our first BrewDog AF Bar is just that." Even if a trip to London isn't in your future, BrewDog's new venture is a welcome development for anyone who has tried to forgo alcohol during Dry July, doesn't drink booze but would still like to sink a few cold ones with their mates, or can't imbibe for a number of reasons — medication interactions, other health reasons or just by choice. With non-alcoholic spirits like Seedlip and Brunswick Aces gaining more attention, bars such BrewDog AF are the natural next step. Yes, you can get non-boozy beverages like juice and soft drinks anywhere, but it's not the same as knocking back booze-free beers in a spot that celebrates the drink but not the alcohol. Find the BrewDog AF Bar at the Mews Unit of the Bower Development at 211 Old Street, London, from Monday, January 6 — open 12pm–11pm Sunday–Thursday and 12pm–11.30pm Friday–Saturday. For booze-free beer lovers in Brisbane, BrewDog's first Aussie brewery — DogTap at Murarrie — is serving up unlimited refills of BrewDog alcohol-free beers until January 31.
If holidaying at sea sounds like your kind of vacation, then cruise ships boast plenty of attractions, including scenic journeys across the ocean, buffet meals, booze and a plethora of spots to laze by — or in — a pool. But there's one thing they haven't featured until now: onboard roller coasters. That's about to change thanks to one cruise ship company. Come 2020, Carnival Cruise Line will debut its Mardi Gras vessel, which will include a 240-metre electric roller coaster called Bolt. The ride will soar nearly 60 metres above sea level, using a two-rider, motorcycle-style vehicle. And, it'll navigate twists, turns and drops at speeds of almost 65 kilometres per hour. Basically, the vessel upgrades cruise ships from floating resorts to floating theme parks — so if you've ever visited Luna Park, Dreamworld or Funfields and wished that all of their attractions were on a boat, now you're in luck. If you're keen on the idea but not so fond of the zooming speed, you'll be pleased to know that the latter is adjustable. No matter how fast you choose to go, you'll have your photo taken mid-ride like on most coasters. Named after the cruise line's first ever ship from back in 1972, the 5200-passenger Mardi Gras will be based out of Port Canaveral in Florida — and just where the vessel's itinerary will take it, and how much a trip will cost, has all yet to be revealed. The company also has two other ships with SkyRide attractions, which involve pedalling around a suspended course in a go-mobile, as well as liners with water slides and aerial ropes courses. For more information, visit the Carnival Cruise Line website. Image: Carnival Cruise Line.
School's not only out for summer, it's actually out forever, with the latest Year 12 cohort receiving their final ATAR results over the next week or two. While that's pretty daunting, Nandos is here to put you in a celebratory mood, serving free chicken and chips meals to help students ring in their results. The idea comes courtesy of a Melbourne-based student named Kyla, who saw Nandos in the UK giving Year 12 students a free feed as an end-of-year favour. Asking whether the much-loved Portuguese chicken brand could do the same for her and her friends, the restaurant stepped up to shout students across Australia. Whether you're seeking a 99.95 or just happy that you'll never have to sit another exam, free chicken and chips is the great academic equaliser. Available to the first 100 students at each participating restaurant, just show your student card to score a free meal, featuring a quarter chicken, regular chips and a 600ml Coke Zero. Held on the ATAR release date in most states — Victoria is up first on Thursday, December 11 — there will be 30 locations around the country keen to take your order. So, grab your pals and celebrate (or commiserate) your score — just know that pretty much no one will speak of them again in a couple of years' time.
Thought gin was just a summer drink? Legendary Sydney distillery Archie Rose is here to remind you that that ain't so, by way of a cosy cocktail experience that's sure to warm your cockles and leave you with a whole bunch of new stand-out winter sips. The crew is taking its popular Hot Gin Terrace event on a cross-country tour and the next stop is Melbourne rooftop bar Pomelo for two tasty 90-minute sessions (6pm and 8.30pm) on Thursday, August 11. Guests will gather around the fire with a hot cocktail in hand, as State Buildings Beverage Manager Eoin Kenny and Archie Rose Brand Ambassador Mitch Gurrin dive into the history of gin's wintry side. For example, did you know that steamy cocktails were traditionally heated by red-hot pokers? Well, this crew is bringing it back. You'll enjoy a warm G&T on arrival, plus another classic heated cocktail to follow, a recipe card and an Archie Rose enamel mug to keep. There'll also be a curated menu of other warm gin concoctions available to buy from the bar. [caption id="attachment_864186" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Pomelo Rooftop[/caption] Book your tickets for Archie Rose's Hot Gin Terrace at Pomelo for one night only on Thursday, August 11 (6pm and 8.30pm).
There's no shortage of highlights along Tassie's eastern shores, with Freycinet National Park's Wineglass Bay an alluring attraction. However, just a short drive up the coast, the charming community of Bicheno awaits, renowned for its scenic natural landmarks and vibrant culinary scene. Returning on Saturday, November 15, the Bicheno Food & Wine Festival is where visitors can experience the community's mouthwatering bites and sips in one spot. Featuring 30 stallholders showcasing Tasmania's finest flavours and makers, expect a coastal celebration of stellar seafood, local wine and live music. The lineup for the 2025 edition is soon to be revealed, but previous instalments have included a who's who of local epicureans. Think award-winning drinks from Bicheno Beer Co., Maclean Bay Wines and Ironhouse Tasmania, alongside non-stop gourmet cuisine from Formosa Bites, Salsa Sol and Fried & Loaded. Set against a picturesque seascape, the Bicheno Food & Wine Festival is also stacked with live music and entertainment. Throughout the day, local bands and singer-songwriters will take to the stage. Meanwhile, roving buskers also provide an easy-breezy soundtrack for visitors dining on the freshest east coast produce.
Not long ago, we saw the online sensations of planking, owling and other bizarre poses in memes and photos on our Facebook and Instagram feeds. The latest postural fad? ‘#Mamming;’ a trending campaign that encourages women to get mammograms during October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The idea is for ladies (and gents, with a little creativity) to rest their busts on random surfaces and objects and pose as if they were doing the most ordinary thing in the world. Snap it, tag it, throw it up on the 'gram and voila! You have ‘mammed’. By imitating the mammogramming position on things like cats and photocopiers, mamming cleverly embraces the awkwardness of the procedure and creates a solidarity front against the nasty disease. Prevention is always the best cure, so hopefully it will inspire women "to ‘mam’ where it matters most — the doctor’s office". This isn’t the weirdest thing we’ve seen. Compared to other well-intentioned but gone horribly wrong campaigns like ‘Motorboating Girls for Breast Cancer Awareness’ and ‘Go Braless for Breast Cancer Day’, ‘#Mamming is witty and refreshingly funny. The promotional video posted last week features the campaign founders (one of who is a breast cancer survivor) and Jillian Bell from The Comedy Channel’s Workaholics. Quickly becoming a viral hit, #Mamming has spurred hundreds of clever Instagram posts that are worth checking out for a chuckle. Or if you want to try it yourself, go ahead. It’d make a good story at your actual appointment.
Art exhibitions are fleeting, gracing walls and halls for just days, weeks or months at a time, then moving elsewhere or never being seen again. The Lume, Melbourne's multi-sensory digital art gallery, is also set to be a brief addition to Australia's cultural scene. The venue opened in 2021, and has now announced that it will shut its doors in 2026, after deciding not to extend its lease at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Whether you're an art lover based in the Victorian capital or elsewhere around the country, you've now got just over a year — before January 2026 — to head by. Until early December 2024, Leonardo da Vinci — 500 Years of Genius is filling The Lume with a tribute to the iconic artist. Then, come Boxing Day 2024, the site is bringing back its Vincent van Gogh exhibition, complete with The Starry Night projected large, taking over an entire room; the immersive Sunflower room, where golden petals stretch as far as the eye can see; an immersive cafe inspired by the artist's Café Terrace at Night; and more. "The Lume Melbourne's lease at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre was up for renewal in January 2026, and we have made the decision to not extend the lease beyond that time. This decision, made in alignment with our parent company Grande Experiences, reflects our ambition to explore new directions and technologies that build on our success here in Melbourne," said the team behind the gallery in a statement. "Since opening in November 2021, The Lume Melbourne has become a beloved cultural destination, inviting audiences to experience art in an inclusive, accessible and engaging way. We are incredibly proud of what's been achieved over the past three years." "Looking forward, The Lume is excited to embrace new technologies that deepen connections with our audiences and will transform the way visitors engage with art and culture. This evolution will guide us toward opportunities best suited to support these creative possibilities," the crew continued. "We look forward to an unforgettable final year at MCEC and to sharing this exciting new chapter of The Lume as we continue to push the boundaries of how technology can bring art and culture to life." When it initially opened, The Lume launched with its immersive van Gogh showcase — making the exhibition's return a full-circle moment. Also wowing audiences at the gallery: a celebration of Monet and his contemporaries, a huge showcase dedicated to First Nations artists and, since early 2024, all things da Vinci. The Lume Melbourne is set to close at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, 5 Convention Centre Place, South Wharf, Melbourne, in January 2026. Leonardo da Vinci — 500 Years of Genius displays until Sunday, December 8, 2024. Van Gogh at The Lume opens on Thursday, December 26, 2024. Head to the venue's website for tickets and further information. Images: Morgan Sette / Miles Noel Photography / Grande Experiences.
The idea behind The Lume was always a stunner, giving Australia its first permanent digital-only art gallery. When the Melbourne venue started welcoming in patrons in 2021, it lived up to its immersive, multi-sensory promise, initially with a spectacular Van Gogh exhibition that let visitors feel like they were walking right into the artist's work, and then with the French impressionism-focused Monet & Friends Alive. The latest showcase set to grace the site's agenda has those past shows beat, however, heroing First Nations art and music. On display from Friday, June 23, Connection features more than 110 Indigenous visual and musical artists in a dazzling fashion. At this Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre gallery, the art gracing its walls towers over patrons, with the space filled with large-scale digital pieces. And Connection is full thanks to more than 550 works — digitals and originals alike. Earning some love: art by Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Tommy Watson, Anna Pitjara, Lin Onus, Sarrita King, Kate Constantine, Wayne Qulliam, Clifford, Gabriella and Michelle Possum Nungurrayi, and many more, in a walk-through exhibition that presents its pieces through the themes of land, water and sky Country. Their work is scored a soundtrack by Yothu Yindi, Archie Roach, Emily Wurramara, Gurrumul, Alice Skye, Baker Boy and others, plus composers such as William Barton. Grande Experiences, the company behind The Lume and its touring exhibitions — Van Gogh Alive made its way around Australia, plus Monet in Paris from June — says that Connection boasts the largest representation of First Peoples art and culture ever assembled. It spans over 3000 square metres, and its remit is just as sizeable: highlighting pieces by past and present artists, and surveying the entire country and Torres Strait. Shining a spotlight on emerging talents while showing their work alongside their inspirations is another key mission. If it sounds familiar, that's because a smaller version premiered at the National Museum of Australia in 2022, with Grande Experiences joining forces with the Canberra gallery. Connection also benefits from an advisory panel featuring Constantine, Quilliam, King, Aboriginal art specialist Adam Knight, the National Museum's lead Indigenous curator and academic Margo Ngawa Neale, arts executive Rhoda Roberts AO, and designer and film producer Alison Page. Updated: Thursday, October 12.
Maybe you first saw Britain's Penguin chocolate biscuits in the supermarket during a UK holiday. Perhaps you have a British partner or pal who raves about how delicious they are. Or, like almost all Australians, you could just really love Tim Tams — and, as a result, you're eager to give any biscuit that even remotely resembles them a try. Whichever category you fall into, you can now get your hands on Penguins in all their famed glory, as they've just landed on Aussie shelves for the first time. You'll need to head to Coles to pick up a six-pack, which'll set you back $2.80. If you're currently thinking "hmmmm, but we already have Tim Tams", these chocolate-covered, chocolate cream-filled bikkies actually pre-date them. Penguins have even been dubbed "the original Tim Tam", which might sound almost sacrilegious Down Under — but, although they're longer and crunchier than the Aussie biscuit we all know and love, they first debuted in Britain in 1932, more than three decades before Australians started munching on Tim Tams in 1964. Discovering whether another bikkie really is as great as a Tim Tam is probably all the motivation you need to "p-p-pick up a Penguin!", as its slogan encourages, and give them a try. If you need more, though, Penguins also come with penguin-themed jokes printed on the wrapper (maybe keep them away from your dad). And, back in the 70s, the British treats inspired quite the advertisement — which you can watch here. Six-packs of Penguin biscuits are now available at Coles for $2.80.
Tired of your post-work pub? Quarterhouse is here to breathe new life into your pint, making its grand arrival opposite Southern Cross Station on Wednesday, May 14. Spanning three huge levels with enough space for 1,400 patrons, expect the venue to become a bustling destination for after-work bevvies, corporate functions and weekend get-togethers. And, of course, pre- and post-game drinks are made easy considering Quarterhouse's proximity to Marvel Stadium. So, what's in store for punters? The ground floor, aka the public bar, adds just a little more sophistication to the quintessential pub-going experience, with hearty meals, cold drinks and live sports displayed on a four-metre-wide screen. Slide into a comfy banquette or head outside to soak up the city's atmosphere with street-side dining and drinks. On level one, versatile function spaces provide the ideal setting for private and corporate events, with capacity for 240 guests. Lastly, the rooftop bar features an open-air, wrap-around terrace, primed with laidback vibes perfect for mid-week or weekend gatherings. Looking out onto Sky Park, you'll have the ideal vantage point to admire this elevated patch of greenery perched above Collins Street. "Quarterhouse is exactly what this part of the CBD has been missing," said venue manager Luke Bottoms. "It's everything Melbournians love about a pub; casual and with something for everyone, whilst also offering something unique with our rooftop bar overlooking the Sky Park." When it comes to food, Quarterhouse has two curated menus, one for each level. Going beyond the usual pub grub, the venue brings a slight European gastropub flair, with thoughtful dishes that still hit the mark. In the public bar, start small with fried squid paired with pickled fennel, lemon and aioli, then move on to classic chicken parmas or the Quarterhouse Burger, featuring bacon, blue cheese mayo, pickled onions and more. There's also a selection of steaks, served with skin-on fries, salad, umami butter and jus gras or peppercorn sauce. On the rooftop, share-style dishes include wagyu beef skewers with a pepperberry jus gras and roast shallots. Meanwhile, seven wood-fired pizza options offer plenty of variety. For something fancy, order the crumbed pork ribeye with a lemon caper beurre noisette and chives, or the pan-fried barramundi served with salsa verde. Complementing the cuisine is a weekly entertainment lineup, with highlights including free all-day pool in the public bar on Mondays. On Thursdays, dine alongside a live acoustic soundtrack from 5pm, then get down on Friday nights for Sunset Sip DJs on the rooftop. Then, Sunday brings a rotating roast lunch special, while trivia takes over the public bar from 3pm. With plenty more to explore, Quarterhouse might just become your new post-work or game-day hangout. Quarterhouse opens Wednesday, May 14, at 693 Collins St, Docklands. Head to the website for more information.
Australia's longest running exhibition and art prize of its kind, the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) was established in the early 1980s when the commercial popularity of Aboriginal art was just starting to develop. The coveted award not only offers one of the biggest prizes for First Nations artists in the country, but it also aims to highlight the diversity and evolution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and its various forms. This year, there are 65 artists who have been selected as finalists for the seven awards, which have a total prize value of $80,000. So we've partnered with Telstra to give you a rundown on seven impressive artists that we think you should get to know better — and support — as they share their artistry with the world. Make sure you visit the NATSIAA website on Friday August 7, from 6pm, to watch the Awards presented live by host Brooke Boney. VICTORIA'S MULTI-TALENTED ARTIST CASSIE LEATHAM Inspired by walking the country near her two-acre property in Central Gippsland, Taungurung woman Cassie Leatham, from the Kulin Nation, is a true slashie. She's an artist, designer, weaver, dancer and educator. Leatham is hoping her second entry in the Telstra NATSIAA — a woven artwork that tells the creation stories passed to her by her elders — connects with the Award's judging panel. 'Nugal-ik Liwik Bundjil (My Ancestors Creation Story)' features a mix of pipe clay, emu fat, wattle sap, stringy bark, mud, ochre, sand crystals and wedge-tailed eagle feathers. The artist says her goal is to maintain cultural practices, with her dream being to create a teaching centre on her property to keep her culture alive. WESTERN AUSTRALIA'S KNIFE WELDING ILLIAM NARGOODAH Emerging artist Illiam Nargoodah is gaining acclaim for continuing an ancient tradition. Based out of Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region, the 23 year old uses his skills to create knives by hand from found objects, crafting every part of the knife from handle to blade. Upholding knowledge that runs in the family, the young artist has been learning alongside his father — a leatherworker — since he was a young boy. The artist's first Telstra NATSIAA entry consists of several special knives that were crafted out of metal objects and artefacts collected on community station properties near his home. QUEENSLAND'S VISUAL ARTIST RYAN PRESLEY Using the iconographic traditions of Christian art as his launchpad, Marri Ngarr man Ryan Presley has his second entry in the Telstra NATSIAA this year. It's a political work that depicts the "beauty, resistance and everyday heroism of Aboriginal people today", he says. 'Crown Land (till the ends of the earth)' mixes oil, synthetic polymer and 23 karat gold on canvas. Presley, who was born in Alice Springs and now lives in Brisbane, is known for creating works that reference the impacts of colonisation on First Nations people, and the devastation of country and wellbeing from industries such as mining. CANBERRA-BASED SHELL ARTIST KRYSTAL HURST Proud Worimi woman Krystal Hurst brings the strength of the women in her family, and her ancestors before her, to her art. Working with banded kelp shells, bitjagang (pipis), fishing line and seaweed, Hurst has created a layered necklace for this year's Telstra NATSIAA. This is her second time entering the Awards, and the jewellery maker's artwork references an enduring connection to the sea and the continuation of knowledge passed on through generations. Hurst grew up on the Mid-North Coast and she continues to tell the stories of her people through her jewellery, and via weaving workshops that she runs at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. SOUTH AUSTRALIA MOTHER-DAUGHTER PAINTERS BETTY AND MARINA PUMANI Winner of the Telstra NATSIAA 2016 Telstra General Painting of the Year, Betty Kuntiwa Pumani enters the awards again this year — but this time in collaboration with her daughter Marina Pumani. Based in Mimili, a remote community in the APY Lands of South Australia, the mother-daughter duo has made two paintings that celebrate matriarchal knowledge. Painting Antara, a special site for the women in their community, Marina adds her knowledge to this particular diptych, referencing Maku Tjukurpa (the witchetty grub songline), which is central to all of Betty's paintings, marked by her signature use of vibrant reds. NEW SOUTH WALES DISRUPTOR AMALA GROOM Mixed media artist Amala Groom is the only New South Wales-based artist to make the finalist list of this year's Awards. Based out of Bathurst, the Wiradjuri artist has re-appropriated a beaten up print of a famed painting by Frederick McCubbin — a prominent member of the Heidelberg School movement — found discarded in a parking lot during the bushfire crisis, earlier this year. Groom's piece 'The Fifth Element' is a "conceptual intervention into the Australian canon of art history", she says. It comments on the uncertainty of our current times and remind us of ngumbaay-dyil — that 'all are one'. ARNHEM LAND TEXTILE ARTIST DEBORAH WURRKIDJ A previous Telstra NATSIAA finalist, Maningrida-based artist Deborah Wurrkidj has this year created a woven sculpture that reflects a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Paris taken in 2019. Alongside four other artists from the Bábbarra Women's Centre, Wurrkidj was asked to exhibit her artwork at the Australian Embassy in Paris, which was then profiled in Vogue. This new work, woven from memory, is inspired by the Eiffel Tower. Wurrkidj says, "I saw that tower and I thought I'll go back to Maningrida and I'll make her. Yes, I can weave that tower in our way, our Aboriginal way, not balanda [a white/European] way. And I did it." Find out more about the upcoming Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards. Top image: Krystal Hurst
You're feeling festive. You're also feeling like tucking into some fried chicken. But, because it isn't December yet, your two-piece feed probably doesn't feel all that merry. Enter KFC's latest piece of merchandise, which is being released to celebrate Christmas in July — but can obviously be worn whenever you need some yuletide cheer and some of the Colonel's secret herbs and spices in your life at the same time. The item in question: a red-and-white Christmas jumper. To use the very words stitched onto it, alongside tiny little chicken drumsticks and buckets of KFC: 'tis the seasonings. Clearly, it's the only thing that you should be decked out in whenever you treat yo'self to some of the fast food chain's fare. If you like to pair your chook pieces with VB for some reason, and you already bought one of the beer brand's own Christmas sweaters last year, you'll now have two festive pieces of apparel to choose from. KFC's version costs $59.95, comes in seven sizes spanning from extra small to triple extra large, and is available to purchase now. That said, they're a limited-edition item, so you'll need to get in quickly if you just can't imagine eating chicken while donning anything else. The brand is donating all of the proceeds to charity partners The Black Dog Institute, ReachOut Australia and Whitelion, too, so you'll be giving them a Christmas in July gift as well. Because KFC does like to theme as many things as it possible can with its own brand — it has given the world KFC cocktails, a KFC meditation track that sounds like chicken frying and gravy simmering, a KFC wedding service and a KFC augmented reality game, after all — it has paired the new jumper with a new Christmas tune as well. Well, a fresh spin on the classic carol 'Deck the Halls', to be exact, with Dune Rats doing the honours. You can listen to the new track below, probably while you're trying to ignore your chicken cravings: KFC's 'Christmas in July' jumper is available for purchase online now, but it's only available for a limited time.
As the accompanying bar to Vue de Monde, it might be all too easy to think of Lui Bar as an afterthought, a mere staging area for the dining room it's connected to. But instead, Lui Bar makes the case for restaurant bars as destinations in their own right. The bar is perched 55 floors above the city in the Rialto — Lui Bar is named, in fact, after Luigi Grollo, whose construction company built the Collins Street tower in the 1980s. It's home to an impressive drinks offering, with cocktails that champion Australian flavours (much like its fine diner sibling). The drinks do more than just feature local ingredients, though: the list is a celebration of Melbourne's cocktail history, with tipples that take inspiration from the city's first cocktail boom during the Gold Rush, right through to today. The venue also takes the concept of drinking snacks to new heights thanks to its Vue de Monde-designed menu, which showcases clever technique as it reimagines classic local bites — think seafood rolls, handmade beef sausage rolls with a spicy ketchup and a chocolate lamington filled with raspberry gel. Add to the mix a standout wine list, incredible views from 236 metres above the city and live jazz on Sundays, and an evening at Lui Bar is no mere afterthought.
South Yarra's plant-based restaurant Lona Misa is championing women in hospitality on Wednesday, April 17 with a women's takeover dinner. Celebrity chef Shannon Martinez will lead the event. The evening will see a special five-course menu curated by top female chefs such as Pamella Tomio (Head Chef at Lona Misa), Kya Knights (Sous Chef at Za Za Ta in Brisbane), Cristina Delgado (Chef de Cuisine at Monster Kitchen and Bar in Canberra) and Federica Lunato (Sous Chef at Monster Kitchen and Bar in Canberra). [caption id="attachment_949671" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Photo by Ashley Ludkin[/caption] Keynote speaker Kim Payne will add to the evening's ambience alongside Martinez as the host, chatting with the Ovolo chefs who've hit Melbourne for the event. This exclusive dining experience highlights the power and skill of women in the industry, as well as their passion for flavour and innovation — with gelato expert Sandra Foti of Piccolina also in attendance. Book your spot online for $105 per person, which comes with a complimentary glass of Piper-Heidsieck champagne. [caption id="attachment_949667" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Photo by Ashley Ludkin[/caption]
Since 2019, coffee lovers nabbing their caffeinated brews from Single O's Surry Hills cafe in Sydney have been pouring their cuppas from a self-serve tap system. Basically, it's the coffee you make when you're not actually making the coffee, and it's about to be on offer in Tokyo as well. No stranger to the Japanese capital thanks to its existing roastery and tasting bar in Ryogoku — as well as supplying local cafes, and also serving athletes in the Tokyo Olympic Village this year — Single O is launching its first international cafe. It'll open its doors in the Hamacho district in the city's east on Thursday, October 28. When overseas travel resumes and Japan lets Aussies back into the country for holidays, you'll know where to grab a taste of home. Single O's new Tokyo base will also go a step further than its Surry Hills sibling — and not just because it'll feature six self-pour taps instead of four. The Hamacho cafe will also sport the brand's first in-store coffee subscription package, letting customers purchase monthly access to drop by and pour their own cuppas. When it opens its doors, the Tokyo spot will launch with five specialty brews, Colombian microlots and an award-winning Cup Of Excellence from Peru included. As for the sixth spot, that'll rotate through international guest roasters. And if you're after an espresso, Single O's signature blend Reservoir will also be on offer. Food-wise, you'll be pairing your caffeine with Aussie staples — such as Single O's signature banana bread with espresso butter, freshly baked pies and a range of jaffles. Chef Yu Sasaki is behind the the menu, after a career spent hopping between The French Laundry in the US, Sydney's Marque and then founding Single O Surry Hills neighbour Creasion. Single O's Hamacho cafe will also boast the brand's Heads of Japan Yu and Mamiko Yamamoto leading the launch, as well as barista Ken Takakura and retail operations head Yasuko Miura — the latter fresh from Luke Mangan's Tokyo Glass Brasserie. And, the venue has the honour of being designed via Zoom during Sydney's lockdown. Australian designer Luchetti Krelle — who also worked on the Surry Hills cafe — has overseen a fitout that includes a curve-heavy front counter, tables made from recycled plastic and a sustainable fibreboard espresso bar created from upcycled clothing. Also catching the eye: a monochrome mural in texta pen by local artist Washio Tomoyuki, plus a 'Cloud' ceiling artwork by Sydney's Ren Fernando that's made from repurposed end-of-line paper and coloured with coffee and other substances. Find Single O's Hamacho Cafe at 3-16-7 Nihonbashi Hamacho Chuo Tokyo from Thursday, October 28 — open from 7.30am–7pm Monday–Friday and 8am–7pm Saturday–Sunday.
After a stack of time spent cooped up in your house this year, there are likely few creative outlets you're yet to have a crack at. At-home ceramics? Paint-by-numbers? Banana bread? Done, done and done. But the dessert slingers over at Doughnut Time might just have a new one for you, involving some crafty flair and a much-needed sugar rush. Roll up those sleeves and get ready, because it's time to try your hand at doughnut decorating. Having made a comeback under new owners, relaunching stores in Queensland and Victoria, the doughnut company has just unveiled its latest creation — a series of DIY doughnut kits. Each comes with four plain doughnuts and all the trappings needed to whip up some mini edible masterpieces, allowing you to recreate Doughnut Time signatures with the help of colourful glazes, sprinkles and other toppings. You can have a go at making your own version of the Caramilk Baskin, or perhaps attempt the chocolate-caramel fusion that is Life On Mars. There is even a vegan kit, if you prefer your doughnuts and decorations cruelty-free. Each DIY kit clocks in at $34, with shipping currently available to Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Melbourne. Folks in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra, stay tuned — you'll be able to order kits to your cities in the coming days.
Melbourne is fast becoming Australia's bottomless capital — with more than 21 bottomless brunches to choose from. Or, if you need some action with your free-flowing drinks, there's also infinite darts, prosecco and snacks at Flight Club. Now, Northside Wines has come on board with bottomless small plates. For $49 per person, you'll be snacking your way through 90 minutes' worth of bites. Some are well-established favourites, while others are new creations. Northside's classics include Tahitian snapper ceviche with citrus pearls, crispy pork belly with sherry glaze and fresh apple slaw, and duck and tarragon croquettes. Among the newcomers are cauliflower steaks with brown butter puree, and eggplant glazed with citrus tahini. Thirsty? For another $49, you can add bottomless wines to your feast. The list is big on small-batch wines made by experimental Australian producers, so you can count on unusual varietals — from the Alles Klar vermentino made in South Australia's Riverland to Norte Wines' durif made in the Bendigo region. Both bottomless menus are available anytime.
Think of live music and you invariably think of one of our rich and diverse capital cities — but there's plenty going on beyond the big metropolises. From renowned multi-day festivals to the regional town that turns itself over to celebrate an enduring cultural icon once a year, there's something to tempt every music lover away from the city this autumn. Ready to reconnect with your love of music, dance under the stars in the outback and experience those heart-swelling, foot-stomping, feel-good moments that live tunes provide so well? We've teamed up with Destination NSW to pick a half-dozen events that'll satisfy your cravings for a live gig and a road trip in one go.
