Chris Singh is an Editor-At-Large at the AU review, loves writing about travel and hospitality, and is partial to a perfectly textured octopus. You can reach him on Instagram: @chrisdsingh.
World renowned Sydney staple The Grounds of Alexandria remains one of the most unique spaces in Sydney, a precinct in itself that seems to always be transforming and delivering new, unique concepts. The latest evolution for The Grounds encompasses three separate experiences, first a Pizza Solo, secondly a dedicated Soda Barn, and lastly a Backyard BBQ,…
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Australia’s fastest growing holistic lifestyle hub, About Life, has expanded to now include eight stores, with its latest sprouting up in the growing lower North Shore suburb of Crows Nest. Fashioned as a one-stop shop for natural groceries and wholefoods, including a range of staples and superfoods, About Life continues to rise along with a…
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With Melbourne but a few hours away, a visit to Geelong doesn’t sound too tempting to the everyday food and beer lover, that is until one realises that the quiet seaside locale is home to the Little Creatures Brewing Village. For fans of the ever-growing craft beer scene in Australia there are few experiences as…
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The change to the colder months has brought about a big change over at Bondi staple Porch and Parlour, with the restaurant bringing on a brand new team to lead their ‘Evenings at Porch’ sessions, including Head Chef Patrick Coleman. This change has resulted in a new evening menu drawing up Coleman’s rich culinary experience…
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Just because Sydney is winding down from three of June’s biggest events (Sydney Film Festival, Vivid, and Supanova), doesn’t mean that there is a shortage of excitement around the city this weekend. There’s quite a few exciting happenings around town, and we’ve picked out some of our favs for you get across, including some that…
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There is no shortage of good ramen in Sydney, with the popular Japanese creation rightfully treated as an art and held to a high standard. The presence of such quality, from the CBD to Kingsford to Crows Nest, forces many ramen-focused restaurants and stalls to constantly up their game but none can really compare to…
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Tigerair Australia have made a big move in expanding options for those looking to book flights with the low-cost carrier, opening up both domestic and international payments to PayPal. The main benefit of this is that those using the PayPal service to purchase flights will be have access to a cost less than half of…
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Back in the 90s, when standards in R&B were still a thing, Brandy rose to become one of the genre’s best known and successful solo performers, eclipsing her contemporaries with a remarkably golden husky voice, defined by the kind of warmth and charisma that easily set her apart and set her on the path to…
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Circular Quay’s famed ARIA Sydney will be pushing further into winter with an exclusive Whisky tasting experience early July, with the restaurant’s team joining up with one of the country’s leading Whisky experts, Franz Scheurer. Those who head along to the special dinner will have a rare opportunity to sample some of Scotland’s most robust…
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One of Kew’s quintessential restaurants, Mister Bianco, now has a little brother with the opening of Massi in Little Collins Street. Chef Joseph Vargetto has opened up the new 50-seated Italian restaurant in the CBD with an aim to bring the flavours of Italian region Piedmont to Melbourne with a casual approach, offering up morning…
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Shelby Sidecar Tours have officially launched in Sydney to bring something a little bit different to your average city tour for both locals and visitors. Now, you can cruise the streets of Sydney from the comfort of a vintage sidecar as the first-of-its-kind tour operator makes a big push for their program of bespoke tours…
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Neutral Bay institution The Oaks has teamed up with iconic Japanese beer Kirin Beer to stage a unique pop-up designed to recreate a Sakaba (an informal Japanese Bar). The temporary takeover has shaped the space into a vintage Japanese garden with traditional lanterns, bamboo archways, and decorative bonsai trees (including an LED cherry blossom tree…
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Mulled Wine and Munich Biers will rule during Australia’s official travelling Winter Festival this year as Munich Brauhaus have come on board for a pop-up Bier Hall. The European flavour of the winter festival will also be upheld by a Food Truck focusing on German sausages and a Belgian Waffle truck, sitting alongside award-winning restaurants…
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There was a lot riding on this episode for HBO and Game of Thrones, which inevitably featured Jon Snow finally facing down with Ramsay Bolton as he – along with Sansa and his relatively modest army – sought to wrestle Winterfell from the series’ most despised villain. Traditionally, these kinds of episodes would be the…
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Richard Kuipers, Programmer of the “Freak Me Out” program strain for Sydney Film Festival preceded a recent screening of The Eyes of My Mother with a fairly apt description: “the point where extreme art house and extreme horror meet”. While art house may outweigh horror here, Kuipers primed viewers correctly, Nicolas Pesce disturbing feature playing…
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It’s World Martini Day today (Sunday 19th June) and being a traditionally lazy day of the week we thought you’d want to stay home and mix up some classics so you can still get involved in the global celebration. More so than most other classics, the martini is so deeply embedded in popular culture that…
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Unapologetic, bold Australian “black comedy” Down Under had its world premiere this past week at the 63rd annual Sydney Film Festival, the only logical platform for Writer/Director Abe Forsythe to debut his second feature film seeing as it concerns one of the most talked about and shameful moments in the city’s history. This inevitably controversial…
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There’s a lot going on around Sydney, and while most of it’s fun there’s some tearful goodbyes too as we farewell two of the city’s biggest events – Sydney Film Festival and Vivid Sydney – for yet another year. This is your last chance to charge up with the energy of both events while also…
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Time to Get Schwifty. Announced on their Facebook page last night, the furious duo of Brooklyn’s El-P and Atlanta’s Killer Mike – collectively known as Run The Jewels – have gotten into the often overcrowded world of collaborative fashion by teaming with Adult Swim series Rick & Morty and clothing label Daylight Curfew. The fusion…
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Director Argyris Papadimitropoulos has a darkly comical voice with which he approaches his new film Suntan, willing to lighten the mood with a playful, enjoyable middle but never quite losing focus of the uncomfortable message at the end of it all. His style is most evident in the cautionary tale of Kostis (Makis Papadimitriou), a…
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One of Double Bay’s most loved restaurants, Vine, are launching a new collaborative dinner series with some of the best chefs across the city, kicking off over the latter half of 2016. A concept spearheaded by Executive Chef Drew Bolton, the Origins Dinner Series will be aimed at celebrating local produce and mold to suit…
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Defusing an explosive in western cinema is very rarely as tense as it should be. With the exception of brilliant films The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow) and Gallipoli (Peter Weir), the suspense surrounding characters handling something so volatile, which with the slightest fault could literally blow them apart in an instant, is often suppressed by…
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Quietly unnerving films like The Loved Ones and Wolf Creek (the first one, not the horrendous sequel) have come to define Australian horror to an international audience, but this country has produced just as many louder, bloodier, and faster entries into the often overcrowded genre, and most of that quality is found on the lower…
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Following yesterday’s exciting announcement that the ultimate food bucket list awards, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, will be held in Melbourne for the first time ever next year, the 2016 edition of the coveted list has been released. Surprisingly, only one Australian restaurant (Melbourne mainstay Attica) made the the top 50 this year, while regional…
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2016 marks the 150th anniversary of the Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, which today famously stores 2.3 million barrels of Whisky across 88 barrel houses. It’s an impressive and landmark achievement for one of the most well-known names in the drinks industry, so of course they are pulling out all stops for events to…
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Further placing Australia as a major player on the global food industry scene, Tourism Australia has announced that, in 2017, Melbourne will become the host destination for the prestigious World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards – a culinary institution often described as the “Olympic Games of food”. This news follows the earlier two phases of Restaurant…
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Following a successful first year, William Grant & Sons have once again opened up submissions from the 2016 Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Prize to Australia, highlighting the iconic distillery’s commitment to the arts and the community which has made Glenfiddich one of the most iconic Whiskies in the world. While only it’s second year in…
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New Zealand born Director Jake Mahaffy was trawling the news one day when he came across a chilling story from 2003 concerning the death of an 8 year old autistic boy named Terrance Cottrell. His death was seemingly the unintentional consequence of a modern-day exorcism performed by members of a small storefront Milwaukee church who…
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Defiance in the face of constraint brought on by stringent cultural convention is a favourite topic for Sydney Film Festival year in and year out. Falling into that category this year is Turkish award-winner Mustang which, following last year’s release, picked up the coveted Cannes Directors’ Fortnight prize, four Césars and an Oscar nomination, well…
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Any documentary ambitious enough to tackle different facets and implications of the “internet” is going to fall short of something. The single most influential creation of the past few decades has grown into such an impossibly complex and overwhelming force that it would be pure insanity to think one could encapsulate all its infinite intricacies…
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