There are plenty of people out there giving uncritical coverage of big food events. But few really guide you on how to get the most out of them.

Last year I tried to answer the question on whether or not it is worth bothering with Taste of Melbourne from 23 to 29 August (read the comments too), based on the fact that it is a big money making event.

Taste of Melbourne is better than the Good Food and Wine Show, where you are paying to have people sell you useless kitchen stuff that you don’t really need and sit at the back of an auditorium to see some TV chefs messing around with food. In contrast, Taste of Melbourne is about the food and gives you the opportunity to taste dishes from some of Melbourne’s higher profile chefs.

So if you don’t get out to eat much, are from the bush or another city, this is a great opportunity to see some of the food that Melbourne offers despite that it misses out on top restaurants such as Cutler & Co, Cumulus Inc, Attica, Circa, Bar Lourhina and a few others.

Taste of Melbourne survival tips

1. Do pick your time carefully. Last year Jackie from Eating with Jack (and Earl Canteen) and I went early on the opening night, which was one of the best times. While there were queues on popular food stalls, it was pretty empty. At peak times over the weekend it will be jammed and some stalls will run out of food.

2. Tickets on the door are $30; in advance $27.50. A book of tickets – Crowns – costs $30. You can buy a premium ticket for $55, which includes $30 worth of Crowns, saving a fairly measly $2.50 on prebought tickets and $5 on the door price.

3. The Crowns are the Taste of Melbourne’s currency which you have to buy at an exchange rate of $1 to one Crown and can be a bit annoying. What you find is the meals are priced at 8, 10 and 12 Crowns. Drinks are six. What you can find is that you can buy books of $30 crowns so you may find that one book may not be enough for two people and too much for one. Also unless you are good at maths you’ll end up with some unused Crowns at the end of your visit.

Chefs to watch

4. Friday, Comida Bebe by Raúl Moreno Yagüe. Raúl is a hot Spanish guy and a former sommelier at Vue de Monde. He’s a great story teller if he has time on Friday night and is sure to be offering some interesting spin on Spanish tapas.

5. Saturday, Izakaya Den with executive chef Yosuke Furukawa is showing. You can see my view on the restaurant here, which in summary I think is quite good but overhyped. Inevitably there will be queues andlate in the day the kitchen may even run out of food. Get in early.

6. Sunday, Embrasse with executive chef Nic Poelaert. Nic is an up-and-comer in the dining scene here and is a disciple of the great Michel Gras. I’ve eaten twice and the food is delicate and beautiful – easy on the palate and the eye.The restaurant itself has overcome its early folksy service with the arrival of Camm from Attica as manager. Again, get in early to ensure you get a chance to try Nic’s food.

7. Charcoal Lane, executive chef Damien Styles. This is an absolutely terrific training restaurant run by Mission Australia that uses indigenous ingredients is a great non-cliched way. It’s really worth a visit to this much underrated and great value restaurant too.

8. Longrain Restaurant and Bar, executive chef Martin Boetz. This is an opportunity to try decent Thai-style food in Melbourne.

9. The celebrity chef restaurants, Maze (Gordon Ramsay) and The Palace (Luke Mangan). Your block here will be the queues and crowds so they are worth avoiding if that is the case. But there again if you are there and there are no queues try these as it will save you the bother of actually visiting them. Maz at Crown is okay but a global franchise and as such you get all the lack of value and innovation that you get from a high-end chain from money-focused chef. The same goes for The Palace with the added problem that the restaurant is in a nomansland in Port Melbourne which means you either have to drive or catch a taxi.

10. Among the others I’d suggest a look in at The European, Esposito (fish), Libertine (French), Sarti (innovative Italian)…they are all pretty decent restaurants. I can’t say there is any one to avoid.

Let us know in comments if there are any spectacular stand outs. Or crashes.

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Matt Preston licks plate. Photo stolen with full disregard for copyright and fair use from the Masterchef website.

It’s pretty impressive how Matt Preston the chummy and ever so slightly chubby Melbourne food writer grew into the huge Masterchef’s Matt Preston and brand. And just grew. And grew. And grew to the point that Woman’s Day is running a splash on him with no information whatsoever about concerns over his health after eating 97 portions of osso bucco risotto.

A big man and I were guessing the other day how much he must weight – possibly 150kg, even 180kg perhaps. That’s a lot of weight making him about two to three times the size of a plump girl*. That’s like Gary plus George and something else large and heavy, like my head.

Let me make this clear. Matt is a really nice bloke. I like him and nobody can fail to. Pompousness aside. But I’m writing this as a favour to him. And you.

There’s a massive queue for Matt Preston’s endorsement from his “cravatalicious” Handee Ultra paper towels to Richard-Dawkins -knows what else. What Matt may not know is that he is being groomed to be the next face for Type II Diabetes. I kid you not.

It creeps up on you whether you are moderately plump to the morbidly obese. And among the food writing and blogging community I think we know where we all stand on this scale.

All food writers have the problem of staying slim. From jogging to cycling and swimming some try and do something about it. Others just give up and seemingly eat and drink more. Greedy bastards.

Dawkins-knows how a writer such as Gourmet Traveller’s Pat Nourse stays so svelte given his food reviewing duties. Perhaps it’s because of good genes, youth, self-control or, as last time I saw him, a girlfriend to exercise him. Or a tumble dryer load of all of the above.

I try and walk a lot. I ride a bike to meetings when the weather permits. And have a girlfriend who helps. Plus there’s plenty of opportunity for masturbation both metaphorically and physically. I also eat plenty of fruit and veg, small amounts of protein, lots of nuts. And aside from the odd Twix, only eat apples and nuts and drink water between meals.

My main vice is alcohol, despite which I’ve lost maybe 6 kilos this year down to 102.7kg before and, ahem, 101.1kg after. I’d like to drop another 5 or 10 but know there is no hope whatsoever of regaining my six-pack of youth. (Note to self: stop getting so pissed).

There’s something else you can do when faced with a ten-course degustation: just eat half of what is on your plate. In fact do that every time you eat out and there is a good chance you will avoid becoming a fat bastard.

Diabetes has been on my mind since January 2009 when my mum suffered a stroke caused by her Type II and her dotty alterative methods of handling it instead of taking her proper medication.

In her early thirties my mum had a waist that a young Elizabeth Taylor would have been proud of. In her forties she started to spread out. By her fifties, a widow, she had cankles and had trouble lumbering up hills.

Then in her seventies, one afternoon she nodded off reading a book. When she awoke she was confused. She didn’t recognize my stepfather. She forgot what words were used to refer to different objects.

She recovered but not fully, from a once brilliant natural Elizabeth David bred cook to microwaving ready meals in the oven. Or just putting a bowl of rice and water in the oven to make risotto. It’s very sad.

Nowadays, depending on her medication she’s pretty good but can be up and down. But she has a very high risk of another stroke.

If anything good came out of this it is that she stopped boring me about what she’d just watched on Jamie Oliver (she lives in the UK) the night before.

This is what happens with Type II Diabetes. Like I said, it creeps up on you. Even if you are fat now and lose weight the damage is done, a bit like cigarettes do to your lungs.

Type II diabetes is a modern disease caused by being too greedy and fat. It eats away insidiously at your cardio vascular system. That’s your arteries, veins and capillaries.

One day you’ll cut your finger in the kitchen and it won’t heal. No, it’s not infected. This is what Type II Diabetes does; it makes wounds slow to heal. Before long you’ll have carbuncles on your body.

Then you’ll be wanting to shag your beautiful girlfriend or wife and your cock will be limp. Zilch. Nothing there. Even, Madame Lash, a blowjob or a threesome with the neighbour’s labradoodle won’t do it for you.

Then your kidneys will become a bit dodgy. If that happens every bit of protein you consume contributes to their demise. That means you will be rationed pork. And duck. Any meat.

And extremities will turn black, just like in the anti-smoking ads.If they don’t drop off they’ll need to be chopped off. Only last night my mum was complaining that her leg was dodgy -apparently she lost the use of it for a while after her first stroke (although I can’t always be sure what she tells me nowadays in reliable).

And finally, those bits of your cardiovascular system that we see in the smoking ads will start breaking off and coursing around your body. Stroke.

If Matt Preston has any sense he will turn this endorsement opportunity down. Or try lap band surgery.

But as Jedro74 said in response to my tweets on this subject:

“a slim Matt Preston wouldn’t be right, like a slim Mikey Robbins isn’t. Then again, the latter was never right.”

*Term and conditions apply. Depends on height, size of frame and muscle mass.

Note: I’m not sponsored by Diabetes Australia but if you think you are at risk check out their site. Or go see a doctor and have a blood test. I’ve been meaning to but I’m a bit scared to be honest.

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Izakaya Den

What do you say to a celebrity when you meet them? It’s a question raised by the Freakanomics guys and what that I often face. When Rachael Griffiths pats my gimpy dog, or my grumpy dog tries to savage one of Guy Pearce’s Basenji, I just make polite conversation and try and treat them normally (although if I see Hughsy jogging down my street I’ll shout “maaaaaaate”).

But more to the point what should a celebrity say to you should they come to talk to somebody on your table at, say, Izakaya Den which since opening has been pitched as one of the hottest joints in town with the Australian media seeming to loose all critical ability when it comes to owner Simon Denton, the son of a famous Melbourne architect.

In Fred Scepisi’s case ignore the other three on the table and don’t even say “hello”. Ditto his son, whose name eludes me, who does a pretty accurate impression of a knob.

It’s not that I particularly want to talk to the director or his son. But there is something called manners. And I put common courtesy in the same bracket as keeping your g-string tucked away rather than riding half way up your back, not scratching your balls in front of the new Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and correctly using a knife and fork. (Wearing tracky pants and scratching your arse in public is obviously okay)

Anyway, in addition to famous directors, their tossing sons, and cheffy cokeheads, Izakaya Den is the kind of place that also attracts the hip, the wannabees and the well-off squares.

The difficult thing is to find the place (down the stairs to Chiodo and left; enter despite it looking closed) and then get in, as there is a no booking policy apart from at lunchtimes or groups of five to 20. You probably want to arrive before 7pm or after 9pm to find on table. This Thursday night, sometime after 8pm we are promised a table in 35, which ended up taking nearly an hour.

It wasn’t a bad wait, but the holding area, where you can also eat and drink, is loud, and in winter cold.

Izakaya Den is a narrow subterranean corridor of a room flaked on the left by an open kitchen and chunky high Japanese-style tables and stools.

The menus come as attractively wrapped scrolls. Drinks encompass a classy and reasonably but small priced selection of wines, beers and cocktails. But if I were you I’d concentrate on Saki, some of which are exclusive to Izakaya Den. You’ll be paying about $30 for 300ml or $75 plus for something the size of a wine bottle.

And the food? The verdict was a damning “quite nice really”. But not quite as good as when it opened from those who’d been here after it first opened.

And it was pleasant. A steamed sole was lovely and delicate. No more or less than you’d expect.

The pictured, a special of tuna sandwiched in corn chips and the others wrapped in radish, was marred by the texture of cat food but the tasted good.

I liked the barbequed tongue, although one of the party found the texture too much like, um, tongue. There’s a lovely eggplant dish, salads…all sorts of Japanese stuff, of which sliced, barbequed octopus, with lovely charred suckers seemed to be the most popular.

For any criticisms I make, you should know I gorged myself. I ate as much as I could and enjoyed it. As I said everything at “Izakaya Den” was perfectly nice, a good meal that has been overhyped.

Unlike Simon Denton’s other restaurant Verge which is tired, try-hard, pretentious and probably in need of a long overdue overhaul, I like this place.

It’s a great place to drop into. But to secure a table time your visit carefully. Or book for a larger group.

And this is the point where I should make a few announcements:

First, I’ve decided to cut loose from producing the video blog for St Ali as it threatened my independence as a reviewer for the Melbourne Coffee Guide book and to my journalism. I shouldn’t have taken it on at all given my position and I’d like to assure all cafes my reviews will be fair and unbiaised. You wouldn’t believe the rigour of this year’s process with all the judges receiving taste calibration and training.

Second, although I mainly write here so does my girlfriend Adriane on stuff like tomatoes and olives now so it’s worth checking the byline of the writer nowadays.

Third, yes I am fucking back and when I get a new generation iPhone, the photography should improve.

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The humble olive: how to cure your own

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In addition to my journalism, now I am blogging for a living over at Ad News and for St Ali where I’m producing a series of video blogs looking at various aspects of coffee culture and some of the geekery behind it.
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I was surprised when I received an email from Pam Jewson asking me to suggest people who might like to be judges for the Golden Plate Awards as we have history. I didn’t reply. I was even more surprised to hear from somebody who had been contacted who said the Golden Plate Awards were using [...]

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There’s a bad joke among old skool strawberry nosed newspaper sub editors when training newbies. “Fresh fish sold here” is the sign above the fish shop. “Fresh” can be removed because of course it’s fresh. “Here” because that’s obvious. It’s a shop, so lose the “sold”. And the “fish” because you can smell it a [...]

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