Hometown highlights
How do you mend a broken heart? If you are Wendy Whiteley you find solace in nature and a shovel. How often is it that overseas visitors tip the locals off about treasures right on their doorstep? That happened this week as German friends enthused about the “secret garden” Wendy Whiteley has spent two decades…
Why afternoon tea might still be the best chill pill going The Ritz London rolled into Sydney this week, ahead of a national roadshow, with a reminder of just how perfect afternoon tea can be. Flagging the iconic hotel’s 110th birthday celebrations – and a northern summer season of packages that incorporate Ascot, Wimbledon, Highclere Castle…
A whisky with Spanish and Japanese ancestry gets the red carpet treatment in the world’s gastronomy capitals In a glamorous private room in Tetsuya Wakuda’s Sydney restaurant, 22 guests are sitting down to a food and whisky pairing rich in alchemy, artistry and Japanese savoir faire. Standing sentinal is a maple tree that seems to wrap…
Sydney Christmas parties are in full swing … some with fund-raising on the side Well heeled, well dressed and well fed … the young and the beautiful who comprise the Silver Committee and their friends decended upon Rose Bay’s waterfront hot spot Regatta for a Christmas lunch to raise funds for the Sydney Children’s Hospital. Paying…
A new treasure trove of wearable silver is inspiration for gift hunters, collectors and connoisseurs. Aficionados of vintage Scandinavian silver are making a beeline for Christopher Becker’s shiny new pocket gallery in Sydney’s Potts Point, called Antiques-Art-Design. His seductive display of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian pieces – polished to a mirror shine – includes designs…
A gleaming new fleet of bespoke motor yachts does the rounds of Sydney Harbour It’s not every day a man asks you if you’d like to see his engines. Bruce Scott does, and it’s hard to refuse. If what’s below deck on the highly polished, immaculately designed and kitted out 73ft motor yacht Komotion has…
Franck Muller makes the coolest, craziest, watches. In Sydney to open a new store, we find out what makes him tick Swiss watchmaker Franck Muller is attracted to precision, power and perfection. Which might explain why his inspiration in recent times has reached from the high seas to grand prix racetracks to nature’s underbelly….
While fine dining temples such as the reborn Bennelong and the scheduled Noma summer pop-up at Barangaroo have been getting all the press love lately, elsewhere Sydney sizzles with more under-the-radar options. Here, four hot new diners. Petrol, in Springfield Avenue, has in the past eight years become something of an institution among Potts…
Dining at the Woolloomooloo Wharf is one of the best ways to experience Sydney. It delivers the goods for both locals and visitors. Manta Restaurant and Bar, between Otto and China Doll, has after nine years, undergone a makeover. Over Veuve Clicquot and a degustation to introduce the new look and feel, owner Rob Rubis…
Is there anything more quintessentially Sydney than lunch at Catalina? It’s like a scene from a Richard Scarry What Do People Do All Day? picture book. The laden Louise Savage Supercat ferry slides on by; striped sailing dinghies dart about the harbour like angelfish on speed; a sea plane swoops into the drink looking like…