“The Electrolux Appetite for Excellence state finals were very challenging this year and the finalists did an amazing job. It’s not an easy task to prepare a dish for the likes of Guy Grossi or Tetsuya Wakuda! These finalists are a shining example of the incredible young hospitality talent we have in Australia,” said Luke Mangan.

The finalist chefs from across the country participated in a professional ‘cook off’, racing against the clock to prepare a main dish for a judging panel of Australia’s leading chefs, including Guy Grossi, Peter Doyle and Tetsuya Wakuda. The finalist waiters put their palates to the test with a blind food and wine tasting, and demonstrated their customer service skills under careful scrutiny of judges including Lisa Van Haandel, Luke Stringer, Sam Christie and Tony Papas.

The following young aspiring professionals will continue through the competition to the national judging:

Electrolux Young Chef Finalists

Ian Atkinson, Universal, NSW
Peter Kelly, Alchemy, QLD
Matthew Dempsey, Pettavel Winery & Restaurant, VIC
Ayhan Erkoc, The Manse, SA
Jessica Jackson, Daniel Alps at Strathlynn, TAS
Brendan Pratt, Frasers, WA

Electrolux Young Waiter Finalists

Fleur Elson-White, Tetsuya’s, NSW
Ramon Arnavas, Restaurant Two, QLD
Alice Heath, Montalto Vineyard & Olive Grove, VIC
Mark Reginato, Sparrow Kitchen & Bar, SA
Adnan Crees-Morris, Daniel Alps at Strathlynn, TAS
Alyce Hall, The Richardson Hotel, WA
Raechell Petty, Il Piatto, Darwin, NT

Electrolux Young Restaurateur Finalists

Danielle Gjestland, Wasabi, QLD
Alex Kearns, Glebe Point Diner, NSW
Zoe Ladyman, Libertine, VIC
Kif Weber, Mud Bar, TAS

City superclub Ivy was named Bar of the Year at the inaugural Time Out Sydney Bar Awards recently.

Ivy was also named the best designed bar, while The Beresford won Best New Bar. Manly’s tiny Safety Wolf received the award for Best Small Bar. Best Wine Bar went to The Bentley, and the Bayswater Brasserie picked up Best Cocktail Bar.

Voted on by a panel of Sydney luminaries including Brendan Cowell, Clover Moore and Fergus Linehan, the awards are a celebration of Sydney’s thriving bar scene, from larger venues such as Ivy to dinky drinking holes such as the People’s Choice winner, Time to Vino in East Sydney, and pubs such as The Australian (which was named Best Pub).

Find all the winners mach zehnder modulatorhere.

Get ready to strap yourselves in for a seven day blast of exceptional animation from around the world in the 9th edition of the Melbourne International Animation Festival!

MIAF is one of the largest animation festivals in the world, screening 350-400 films each year in competitive, student, curated & retrospective programs. The festival aims to challenge and inspire audiences with thematic, aesthetic and technical diversity from award winners, outstanding industry veterans and those wonderful newcomers who are exploring their talent on screen for the very first time.

When:
22nd to 28th June 2009

Where:
ACMI Cinemas
Australian Centre for the Moving Image,
Federation Square, Flinders St, Melbourne

Contact:
www.miaf.net

In 1978 the New South Wales Government inaugurated the annual New South Wales Premiers Literary Awards to honour distinguished achievement by Australian writers. The Awards are announced during the Sydney Writers’ Festival. The NSW Premier’s Literary Awards are the richest literary awards in Australia.

The NSW Premiers Book of the Year for 2009 is ‘The Boat’ by Nam Le.

Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. He has previously received the Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Phillips Exeter Academy. His fiction has appeared in venues including Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, Conjunctions, One Story, NPR’s, Selected Shorts and the Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best New American Voices, Best Australian Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. He is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review.

The Boat is a stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take the readers from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterful display of literary virtuosity and feeling. In the opening story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father’s experiences in Vietnam — and what seems at first a satire on turning one’s life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son.

Full list of all the winners can be found here.

Award winning singer and songwriter Kate Ceberano gets comfortable to talk with Two Flat Whites. One of the great voices this country has produced, Kate has teamed up with multiple ARIA award winner and Grammy Award winner Mark Isham to create her first jazz album in 20 years. An album that could only be aptly titled, ‘Bittersweet’.

With five Platinum albums, four Gold albums and over 1 million albums sold in Australia alone, Kate Ceberano has performed countless sell-out tours, starred in acclaimed feature films and hosted her own television show Kate & Friends. Kate’s bittersweet musical journey is set to continue. So grab a warm beverage and enjoy the interview.

Where did you grow up?

Melbourne

You live in Melbourne – what do you love most about that now?

I always love Melbourne this time of year. The turning of the leaves and the early dark nights. It reminds me of warm kitchens after school, tram rides home through Hawthorn, Kew and Balwyn and the smell of rain. I also love the city and the drama of Southbank counterpointed with the Botanical Gardens.

In your own words, what do you do?

I am a performing artist.

Where did you learn your craft?

On the road, in pubs, small theatres, cafes and bars. Later, concert halls, arenas and film studios. It has never ceased to inspire me and thrill me the learning part of my craft. Each new skill challenge or obstacle has been a red flag. I never ever think that I know it all. The contrary, I always approach new experiences knowing nothing… more fun this way. Open heart, Open mind…

Childhood Memories:

TV Show – Bewitched

Hobby – tap dancing

Food – grandma’s chicken and banana cake

Fear – being left out

People –teenage girls in gangs have always made me wary

Defining moment – the first harmony I ever heard

(more…)

This year is the 56th Sydney Film Festival, making it one of the longest running events of its kind in the world.

Each year the festival brings the best new films from around the world to audience’s right here in Sydney. As well as brand new features from over forty countries, we screen short films, Australian films, documentaries and archive titles, many of which are recently restored. The festival hosts a number of awards to recognise excellence in filmmaking, including the Dendy Awards for Australian Short Films, (which are Academy Award eligible!) and the Official Competition, which celebrates ‘courageous and audacious filmmaking’.

The Sydney Film Festival runs until the 14th June 2009. Do yourself a favour and catch a film!

Cut & Paste is a global design competition for the most creative minds in design across the world. The competition was launched in Sydney in 2007 when over 1000 people packed into the Metro Theatre to watch the live creative design process. This years’ Cut&Paste in partnership with Autodesk and Wacom is going to be even better with designers battlin’ to given themes and time limits live on stage! Their work will be web cast globally and projected in real-time for the live Cut&Paste audience.

This years’ event features a hat trick of 2D, 3D, and Motion Design competitions in sixteen cities worldwide,  across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, San Francisco, Toronto, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, London, Milan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo and we want you involved! The 2009 tour takes Cut&Paste over, across, and around the world in just over a hundred days, then flying back to New York for the grand finale, the debut of an international showdown between champions.

This years Cut&Paste is back at the Metro Theatre on Saturday, June 6.

Get your tickets here.

Sydney restaurant Tetsuya’s has again been named best restaurant in Australia at an awards ceremony in London recently, where a list of the World’s Best 50 restaurants was announced.

The renowned S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list celebrated its eighth year, with Spanish restaurant El Bulli coming out on top for the fourth straight year. Once again London’s The Fat Duck came second, while Joel Robuchon won the Lifetime Achievement Award. A total of 4,185 votes were tallied from 837 restaurant experts from around the world as the list continued to receive greater recognition around the world.

On the world list, Tetsuya’s fell to 17 after placing fifth in 2007 and ninth last year, while Neil Perry’s Rockpool dropped off the list altogether for the first time. Rockpool reached as high as 4th in 2002 but has since steadily lost favour amongst the selection panel. However, fellow Sydney restaurant Quay capped off a stunning twelve months when they were named on the list for the first time, coming in at 46. The harbourside restaurant, led by Executive Chef Peter Gilmore, last year won Restaurant of the Year from the Gourmet Traveller Magazine, captured the Australian Restaurant of the Year title at the Savour Australia National Awards and was adjudged Best Sydney Restaurant by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Aside from Rockpool, another familiar name to Australians was missing from the list this year, that of Gordon Ramsay. His flagship London restaurant was a notable omission, having placed 13th last year. Both Rockpool and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay failed to make it onto the extended list of the Top 100, while Sydney’s Pier Restaurant managed to edge into the Top 100 for the first time – coming in at at 94.

Article written by Daniel Palmer.

The Young Designers Market at South Bank features over 80 stalls with some of Brisbane’s best up and coming designers and artists selling a range of fashion and accessories, jewellery, homewares, object design, furniture and arts. The popular market has just become a monthly event and is on the first Sunday of each month.

Sunday 7th June 2009: 10am-4pm
South Bank Visitor Centre
Little Stanley Street, South Bank