La Dolce Italia – The New Lygon Street Festa?

La Dolce Italia
Royal Exhibition Buildings, 10-12 August 2012
http://www.ladolceitalia.com.au/

I originally made a video blog of this, but due to the extremely tight nature of the collar under my bow tie – and the slight layer of blubber I’ve acquired over the winter months (everything must go… for summer!) – I’ve decided to spare you the jowels and instead offer you this take on a food, fashion and cultural event I recently attended.

La Dolce Italia has become the replacement event for the Lygon Street Festa. Try typing the latter in Google, you get one replaced for the other.

Where did the old one go? Probably “too much the insurance”, and a lack of commitment from local councils, much like the good old Brunswick St Festival (what I wouldn’t give to be able to enter a float, and go down Brunswick Street playing rock and roll on the back of a flat bed truck with all my nephews and nieces in costume doing formation dancing to advertise Blue Vapours...).

But how do the pair compare? (as they ask about superannuation funds).


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The Everleigh

150-156 Gertrude St, Level 1
Fitzroy VIC 3065
theeverleigh.com
+61 3 9416 2229

Alright, alright, I know what you're thinking. "This guy's only going out to places that are a hop, skip and a step from where he works." Possibly, but I actually have been supposed to be writing reviews on the Carlton Wine Room, an upcoming Italian food festival at the Exhibition Buildings called la Dolce Italia, NOT TO MENTION our new relationship with Les Toques Blanches, the Executive Chefs Society of Victoria who we recently did a website for in exchange for food (well, we are working in a "patchwork economy", as our Julia says).

But somehow my heart just hasn't been in it. I haven't been inspired to put quill to parchment, let alone RSI afflicted finger stumps to keyboard.

But last night something changed all that. I went to try the new cocktail bar up the road, admittedly with a pretty big chip on my shoulder. "The best bar in Melbourne, as judged by the Age Good Bar Guide? Bah! Fifth best bar in the world, as per the some English newspaper? Humbug! I bet it's full of ostentatious wankers with beards, buns and fixy bicycles."

Well, the generation gap may be there, but I am going to have to stop being so flippin' ageist, because it really is fantastic. Now read on...

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