Pilar Mitchell

5 days ago | broadsheet.com.au | Pilar Mitchell

“At the end of every year, when I was a kid, I remember people making mochi in my hometown, in Kamakura,” chef Nobuyuki Ura of Sydney restaurant Ora tells Broadsheet. “My grandpa and grandma, cousins, everyone would come and we’d gather the backyard watching as one person pounded the mochi, while another person added water little by little. They stayed in rhythm by shouting, ‘yoi-sho, yoi-sho!’.”Yu Ozone, co-owner of Comeco Foods in Sydney, has similar memories.

1 week ago | broadsheet.com.au | Pilar Mitchell

Eilish Maloney believes the Australian food system is broken. “It hit me a couple of years ago,” the chef and owner of The What If Society in Moss Vale tells Broadsheet. “The Southern Highlands is a big food bowl, with so many producers. We watch the food get shipped out and then go to the shop and buy something that was trucked in from somewhere else.”Eating local is one of the core principals behind Maloney’s business.

2 weeks ago | broadsheet.com.au | Pilar Mitchell

When Indonesians caution that their food is spicy, take them seriously. The heat from the nasi padang bungkus at Bintang Bro, for example, builds slowly until you wish you’d ordered two iced coffees from neighbouring shop Kanagnan, an Indonesian coffee franchise of Starbucks-like proportions. Bintang Bro, Kanagnan and dessert shop Sweet Republic make up Little Indo Town, a standalone eatery in Westfield Sydney’s food court under Myer.

2 weeks ago | broadsheet.com.au | Pilar Mitchell

Shatteringly crisp filo pastry, glossy with olive oil. Piles of biscuits dusted in icing sugar. Pistachio-stuffed sweets soaked in honey syrup. These are the treasures of our city’s Greek and Cypriot bakers. And there are plenty across Sydney. In the last six months, Greek food has really hit its stride across Sydney. The Apollo opened its follow-up in Redfern and Olympic Meats is sizzling in Marrickville.

3 weeks ago | broadsheet.com.au | Pilar Mitchell

When Jim Flanagan started approaching independent musicians to stock their albums at Lazy Thinking, his Dulwich Hill record store, music venue and bar, he noticed a strange phenomenon. “People came round to drop off stock and would tell me they lived 100 metres away,” Flanagan tells Broadsheet. “It happened over and over again. There’s this perception that the music capital of Sydney is Enmore and Newtown, but that’s really changed.