Umberto is the ideal place to celebrate a milestone if you’re not into stiff restaurants and contrived food – the dishes are honest and down-to-earth, the restaurant is charming and comfortable, and the waitstaff are pleasant to a fault.
Espresso Alley is a cutesy local on a somewhat deserted strip in Northcote that I’m glad exists because it means grocery shopping can be fun every once in a while.
We walked around the main high street of Yarraville, which had a busy and festive feel to it despite the cold, until we eventually settled on Cornershop – a cosy and inviting restaurant bathed in warm yellow light and clad in timber joinery, yet not so packed that we couldn’t get a seat.
If I had to choose three cuisines to survive on for the rest of my life – I think about this important question a lot – Chinese Malaysian would be one of them, and so I was highly excited when Gingko Leaf Girl suggested we try Red Hot Wok, a Chinese Malaysian restaurant in South Yarra.
Portello Rosso is an ever-reliable source of tasty Spanish food and a more parent-friendly CBD dining option than the perennially cool Bar Lourinha and the slightly more upmarket MoVida outposts.
Mr Whatever Floats Your Bloat is notoriously hard to lure out of the house when it’s not for a halal snack pack or Red Rooster chips, but I managed to entice him with the prospect of a milkshake at Sookie La La, an American style-diner in Northcote I’d been meaning to try for a while.
I assumed Hawker Boys was new, but reviews dating back to 2016 revealed how little I venture up to Hardware Lane.
