Month: October 2015

Petition Kitchen is a brand new restaurant that opened in Perth, and so I had to check it out. I believe the head chef used to work as a sous chef at Cumulus Inc, one of my favourite walk-in restaurants in Melbourne. During its review period (opening – 11 October), reservations were essential. From my observations of the Perth population, I wasn’t sure that reservations were necessary, at least on non-Friday and Saturday nights. Turns out you can walk-in, too, during this time.

What I love about visiting a brand new restaurant is actually seeing them seeing what works and what doesn’t – watching something come to life and then grow is fascinating. So I booked two sessions, the first was a Sunday brunch (I thought I booked for lunch but they gave me a brunch menu? They didn’t seem to be serving non-brunch until after about 1pm or so), and the second was a Friday night dinner.

Continue reading Petition Kitchen – 9 October 2015

Kensington Street is getting an upgrade, and I want to go there for one reason: Kensington Street Social. However, since it wasn’t open yet, and I had some spare time, I was very lucky to find out that Automata, another new restaurant on the block, was open for Sunday lunches (the only spare day I had in a short trip to Sydney), so off I went.

The layout, to me at least, felt remarkably similar to Nel, especially when it comes to the open kitchen. The other similarity, I noticed, was the set menu style meals. It’s not quite a grand deguastation, but coming in at 5 courses, it is still an experience. It’s also relatively cheap, and by that I mean sub $100. It’s like a new breed of restaurant has popped up – accessible fine dining as if to appeal to the masses. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but considering how small profit margins are for restaurants, I am a little concerned about their longevity. It’s hard to see how all these restaurants will all remain standing after 5-10 years, if that. But only time will tell.
Continue reading Automata – 27 September 2015