Category: Culinary

The most common mistake made when writing about non-alcoholic drinks is to frame them as what they are not. A non-alcoholic spirit is not a wine without fermentation, a cocktail without the cocktail. This framing produces defensive journalism and suspicious re

Sydney did not invent third-wave coffee, but it understood it earlier and with more seriousness than most cities outside the Pacific Northwest and Scandinavia. The conditions were right: a restaurant culture already accustomed to treating ingredient quality as

Ask a serious cook what Sydney food is doing right now and you will hear several things at once. Fire. Fermentation. The coast. Something Japanese at the structural level, not just at the level of garnish. A return to the table as the site of conviviality rath

The Sydney Rock Oyster (Saccostrea glomerata) is one of the more quietly extraordinary things that can be eaten in this city, and the people who know it well know that the name is a form of shorthand that obscures far more than it reveals. A Sydney Rock from W

There is a particular kind of restaurant that is possible only in a city shaped by sustained, serious immigration — not the superficial multiculturalism of fusion cuisine and shared-plate menus, but a cooking tradition carried intact from one place, establishe

The execution of classical French pastry requires an unforgiving precision: a three-day lamination process for a croissant cannot be rushed, and the temperature of the butter cannot be compromised. For a long time, Sydney’s humidity and isolation made this lev

The cellar is not a collection. It is an argument about time. Every bottle placed on its side is a small act of faith — in the winemaker, in the vintage, in your own patience — and the bottles that eventually emerge from a serious cellar are different creature