New Zealand is beautiful. I keep thinking that when the world gets more and more crowded, the South Island will become a very sought after place. Buy a property there now! There is plenty of water, scenery, and green pastures for food. I have just returned from a holiday in New Zealand including the Milford trek. So happy, along with bunjy jumping.

Just before I left for my trip, 4 of us went to Cumulus Inc. for dinner. When people come to visit Melbourne, and there was one place you could take them to eat, I think this is it. Fine food in casual, shared setting. No table cloths, no lengthy speech about how to eat your food. The dishes ranges from delicate fine dining style to home/rustic (last year’s truffle gnocchi!) but all designed to share. After dinner, you could take them for a walk along Little Flinder’s Lane, past Kenzan, Coda, Yu-yu, Movida and see some graffiti in narrow laneways.

We ended up having 12 dishes all up, and if not including wine or oysters, the bill came would be $40 per person. Two dishes were the favorites of the day. The crispy school prawns with chili, garlic and spring onions was sweet, juicy and the shells all edible. Surely inspired from travels in Asia. Second was the mussels, jamon, parsley and saffron sauce. Perfectly balanced flavours that we have never seen with mussels. We certainly did not forget to ask for more of the white sourdough/wet-dough bread to mop up the sauce. That bread is always so nice, I could order just the prawns and mussels and my evening would be complete.

Going again tonight =)