Kara Monssen

May 4, 2023 | delicious.com.au | Kara Monssen

Emily Gurr knows how to bring style to a room. The Melbourne model is the driving female force behind South Yarra’s hottest new rooftop bar, Beverly, through her role as the venue’s creative director. “A lot of women are in our design team,” she said. “It was a team effort to hit that overall key brief and it’s been executed beyond expectation.” Gurr, who studied both architecture and fashion, had a specific vision for how the rooftop bar 24 floors above Chapel Street should look.

Feb 11, 2023 | delicious.com.au | Kara Monssen

If Thai food were a song, it’d bring the funk. An excitable energy, with a spicy tempo, thumping sour bass and squealing lime vocals. It has that grippy, fast, fresh and fried fun. Quenching cocktails, tropical fruits, toasty peanuts, kaffir lime and tingling-heat giddiness. A riot of colour, texture and aromas – all something I never experienced at Longrain in its heyday. That’s right, my first ever experience of what some may dub Melbourne’s most famous Thai was last month. Saay what?

Feb 11, 2023 | delicious.com.au | Kara Monssen

Vibe check? Hell yes. Location? Nailed it. Drinks glowing all of the colours of the natty rainbow? You betcha. Clover is Richmond’s newest bar-slash-bistro brooding with hipster swag. It’s where you’ll see the South Yarra cool kids thirsty for that alternate lifestyle without committing to a northern suburbs postcode. Lyndon Kubis, behind the east’s beloved neighbourhood bars The Alps and Toorak Cellars, is having a proper crack at the restaurant thing with mate Charley Snadden-Wilson.

Feb 1, 2023 | delicious.com.au | Kara Monssen

Pass the pita!If you haven’t tried chef-about-town Alex Xinis’s famous flatbreads yet, you’ll soon get your serve at his new Collingwood restaurant. He’s opening Orlo; a new Greek eatery with the help of Young’s Wine Rooms’ James Klapanis in March. “I’m pretty stoked. It’s going to be the first project that I’m involved in to this extent,” he said. “I always had that dream to open my own restaurant… and I’m at that stage of my career and life where I’m ready for it — I’m really excited”.

Feb 1, 2023 | delicious.com.au | Kara Monssen

Forget what they said on The Simpsons, you can make friends with salad; especially at Little Picket. I’d even go steady or move in with what’s plucked from the patch here, slicked simply with sweet honey mustard and a twinkle of sea salt. I’m sure this isn’t exactly what the surfers pined over at the Lorne Bowls Club in years gone by, unless it accidentally ended up on their plates breathing nutrients into their fish and chip or chicken parma dinners. Yet the tide’s turned in Lorne.