For the past four weeks, I’ve been in Australia, mostly staying in Melbourne, but also Torquay and Hobart (Tasmania). It’s been amazing! I’ve been blown away by how nice of a city is, let alone the fantastic food, coffee, & drinks available nearly everywhere.

Here are a few terms I’ve learned along the way…

And a few places I loved that have stayed on my mind…

Cafes: Proud Mary, Aunty Peg’s, Grace Cafe, Industry Beans, Rustica, Seven Seeds. (All those are great for coffee, breakfast, and lunch, with the exception of Aunty Peg’s, which just has great coffee).

Bars: Above Board, Bar Americano, Black Pearl, Byrdi.

Restaurants: Supernormal, Tonka, Chin Chin, Charcoal Lane.

Sight-seeing: St Kilda penguins at sunset (get there a half hour early to get a good spot, and walk to the end of the pier), National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), ‘Hands-On’ Street Art Experience (Airbnb – Lukas), Ian Potter museum, Royal Botanic Gardens, the Keith Haring mural in Collingswood.

Shopping: Original & Authentic Aboriginal Art, Wonderkammer.

Outside Melbourne: Anglesea Golf Club – Kangaroo tour, Great Ocean Road, Koala Cafe (100% because of the koalas nearby), the beach.

Hobart, Tasmania: Museum of New and Old Art (MONA, incredible), Pennicott Seafood Seduction boat tour (omfg), Macq01 Hotel, Sullivan’s Cove whisky.

Next stop: Seoul!

🇰🇷

Just a few blocks from where I’m staying, I happened upon a multi-block street festival that had two stages of various music & dancing, and in between a menagerie of food options. I ended up getting some chicken ‘wanton’ tacos, which were pretty tasty.

Today, Taylor & I went to Mate Fest, an international beer fest hosted by Moon Dog Brewery in Melbourne. Our friend Erik from Magpie in Seoul gave a masterclass, which was pretty fun!

Breakfast at Grace Cafe: Chilli Scrambled Eggs, with Lao gan ma chilli, pickled shiitake, enoki and szechuan crunch on toast

Taylor & me

Magpie’s Erik giving a masterclass

Moon dog had a dope analog style version of Pong

Moon dog’s crazy keg setup

A mostly random sort of day with Erik and Taylor. We ate and drank our way around Melbourne.

Soft shelled crab ‘burger’, from Proud Mary’s. (basically, they seem to call anything on a bun a ‘burger’)

Tempura green beans, from Byrdi.

Grau Projekt: an art opening that a bartender told me about, which had about 8 pieces on the wall, literal tons of salt on the floor, and maybe 9 people there. I didn’t stay long.

Nashville style hot fried chicken, from Belles. pretty tasty!

ET

I mostly had a low-key day before meeting up with Rob and Erik for a fantastic dinner at Chin Chin, then Erik & I went to Mr West for some beer.

Earlier in the day, I stopped by my artwork to discover only half of it had been painted over in its first 24 hours of life, which I was pretty happy about! (I mostly expected it to be completely gone by then.)

Mooninite, the day after

Bacon Katsu Sando, from Proud Mary’s. So f’ing good.

bowie

🎄

Green eggs and ham, from the Dr Seuss gallery

Hot Chocolate, from Hash Specialty Coffee. Epic. So bitter, so dark, so delicious.

I went on a walking tour of street art in Melbourne that I found on Airbnb. Lukas took me and another guest around to see some cool street art, pointed out various different styles, and put it all into context and the culture around the street art scene here. BUT, the highlight is that we got to make our own street art. It was awesome! I was super nervous to start, but it came out way better than I had hoped.

I chose to paint Ignignokt, a mooninite from the tv show Aqua Teen Hunger Force (ATHF). Not only is ATHF made by [adult swim] in Atlanta, but the voice actor for Ignignokt is ATHF creator Dave Willis, who went to Wake Forest and while there was Station Manager at Wake Radio (two things I also did). Also, my late friend Trey Tims worked at Adult Swim and worked on the marketing campaign that put LED-based mooninites up in 10 different US cities, most notably Boston (sigh, lol).

Mooninite

Mooninite & me

The rest of these were found in Melbourne.

A tree created with several stencils

Kasper

Kasper

This afternoon and evening, I went to St Kilda Pier in the southern part of Melbourne. Every day at sunset, a colony of penguins swims back to the rocks to sleep. You can catch a couple of them inside the rocks during the day, but the real treat is right at sunset, when they swim up to the shore and waddle up to the rocks. PENGUINS!!!

St Kilda Pier

St Kilda Pier

Penguin

Penguin

Penguin

Melbourne city lights, as seen from St Kilda Pier

I tried the New York style pizza at Shawcross, which was pretty tasty, but the downside was you couldn’t hold it up properly (too flimsy on the bottom half).

After a lot of colder, rainy days, it was gorgeous in Melbourne today. I walked a couple of miles over to the zoo, where I saw some dope animals.

Elephant

Giraffe

Wild dogs

Lion

I met up with Taylor, Maki, Sheena, & Brenda at the South Melbourne Market, where we had coffee and pastries, walked around, did some shopping, and then had a paella lunch at Simply Spanish in the market.

We stopped by their house for a bit before Taylor & I went to dinner at Supernormal, which turned out to be my best meal in Melbourne (so far at least!). We started with cocktails and the raw Kingfish with mandarin dashi, arame. It was a good start to what would continue to be a great meal. We moved on to the Crisp pork jowl & watercress salad – that pork jowl was not only crisp, but so tender it was like liquid pork. The New England lobster roll was perhaps the perfect form of a lobster roll – a lobster salad ensconced in a brioche roll with a fantastic light crunch. For the main, we had the slow-cooked Szechuan lamb with sesame bread & coriander paste. The spice was subtle and never over-powering, but the lamb was so tender and flavorful!

South Melbourne Market

Taylor & Sheena

Supernormal

Negroni

Eight

Kingfish with mandarin dashi, arame

New England lobster roll

Slow-cooked Szechuan lamb with sesame bread & coriander paste

Downstairs

Chief Wiggum

I stopped by Charcoal Lane tonight for dinner, which not only has delicious food and drink, but is also a “social enterprise restaurant that provides guidance and opportunity to young Aboriginal people who are in need of a fresh start in life.” So you can feel good about where your money’s going while enjoying some kangaroo!

I started with a negroni: Native pepperberry infused gin, Antica Formula, Campari. I couldn’t quite detect any significant pepperberry flavor, but it was still delicious.

To start, I enjoyed the charred asparagus + legume medley, with desert lime preserve, white onion + eucalypt cream, basil + pepperberry oil, chia seed crumb.

For my main, I chowed down on the chargrilled kangaroo sirloin, with parsnip, carrot + beetroot timbale, seared bok choy, davidson plum sauce. It was my first taste of kangaroo, which was a leaner and slightly gamier than beef. They recommend not going past rare or medium rare as it’s so lean. Overall, I loved the meat with the plum sauce, though I added a bit of salt to it. The parsnip was delightful too! So delicate. I paired this dish with the Innocent Bystander Syrah 2017 from Yarra Valley, Victoria (closeby to Melbourne).

To finish my meal, for dessert I had the native citrus marmalade steamed pudding with smokey whiskey anglaise, apple textures. Quite yummy! A perfect end.