G'day. If you're new here, and you are interested in the Melbourne food and drink scene you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or the email newsletter below. Thanks for visiting and enjoy eating and drinking in Melbourne. Cheers.
Updated 11 Sept. Updated to 76 21 August. Updated 75 on 14 August.
Updated to 74 on 13 August.
Updated 7 August to 73. Updated 1 August to 70 Melbourne food blogs.
In the dead tree media the debate is whether or not blogging has peaked. And the blog focused bloggers debate why there aren’t more blogs in Australia. As a microcosm of the whole Australian blogging community food bloggers are overrepresented, especially in Melbourne.
Why? I have no idea except perhaps it is that the food culture is so strong in Australia, especially in Melbourne with it’s open markets and some of the best value middle ranking restaurants and cafes in the world.
Back in March I found around 49 food bloggers in Melbourne. Almost five months later and a dozen or so of those blogs have stagnated, a few more have come and gone and a few others have managed to stay the course. I’ve highlighted some of the many new ones on the scene.
In my reckoning there are at least 56 70 food bloggers in Melbourne and no doubt there are a few I have left out. When I started blogging in July 2005 there were barely 30 food blogs in Australia. Now I guess there must be about 120. I should add because of the scale of this excercise, for now I have left out wine blogs that feature food but probably should add them in - when I have time.
To put this number in perspective probably half the food bloggers from Australia come from Melbourne, a city of some 3.75 million out of a population of 21 million. In The UK, where Spittoon Extra keeps tabs on blogs, his last count unearthed 92 - that’s for a country over three times the size of Australia.
I have no idea how many food bloggers there are in the US but with a population of 300 million, to match Australia there would have to be 1,800 over 2,000.
In terms of how food blogging has evolved in Melbourne, it looks like the reviewers (some of whom cook) - nearly 25 of them - are catching up the cooks and bakers.
If I missed anybody, please let me know. Also please let me know if there are any broken links.
1. 1001 Dinners 1001 Nights A guide to eating out in mainly Melbourne
2. A few of my favourite things Travel. Eating out and in.
3. Aussie Bush Food Self explanatory
4. A gastronomic voyage in Melbourne Mainly restaurant reviews and some travel.
5. At my table Neil who I bump into at Prahran market
6. Candid Cuisine No holds barred restaurant reviews
7. Confessions of a Food Nazi By Another Outspoken Female!
8. Cook Almost Anything Once Great food and pics. The most links of all Melbourne food blogs, according to Technorati
9. Doublecooked Gen y-ers reviewing the restaurant scene
10. Eating to be vegan Avoiding the other stuff in and out
11. Eat and be happy Lots of baking.
12. Eat me! Food ideas and words
13. Eating with Jack A food pro eats out and travels
14. Elegant Sufficiency A well known journalist blogging.
15. Esoteric rabbit Restaurant and arts reviews
16. Ensurientes - The comfort zone Melbourne’s original baking blog
17. Fat Duck Eating out
18. Feed me! I’m hungry! Cooking, baking…experimenting
19. Fiona’s food blog restaurant reviews
20. Flagrant Food Fawning A group blog on cooking and restaurant reviews
21. Food for thought Green and ethical stuff
22. Food from Oz That’s Australia, down under.
23. Food Lover’s Journey Recipes - good Vietnamese ones - and others
24. Full as a goog This means full as an egg in baby talk, apparently.
25. Goddess Yumnyum Recipes and stuff.
26. Green Gourmet Giraffe Mainly cooking
27. Harbx Reviews and stuff. But leaving the country I believe
28. High Fidelity Travel and cooking
29. Hook turnsReviews
30. I eat therefore I am Reviews and stuff.
31. Iron EatersReviews. Just been to Koko Black
32. Kate and Zoe Reviews. I’ve met Kate. She’s a journalist for the Sunday Herald Sun
33. Kirkfood A food wholesaler Who’s just blogged a cheese for every stage fof Le Tour de France
34. Kitchen Wench Shot up the Technorati rankings
35. Lady lunchalot And cookalot.
36. Laws of the kitchenMainly cooking.
37. Love, food and thoughtAnother Prahran Market shopper.
38. Melbourne coffee review No need to explain this one.
39. Melbourne Food Tales From Sydney, exploring Melbourne
40. Melbourne Gastronome Eating in and out
41. Melbourne Larder Cooking and eating
42. Miss Epicurious Slacking off
43. My favourite plum Another local stalwart
44. New Epicurian Successes and disasters in cooking
45. Noodleoodle With some great illustrations
46. Nourish me Mainly healthy vegetarian food
47. Only Turkish Food Great Turkish recipes
48. Oooh! CakeCrazy about desserts
49. Pretty in PinkFood, gadgets and scarves
50. Sarah Cooks Once spent a whole year cooking Nigella Lawson recipes.
51. Sharing my interests Food and a bit more.
52. Should you eat that? Moderation is the key to health.
53. Smell and Taste are my Memory Cooking, baking and some eating out
54. Syrup and Tang Another food writer blogging
55. Sweet cherry pie The appetite is sharpened by the first bite.
56. The breakfast blogThe definitive guide to breakfast in Melbourne and beyond.
57. The Cocoanut Eggs boost sex drive
58. The chronicles of a dirty flamingo in the kitchen A vegetarian in Melbourne.
59. The Ezard Challenge Also Totally Addicted to Taste
60. The Jamjar Cooking, eating out and other things
61. The journey of taste A flogger.
62. The Secret FoodieEating in and out
63. This is vegan Melbourne Also a grammar freak
64. Tomato Me. Cooking and reviews
65. Totally addicted to taste Also runs The Ezard Challenge
66. Tummy RumblesVery active on restaurant reviews
67. Vicious AngeReviews and cooking.
68. What I ate last nightA stalwart of the Melbourne food blog scene.
69. What’s on my plate Travel, cooking and eating out.
70. Where’s the beef Voracious vegetarians or something like that
Additions
71. Spot4Nosh A local review site.
72. Guide to Victorian Markets From Haalo at Cook almost anything once
73. Eat (almost) anything at least once From Haalo at Cook almost anything once
74. Gourmette Guide to Melbourne Reviews. Found this via Facebook.
75. Dessertaholic Eclairs so far.
76. Jo Blogs Another newey.
78. Deep dish dreams The prolific stickyfingers
Popularity: 22% [?]
{ 1 trackback }
{ 46 comments… read them below or add one }
What a terrific resource! I’ll be linking to it in my weekly round up. I don’t know if this blog qualifies? http://shouldyoueatthat.blogspot.com/
Hehe - “dead tree media”. Thanks for the link
Great list of food blogs in Melbourne! one more for your list: http://eatmefood.blogspot.com
Hi Ed,
A few more I’ve noticed:
Eat and be happy
The Elegant Sufficiency
Green Gourmet Giraffe
High Fidelity
The Journey of Taste
Melbourne Gastronome
More To Love Vegan
The New Epicurean
Noodleoodle
Nourish Me
This is Vegan Melbourne
Meg, Mike and Cindy
Thanks for that. Now it’s an even better list. Mike, Sorry I left you out. As usual I had a browser crash while writing this post and that’s why I may have lost yours and Elegant Sufficiency. It’ll be interestng to see if there are others we have left out. I’m just wondering if I dare do the rest of Australia.
Hi Ed,
This is an excellent list. I have added some more blogs to my Google Reader.
Also, I just saw your comment on my earlier post about pronouncing Pho. Sorry for the very late reply (I didn’t receive the comments until I went through my posts)… But if you need any help at all, please let me know.
I always thought there was a lot of Melbourne food blogs, but didn’t know we made up so much of the nations food blogs. I always assumed that Sydney would have more food bloggers just due to them having a larger population. I guess this just shows how vibrant the Melbourne food culture is that so many passionate people feel like writing about it.
At the beginning I used to read overseas food blogs as they were the first ones I discovered. But I have found myself gravitating towards Melbourne food blogs more and more because I can read about places that I can actually go to and try for myself. Also places that I have been to, others may have gone to and I get a different perspective on it. It’s finding equally passionate friends about food and the discussions that ensure always teach me so much.
Keep up the blogging fellow Melbournian food bloggers, yourself included Ed. I love reading your blog.
Melbourne leaves the other state capitals for dead when it comes to great dining and range of produce across all budgets. Naturally enough those of us who like to share, have found a medium, free of editors and second opinions with which to enthuse over our discoveries.
Another place that appears to have a lot of bloggers - food or otherwise - is Singapore. I wonder, is it because of a repressed need for expression?
Another Melbourne food Blog is by expat Kiwi Food Writer Pat Churchill - Cooking Down Under -
http://www.cookingdownunder.com/index.htm
Oh and then there’s the Melbourne contingent in the Chow Hound forums
Stickfingers,
I think you’re right on the participation. When do you start your blog?
I’ve seen Pat Churchill’s site but although she cals it a blog it doesn’t seem to be blog format. For instance, she doesn’t have the chronology/date format and doesn’t take comments. Does anybody else have an opinion on this? Should I include it as a blog or not?
Anh, don’t worry about that comment - I’ve moved on for now but may come back to it as I have some interesting news coming up on street food in Melbourne.
Thanh, I’m the same as you. I’ve probably dropped reading some of the US blogs and have started reading more local ones. Someone probably needs to start some local events as it seems silly to participate especially in the seasonal events from here. I the local blogs - including yours - great to find new restaurants.
Yes Ed, under the circumstances Pat probably doesn’t fit the criteria you outlined. Perhaps if she included comments on her site, she would get to know some of the local food community? I found her site during an occasional trawl through Epicurious, where she posted that she was looking for recommendations of where to eat close to home.
As for me, my friends here and OS have been nagging me for a food blog, but I write and design for a living, and am also thrashing out a chick novel about a Blogger, so like Lucy of ‘Stuff and Nonsense’, I can’t commit for now. All that aside, my other half says I spend far too much time on the computer as it is. LOL!
Anh, I love your blog. When we came back from Vietnam recently I had a craving for B
Hey Ed
I agree that comments are a necessary requirement.
You may as well be reading the online content of the dead tree media, if it wasn’t for comments. It helps bring us bloggers in touch with our readers and the readers a sense of by-in to the blog. Much more contagious reading than a newspaper!
Jack
A really helpful list, Ed. Melburnians are a lucky bunch. I’m feeling sorry for a mate of mine who has just moved to Canberra… he can only find one fading (and vegetarian) blog for the city and nothing more! I hope he’s missed something (and I’m encouraging him to try blogging himself).
Duncan
About whether blogging has peaked or not, it would seem to still be on the way up. Last week, Clotilde from Chocolate & Zucchini was on UKTV Food’s Market Kitchen talking about blogging, so exposure is still growing. Interestingly, she claimed 15,000 hits a day and I’ve noticed that Elise of Simply Recipes claims 1,000,000 visitors a month (33,000 a day), so the trend is definitely still going upwards.
Melbourne is more literate (in an academic sense, not a criticism necessarily); has a broader food culture; springs from a wider ethnic base; is more introspective and is colder. All adds up to more people writing about food. This feeds on itself of course; as bloggers like an audience.
Sydneysiders would probably, and quite justifiably, say in reply to Melburnians, ‘While you write about it, we just eat it.’
Could the popularity of food blogging in Melbourne stem from the low, low standard of food writing in the printed media? Are all of our food bloggers simply answering “well, yes I can” to the old chestnut “if you think you can do better…”. The opinions in the newspaper offerings could be the most perceptive and insightful going around, but it doesn’t matter a jot if you can’t read past the first paragraph. Perhaps the Melbourne food bloggers are sick of reading that it’s such a chore to review good restaurants for a living, and how the reviewers yearn only for a simple peasant meal. Maybe they don’t care that the menu promised Southern Ocean Alt-A tuna, but it was obviously the lesser quality Southern Ocean Sub-Prime tuna that was served up. Two points off for paper napkins? Oh please. The bloggers might actually be hoping to follow your lead, Ed, and get a gig in the “real” media?
Whatever the reason, I’m glad of it. Several bloggers going around in Melbourne are much more engaging and eloquent than their paid equivalents in the local papers. I do quite enjoy Matt Preston’s reviews though; hopefully his head doesn’t disappear up it if he ever takes over the main job…
@ Tim: I take it you don’t like Stephen Downes (LOL)… but most of your complaint about newspaper reviewers doesn’t seem to apply to John Lethlean, surely? And not all the newspaper stuff is reviewing or garbage, though certainly there’s a fair bit of both around.
Ed, sorry to have stuffed your blog name (that’s what you get rushing a post late at night before bed) - all fixed.
Meg - thanks so much for suggesting my blog for inclusion on this list, very much appreciated!
Hi Tara
You’re welcome. I remembered it from the Aussie Blogs Community on Bumpzee
Interesting. I blog from Sydney, and there seems to be more of a blogging community feel to the Melbourne scene. This also seems to be the case with the Aus/NZ forum on eGullet, which is most of the time very very dead, except for the odd comment, usually hailing from Melbourne.
As an aside, I didn’t realise Kirkfood had a blog - don’t know why but I find it kind of funny, especially the whole Le Tour de Fromage thing.
Wow, you mentioned my blog - thank you!
I’m not all that surprised how many foody blogs are from Melbourne - we have so much great food, both in restaurants and produce to buy, that it really is a most amazing place for a food enthusiast to live.
Hello Ed
Great site, great resource and great reads…great work!
On the other end of the scale, here’s yet another Melb food blog which I recently started, mainly restaurant reviews. Very green, food blogging-wise and in terms of blogging in general, so still pretty much flying under the radar. But hope there’s some interest there for others!
Cheers
Towz.
Thanks everyone.
Y, you’re right about egullet - not much there really for locals.
Anna that’s probably the case.
Towser, Just added you to the end of the list.
Just found another from somewhere in country Victoria. It is called the Backyard Pizzareria
http://backyardpizzeria.blogspot.com/
I agree with Kitchen Hand - Melbournians are more intellectual and love to read/write moreso than other places. The cold I guess? But I also think there’s much more cultural variety in Melbourne so you’re used to dining at really diverse restaurants.
Tim - if you think the local press is doing a bad job on food writing then you should try the Gold Coast! really, really bad. Not a single independent review in any of the local newspapers - the only time you’ll get a write up is if you place a nice fat ad in their dining section…
Great comprehensive list Ed - lots to check out!
I’m a little wary of trumpeting Melburnians as the fantastickest… Sydney has a wealth of cultural variety, but we do have the advantage in Melbourne that geography makes it easier for us to get around the various good food destinations than is the case in Sydney. And discourse about food seems more prominent down here.
Wow Tim, that’s an interesting opinion that you have as to why good food blogs are more prolific and entertaining than the dead-tree-media food journalism.
In their defence, from what I gather, Editors of Melbourne Newspaper food supplements have to battle with the fact that the amount of advertising placed will determine how many pages they will have to play with each week. Blogs do not. Sadly, good restaurants do not have a culture of advertising, and neither do specialty food providores, so the number of ads placed in Melbourne supplements are growing fewer. Large multinational brands tend not to advertise in such niche segments, as the viewership is much lower than that of the rest of the paper.
Food journalism doesn’t pay that well either so it sometimes can be an instance of those writing doing it as ‘an occasional bit on the side’, hence the limited number of writers contributing to local media. Understandably, in order to keep the wolves from the door in is not uncommon for food journo’s to write for a number of publications, and sometimes the material hardly varies from publication to publication, which can be a little boring for high consumers of Aussie food media. What you’re looking at here is a side effect of living in a country where the headcount per km squared, is tiny, and the numbers of those who consume food media are considered insignificant in the context of selling newspapers.
Blogs luckily, unlike the printed media, do not suffer from editing by third parties. Newspaper and magazine articles can be grammatically mangled - to the chagrin of the Writer - by those in authority at the parent journal, who also have carte blanche to change the direction and format of the piece, based on the opinion, personal style or mood of the management or editor. A piece may also revised with an eye to points of law. All the Writer can hope for is that the finished result still contains elements of ‘their voice’ on publication.
All considered, I think that the standard of our local food media, both electronic and printed is of a high standard. Given that many foreign journals model themselves on our food magazines and are using formerly Australian based writers and photographers to lift the game, I think that we are doing pretty well given the constraints that we have to deal with.
Tim/Stickyfingers,
I think there is a problem in the viability of food media in many countries for the reasons you have given. Certainly many decent publications have come and gone and turned to the more forward looking supermarkets there for help. Even the excellent Guardain Food Monthly i gather doesn’t make that much money. Stickfingers is right. My own experiences in selling advertising for Tomato was that there are the mass market food and wine brands that target a mass audience and most smaller, quality food brands don’t have the budget. In terms of the local market there is only really one current publication supporting a decent sized stable of writers and that is The Age’s Epicure - the Herald Sun’s Epicure being a lot slimmer. I understand the reason for this is that the circulation is much higher in the Hun and restaurants can’t afford the ads; in Epicure they are lower and I believe a lot of the Fairfax supplements are run as loss leaders. The shame is that in old media we have this limited environment. It leaves little room for the established writers to move on and make space for new blood and stifles new people, ideas and writing. Until now that is, where bloggers are able to publish there own ideas. I do lament locally that there is little championing of innovation or indepth challenging of the accepted orthodoxy. The emphasis is on recipes and reviewing and little writing is designed to actually stimulate new ideas.
Stickyfingers, although I do get edited sometimes I must say that I don’t think there is that much that is mangled. It would be excellent to see some more bloggers finding their ay into the mainstream although don’t overestimate my weekly 300 word contribution.
Great post, thank you. There certainly are a lot of us. It’s hard to visit such a large range of blogs on a regular basis and there are many I haven’t visited, but I find it a great feeling visiting someone’s blog and leaving a comment and some encouragement.
I started my blog just before moving to Melbourne, when I was half living in Canberra and half in Sydney. I find the Melbourne blog scene to be a little more welcoming and others have agreed. Then again I find much more friendliness in Melbourne than Sydney…and that’s not an attempt to start a Melbourne vs Sydney debate, I love both cities very much for very different reasons and I’ll leave it at that!
Ed/Stickyfingers/Tim - The Age Epicure has definitely suffered from fluctuations in advertising in recent years, strongly affecting the number of pages and therefore the space and budget for freelancers (like me). No idea how much advertising costs, but if other sections of The Age are anything to go by, I’d guess at least $250 for 3cm x 3cm ad. Not many small businesses can afford a decent ad at that price.
As well as the problems of population density, spending preferences, etc, there’s just the reality that the food media dislike challenging people - the income from foodmags, etc, comes primarily from ‘lifestyle’ readers, so you don’t want to challenge that market or they might get offended and go away!
Thank you for your good work and helping us to know one another. Can you imagine us all in one room - all those opinionated Melbourne food bloggers!
Blessings and bliss
oh gawrsh, thanks for this list up!
Ducan, although you will find The Age discounts massively which makes it affordable. I’ve seen DPSs sold in Uncorked at a massive loss leader.
Miss Eagle/lynn.wabbit,
Gad to be of use.
Hi Ed
I don’t really think of my website http://www.cookingdownunder.com as a blog per se, but lots of others refer to it as such so I now have it listed in a couple of blog catalogues. The individual articles can be followed chronologically - the current one is the first listed on the home page. But I also have quite a bit of other material there - news, books, etc.
I designed the site from the bottom up and so don’t have something like WordPress running in behind managing comments etc. I did have a guest book operating but thanks to the overwhelming amount of spam it attracted, I axed it. I know of website owners who have almost a fulltime job moderating their forums so I haven’t really explored too far down that trail.
And, Stickyfingers, I, too, would like to see you blogging. I am still working my way through the local restaurants you kindly recommended. The Graham was spot-on for our recent anniversary.
Melbourne is certainly the place for dedicated eaters. I wonder if it’s the public transport that helps? We frequently use the trams, at least for getting into town for a night out. Public transport in our hometown, Wellington, is a joke and we never considered it as a means of getting into the city in the evening.
Cheers
Pat
Another Melbourne-based blog I don’t see on your list: http://adambalic.typepad.com/the_art_and_mystery_of_fo/
v
I’ve just spent an hour or so looking at some of the sites that I could never have found without Tomato and browsing through the comments.
Only a year ago Dani Valent wrote a piece in the Age Magazine telling us that the heart of the Australian food scene had moved from Melbourne to Sydney where the cult of the celebrity chef was in full flower. In my view she got it completely wrong.
The factors mentioned by your commentators- ethnic diversity, transport and accessability, quality of produce, an enthusiastic eating public and lots of very good chefs competing with each other have kept Melbourne in the forefront of Australia’s food culture.
With the exception of John Lethlean I am unimpressed with restaurant reviewers here. I find them uneven and often display strange biases e.g. Stephen Downes on Vue de Monde and the Grand in Richmond. Nevertheless I think I might well stop buying the Age if not for Epicure which I think is better than ever with it’s newest editor
I doubt that it is poor journalism that’s led to so many food blogs in Melbourne. Rather it is an expression of where our interests lie, together with the revolution that has allowed us the time and the capacity to express our views.
No doubt lifestyles are affected by climate and all the rest of it and this is one of the main ways we like to indulge ourselves in Melbourne.
I’m pleased that Tomato has published this large selection of sites and expect to spend many more hours browsing through them
Howdy Ed, keep up the good work. Maybe now everyone is chatting it’s a good time to launch the melbourne food blogging wiki?
Pat you should think of reopening comments. Using Wordpress there are some excellent plugins which catch almsot all spam. i find I moderate maybe a dozen a week.
AOF, the wiki is so damnhard to use I’m going to start again from scratch. And time keeps running out.
Whoops! A bit late, but just got around to checking our webstats, thanks for the link! =+)
Going by the number of comments, there is definitely a lot of interest in Melbourne food blogs. I think recently The Age had a list of top food spots in the world and Sydney made the list at 10 while Melbourne didn’t. I don’t know how they came about judging this, but if the number of enthusiastic bloggers is anything to go by, Melbourne definitely has a very healthy food culture.
As for Miss Eagle’s pondering of how all the food bloggers would be like in a room, I would love to see the results of it. I previously posted an enty on my blog about meeting up with other Melbournian food bloggers and was pleasantly surprised that other people responded. We had a great night and I would love to meet more food bloggers. It would be great if there was a massive food bloggers meet up, but its hard to organise as you need to confirm with everyone. One day there may be official food blogging groups such as the Melbourne Mac Group that meet up each month to discuss all things Mac. Wouldn’t that be interesting, meeting up to talk all about food?
I read the Gourmette Guide to Melbourne. It was really well written. Kind of young and edgy - cheeky. What did you think? Have you heard of what this Melting Butter Commnications is? Sounds like a magazine - which I have not seen…
This debate on Melbourne’s food reviewing is really interesting. I recently did a CAE course on food writing which helped me to understand the reviewer’s perspective. Like how a bad review can help to close a business (and go back again to check they didn’t go on an off night). And how much a food reviewer has to eat out and what unusual foods they are always eating - which in a way makes me trust their taste less… if I’m constantly eating out or eating very rich, interesting food, I value plain food much more - which may explain the obsession with peasant-style food!
Thanh, if you ever do get that food discussion group going, let me know. I’d be there!
There are a lot of us and food blogging in Melbourne is fantastic. It’s no wonder since we are, in my opinion, the best foodie capital of Australia! I’m lucky to have been born and bred in Melbourne because I get to eat and taste my way around this wonderful city!
I think a Melbourne based blogging network is a fantastic idea.
Pat Churchill has just this week joined our ranks and launched a blog adjunct to her Cooking Down Under website. I’ve added the link to my blog as Pat, Ed & Stephanie were the trinity of social and traditional media gourmands who gave me the impetus to blog…thanks guys.
http://cookingdownunderblog.blogspot.com/
Ah, stickyfingers has said it for me. Yes I caught the bug, too.
Ed, When you get the chance I would love it if you could add Melbourne Foodie to your list.
Just found another cheap eats review blog - Melbourne Restaurant Review
http://www.melbournerestaurant.blogspot.com