20 years of...

   

 

Today marks 20 years since we published the first post on where's the beef?. The format has aged, we have aged, our posting frequency has slowed and our readership has declined, AND YET - in this obscurity we still find food blogging meaningful and useful, and occasionally we continue to get messages that some of you do too.

 

where's the beef? is a document of the 20 years we've lived in Melbourne, the people we've spent time with, the things we've done, the ways we've changed. Early on we lived very close to our workplaces: we were often home with groceries by 6pm with energy to cook something new; on the weekends we'd get on the train or tram and visit a new-to-us suburb to eat new-to-us food. Twenty years later our habits have narrowed a bit: I tend to seek out simpler new recipes and happily refer to old favourites that we've saved up here; there barely seem enough chances to support the restaurants I already know and love, and we're completely out of the loop on what's hot in the city. (Meanwhile Michael visits Iris the Bakery several times a week and has never written a post about them!) In between, we've made some of the firmest friends of our adult lives through blogging and we're having many of them over for a vegan potluck tomorrow.

 

In the past few years, my computer-based workload and bouts of vestibular migraine have put me off opening the laptop in the evenings, and one day they might do this blog in entirely (if Google doesn't do Blogger in first). For now where's the beef? is still here, celebrating vegetarian food at its own pace. 

Cheap East 2006, 20 years later

   

We started where's the beef way back in 2006 when we moved down to Melbourne from Brisbane. That means, of course, that it's 20 years since we started exploring Melbourne veg dining options and posting low quality photos of delicious food. 

Our bible for the first few years was The Age's 2006 Cheap Eats Guide, a region-by-region guide to 473 cafes, bars and restaurants across Victoria that promised meals for less than $25 a head. We checked back in 2016, revisiting a bunch of old favourites and checking the stats. At that point, 282 (59.6%) of the places listed were still open, and getting blogged by us in 2006 or 2007 was associated with a very large benefit (around 80% of the places we had blogged stayed open compared with 56% of the unblogged places).

Another decade has passed, so it's time to update the figures! The decade since 2016 has been a tough one, with the number of places still open falling by about half - we're down to 144 out of the original 473 (30.4%). There are a range of factors that predict longevity, but the key finding: being blogged by where's the beef will boost your business' survival. 

   

Between arriving in Melbourne in late 2006 and the end of 2007, we visited and blogged 43 places from the Cheap Eats, and 21 (48.8%) are still trading two decades later, compared with just 28.6% of the places we didn't blog. Now that's influence. In a fully adjusted logistic regression model, getting a wtb review before 2007 was linked with a doubling of your odds of staying open for 20 years! Incredible stuff.

   

There's some interesting variation between venues. Pubs seem to have the most staying power. Vietnamese restaurants in particular have struggled through that second decade, with only one of the twenty places in the Cheap Eats still trading this year. 

   

This is echoed in the regional data - the Inner East (which has a strong Vietnamese history and community) experienced the most closures, but more than half of the listed places have closed in every region. It's a tough industry.

We're going to revisit a bunch of places from the early years of where's the beef this year and check in on how they've changed (or not) since the heady days of 2006. Stay tuned!

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Do you receive updates from where's the beef? via email? The service we've been relying upon to send those updates is being discontinued in July 2021. We're working on a new system and if all goes well, you'll be automatically transferred over and will barely notice a thing! But if there are hiccups, you may need to resubscribe.

Keep an eye out for new posts this week for rum and raisin cake and all the things we've been cooking from Hetty McKinnon's beautiful cookbook, To Asia, With Love. If they fail to arrive, come visit our website directly and try resubscribing to our emails. You can contact us at wheresthebeef_blog[at]yahoo.com.au.

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on

January 10, 2016

Cindy and I moved to Melbourne mid-2006 and one of the first things we did was grab ourselves a copy of The Age's Cheap Eats Guide. The rise of Zomato/Urbanspoon has diminished the influence of these books, but when we arrived the Cheap Eats was our guide. This year we're pulling the old book off the shelf to see what's changed in the past decade.

I've gone through each of the 474 listings in the 2006 guide, noting down the type of venue, the region it's in, whether or not we've blogged it and whether it's still open. Shockingly, there wasn't a single Mexican restaurant in the 2006 guide - an almost unbelievable absence given the Mexican explosion that hit Melbourne a few years later.

Of the 474 places listed in the 2006 Cheap Eats, 282 (59.6%) are still open. The survival rate varied substantially by venue type - bakeries were pretty secure while burger joints, seafood purveyors and vegetarian restaurants failed in droves.

There was surprisingly little variation by region. I expected that the gentrification of the inner-north would have swept away the majority of the 2006 entries, but it was the inner South-East (South Melbourne, Middle Park, Albert Park, South Yarra, Prahran and Windsor) that had the most closures.

Now, to the most important statistical question - what impact does getting reviewed on where's the beef? have on a business? Well, of 73 places we blogged, 58 are still open (79.5%), while of the 400 places we didn't blog, 224 are still open (56.0%), so early signs are positive. Even more strikingly, of 8 vego places we blogged, 5 are still open (62.5%), while only 2 of the 9 vego places we didn't blog survived (37.5%).

To properly test our influence though, you need to control for the kinds of places and areas that we tend to blog. So I popped all of these data into Stata and got cracking. In a logistic regression analysis, controlling for type and region of venue, places we blogged were 4.7 times (2.2-9.9) more likely to be open than those we didn't*. Surely all the evidence you need of the remarkable influence that where's the beef? has on the world.

Throughout 2016 we're planning to revisit some of these old listings, returning to favourite eateries and finally checking out some places we've shamefully never gotten around to. We reckon these stayers warrant our blogging attention as much as buzz-hungry new venues.

____________

* The very fact that a place stayed open increased the likelihood that we eventually got around to blogging it, meaning that the causal relationship here goes in both directions. As a robustness check, we just looked at whether or not being blogged on wtb by the end of 2007 was associated with being open in 2016 - the significant relationship remained, adding weight to the argument that where's the beef? attention is a strong predictor of business survival.

Don't forget! where's the beef? picnic

In our 1999th post, we'd like to remind you that we're holding a 2000-post celebratory picnic this Sunday March 22 from noon. We'll set up at the northern end of Princes Park, near the pond. Come by and say hi, and if you want to stick around a while, please bring your own picnic gear too - blankets or chairs, plates, cups and cutlery and a plate of food to share. (The most sharing plates of food are ones that are vegan, gluten-free and otherwise diet-inclusive.) We couldn't have asked for a better weather forecast- it's likely to be 27°C and sunny!

If you're a facebooker, join the event page for last-minute updates. 

Note: this food is for illustrative purposes only, actual picnic food may vary

A new millenium for where's the beef?

After more than eight years of blogging, reviews of over 700 restaurants in 34 cities, nearly 900 recipes and more hours than I care to tally up, where's the beef? is poised to publish its 2000th post!

We're going to welcome the start of our third millennium with some tweaks of our design and some long overdue updating of our where's the best? list, but we'd also like to mark the occasion by eating food. Tons of food.

Note: this food is for illustrative purposes only, actual picnic food may vary

So we're going to have a potluck picnic in the park to celebrate. Cindy and I are going to pack up loads of food and plonk down near the pond at the Northern end of Princes Park from midday on March 22. You're all invited to join us - bring food if you want to, but feel free to just swing by and say hi as well. We've set up an event over on our facebook page, so sign up there if you want to keep track of updates and frantic weather-related rescheduling. We'd love to see you there!

Thinking & Drinking at the Melbourne Writers Festival

August 23-27, 2014

Michael and I threw ourselves whole-heartedly into the Melbourne Writers Festival these past 10 days, attending all sorts of sessions - dress memoirs, life anti-hacks, TV tapings and queer commentaries among them. I was especially drawn to the food-themed events, turning up at four of those alone.

On the first Saturday I listened to American food writer Ruth Reichl. She seemed completely at ease on stage, with a warm, playful and occasionally passionate manner. Reichl was motivated to develop a discerning taste at a very young age, as her mother was an untalented and occasionally dangerous cook. In spite of this setting, she grew to love rather than fear food and went on to strike a deal for her first cookbook at just 21 years of age. She's been writing about food for decades since, working at Gourmet magazine in its heyday of extensive recipe testing and 10 onsite cooks. Seeking anonymity in her restaurant reviewing, Reichl developed an elaborate range of disguises and characters (even impersonating her own mother!) and these ultimately led to her recent foray into fiction. A newcomer to her work, I was as enthralled with Ruth Reichl's life story as any of the more clued-up fangirls in the audience.

Just half an hour later I slipped into a session on Crowdsourced Criticism featuring Lorraine Elliott (aka Not Quite Nigella), Tresna Lee of Yelp, and freelance food writer Dani Valent. The obligatory initial discussion of defamation gave way to some more interesting reflections on the unique opportunities of social media (e.g. conversations that include business owners) and challenges of providing rigorous critique.

On Monday night it was my turn to step up, joining a panel on Australian Fine Dining with Ronnie Scott and Andrea Frost (pictured above). Estelle Tang was our friendly and funny moderator, teasing this blog's "fancy schmancy" tag one moment and rightfully schooling us all on fair working wages the next. Ronnie and Andrea were clever co-panelists and I did my best to keep up. While we all agreed that food can be art, I think the session proved that we have as much affection for everyday eating as the posh stuff - Andrea's book really cuts away the pomp around wine culture, and Ronnie confessed to eating Pizza Hut for lunch.

Two nights later I returned to the Duke for a session on Food Ethics. This time Leanne Clancey MCed a panel comprising farmer Tammi Jonas, Sustainable Table's Cassie Duncan and sustainable designer Ewan McEoin. They highlighted the Aussie demand for cheap food; McEoin astutely pointed out that if it's cheap for us to buy, the cost is probably borne elsewhere - by the environment, by the farmed animals and by our fellow humans on the supply chain. The panel also discussed solutions, from long-term overarching structures to everyday actions. Their ideal is to shorten the string of transactions between food grower and food eater and Jonas boldly challenged the audience to make a difference by immediately ceasing to eat chicken from suppliers they don't know personally.

It's been wonderful to hear from some of Victoria's more thoughtful eaters during the festival (plus a couple of out-of-town guests) - credit goes to festival director Lisa Dempster and especially the Thinking & Drinking convenor Yasmeen Richards for seeking out such diverse opinions and styles.

____________

I received free entry into Ruth Reichl's Delicious, Crowdsourced Criticism and a number of other Melbourne Writers Festival events as a participating artist of the festival. I will likely be paid a fee for my contribution to the Australian Fine Dining panel. I paid full-price entry to the Food Ethics panel.

Reminder: Australian Fine Dining panel

The 2014 Melbourne Writers Festival approaches! The panel I'm appearing on - Thinking & Drinking: Australian Fine Dining - is happening in just two weeks. I'm catching up on the books of my co-panelists Andrea Frost and Ronnie Scott, and they're definitely food for thought... moderator Estelle Tang's food blog makes for a few chuckles in between.

I believe there are still some tickets available through the festival website. Hope to see some of you there at the Duke of Wellington (an accessible venue!) on Monday August 25.

where's the beef? at the Melbourne Writers Festival

The 2014 Melbourne Writers Festival program was released yesterday, including an extensive selection of Food, Wine and Travel events. I'll be appearing on a panel entitled Thinking & Drinking: Australian Fine Dining alongside Andrea Frost, Ronnie Scott and Estelle Tang. This panel will be held at the Duke of Wellington (an accessible venue!) from 6:30pm on Monday August 25.

I'd love to see some friendly faces there - please come and say hi if you attend!

Vegan events, online and off

This September brings two terrific events for lovers of vegan food!

First, it's the 4th anniversary of Planet VegMel, an aggregator of 64 of Melbourne's veg*n food blogs. To celebrate there'll be a picnic at Curtain Square from noon on Saturday September 14. Bloggers, non-bloggers, veg*ns and non-veg*ns are all welcome - just bring a plate of vegan food to share and you will instantly earn friends. Check out the facebook event page for full details and updates, and if you're feeling inspired contribute something to the annual zine too.

Second, VeganMoFo has rolled around a month early! Blogs all around the world will be posting new vegan material daily, and this year we've decided to join the party - that means a 100% vegan post from us every weekday through September. We've recently moved to a new kitchen in a new neighbourhood, and we'll each be setting off on short trips as well, so we won't fall short of inspiration. Keep an eye on the offical VeganMoFo homepage for a full list of participants and RSS feeds.

Let's make three a crowd

   

We're rapidly approaching Planet VeGMeL's birthday! For three years the planet has brought the food posts of Melbourne-based veg*n blogs to one location for your convenient consumption. With 57 of us on the roll, you're RSS-fed a multi-course meal daily.

To celebrate the occasion, Steph has announced a picnic on Saturday September 15 at Edinburgh Gardens, starting at 1pm. Everyone is welcome - blogger or not, veg*n or otherwise - to bring a vegan dish and partake in an IRL feast. (In the spirit of extra-awesome inclusiveness, consider cooking gluten-free.) Any late changes will be posted on this facebook page. Marking your attendance isn't mandatory, but might help Steph ensure that there are enough zines to go around.

Last year's picnic was a cracker, so I'm bypassing the usual pencil and inking this one into my diary.

Celebrating two years of VegMel

It's been a fun four weeks showcasing the delights of Planet VegMel! We've recreated and/or remixed 9 recipes from as many bloggers and plenty other VegMellers have joined the fun too. (See Steph's first round-up here and stay tuned for another.) We got a kick out of seeing a few of our recipes rerun - Johanna made baked beans, Steph tried lemon pepper cashews, and K churned up a batch of salted caramel icecream.

Celebrations culminated in a VegMel picnic last Sunday, where the sun shone down on Edinburgh Gardens and a few of us narrowly escaped our first sunburn of the season. Steph had spent Saturday making badges and zines for all! Amazing. You can download the Happy Birthday VegMel zine here (PDF), which unfortunately but doesn't come with the hard copy's coloured party hat for the tofu coverguy and matching coloured stitching on the spine. There was far too much food had by all - savoury muffins and bread, eggplant salad, Michael's enchiladas, mock crab cakes (inspired by us!), mini tofu quiches, apricot delights, peanut butter balls, cake pops, chocolate caramel slice, my cookie sandwiches and many other delicious dishes soon-to-be or sadly-never-to-be blogged.

Melbourne's online veg community is pretty special! And all the better for having spilled over into face-to-face food sharing and friendship.

More for Melbourne's veg*ns

Hot on the heels of our blogiversary comes the 2nd birthday of Planet VeGMeL! Planet VeGMeL aggregates the posts of participating vegetarian and vegan bloggers in Melbourne. And us vegos are pretty keen participators - there's 44 of us at last count. We'll be celebrating both on- and offline.

The main event is a picnic potluck on September 18. All readers and friends of VeGMeL are invited, not just its contributing bloggers. Please bring a plate of vegan food and a smile! An RSVP on the facebook event page would also be helpful for the organisers.

For those of y'all with blogs, Steph is also hosting 'that recipe seems very familiar...'. This is a chance showcase the awesome recipes blogged by fellow VegMellers. Our wish list is long and we'll be trying and blogging as many as we can between now and the September 13-ish deadline.

____________

In other news for local veg*ns, Melbourne's Fringe Food Festival is hosting a 5-course vegan dinner with Embrasse's Nic Poeleart and winemaker Neil Prentice on September 7. Get in quick for tickets! We really enjoyed Poeleart's way with vegetables at this year's Melbourne Food & Wine Festival and can't wait to see what he'll do when butter, cheese and eggs are off the menu.

5 years, still no beef

Today marks five years since our first post here at where's the beef?. It's getting difficult to remember what we did with ourselves in our blog-less days with only a dial-up connection to check our email. (I think I read more books... and I suspect Michael watched more sport.)

In that time we've written about 401 different restaurants across 563 posts and tried 602 vegetarian recipes. That includes 75 breakfast venues and 25 pubs, 31 flavours of home-made ice-cream, 42 soups and tofu cooked 56 ways in our kitchen alone.

We've more trouble counting the friends that we've made, the things that we've learned, or the number of days in that time that have been cheered by your comments, tweets and emails. As a thank-you for your support, we'd like to run a giveaway for our Australia-based readers this week. The prize is a $60 gift voucher to spend at the Radical Grocery (if you're in Melbourne) or at the Cruelty Free Shop (if you're anywhere else in Oz)... PLUS we'll donate an additional $60 to the World Food Programme in your name. We reckon these folks all do great work and we'd be proud to support them on your behalf.

To enter, leave a comment on this post telling us what or where you're most looking forward to eating this spring. It could be a seasonal ingredient, a recipe just not quite right for winter, a favourite picnic spot or beer garden... there must be something that you've been hanging out to have these cold couple of months! If you do not already have an email address or twitter account attached to your commenting profile, please send us an email entry as well to wheresthebeef_blog[at]yahoo.com.au, so that we can contact you in the event that you win. Entries close at midnight ending Saturday August 28 and the winner will be randomly drawn and announced on Sunday August 29.

Between now and the prize draw we've got a few posts for you following the five-year theme. Cheers!

Giveaway winners

I won't bore you with the details of the fabulous recipe-weighted random number generator we concocted, but suffice to say it works and it has drawn winners for our veg week competition! We can now announce:

Hannah
has won
the Australian Veg Guide

tronica
has won
Vegan Indulgence

We'll be in contact both our winners very shortly.

The good news for the rest of you is that these books cost <$20 each and you can order them through Aduki's online shop any time.

An Aussie Veg Guide in Aussie Veg Week

While every day is a vegetarian day here on where's the beef?, today marks the beginning of National Vegetarian Week!  And one way to take advantage of Australia's great veg eating is to get your hands on a copy of...

image from aduki website

Yes, it's here!  Following up from the enormously successful Melbourne Veg Food Guide, editor Lisa Dempster and publisher Aduki have expanded their scope and gone national with the Australian Veg Food Guide 2011.  Inside you'll find 200 reviews and listings of Australia's best vegan, vegetarian and veg-friendly restaurants.  The guide will be in stores on October 25 but you can pre-order it right now.

We've already purchased two copies and we want to give one of them away to you.  We also have another fab Aduki publication, a copy of Leigh Drew's Vegan Indulgence, to give away.

image from aduki website

To enter the draw for the Aussie Veg Food Guide, tell us in a comment below about the best dessert you've eaten out in an Aussie restaurant.

To enter the draw for Vegan Indulgence, tell us in a comment below about the best dessert you've made at home.  I will double your chance of winning if it's vegan and triple your chance if it's both vegan and soy-free.  (I can do this because I AM THE MASTER OF MY RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR and I have this thing about soy-based dairy substitutes.)

We are willing to post these prizes to any address world-wide (... that's recognised by Australia Post).

If there is not an email address clearly attached to your commenting profile, please drop us a note as you enter to identify yourself.  We want to make sure that the actual winner claims the prize.  We will not share your details with anyone and will delete them after the competition is concluded.

This competition closes at midnight on Saturday October 2.  Oh, wait!  Do we have two midnights on Saturday October 2, owing to daylight savings?  Hmmm.  I'll give you until 10am daylight savings time on Sunday October 3 and announce winners as soon as I've sorted my random number thingy out.

Happy National Vegetarian Week, y'all!

1000 posts

Yes, really - this is our 1000th post at where's the beef!  To celebrate, we're...

1.  Dressing up.

We've spruced up our layout a little.  Oh, and we have some NEW ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETER CARNAVAS.  Aren't they grand?

Pete is a writer and illustrator of children's books, with his latest publication - The Important Things - having just been launched last weekend.  He's also a long-time friend of ours and we're thrilled with his interpretation of what this blog is about.  You can find out more about Pete's work here.

2.  Inviting you to celebrate with us.

Come share a celebratory drink with us!  We'll be at Grumpy's Green (125 Smith St Fitzroy) from 3pm on Sunday May 23.  They've got comfy couches, a lengthy eco-friendly drinks list and crinkle-cut chips.  I'll bring cake.

(If you're not in Melbourne, don't worry - we've got something fun planned for you too.)

3.  Joining the Twitterverse

For those of you who didn't notice us slinking onto the scene a couple of weeks ago, we're now twittering as @herestheveg .  Expect quick'n'dirty updates on what we're eating, links to stuff we like and live Masterchef ranting.

 4.  Housekeeping

Housekeeping, woo!  We've been adding some new favourites to the where's the best? list, such as

• Lentil tacos
• Pancakes
• The quick and the dead tasty pizza dough
• Raspberry rippled coconut icecream 
• Zippy warm potato salad
• Court Jester Cafe in Brunswick
• Merrijig Inn, Port Fairy
• Penang Affair, Fitzroy
• Plush Pizza, Hawthorn
• Provenance, Beechworth

We're also sad to note the closure of some favourite restaurants - Bowl of Soul and Idea Fine Food and Wine are no more.

If you're reading this on our home page, you might also have noticed that we've rearranged some of our links and updated our profile photos.  (I've gone and had a haircut since Matt took that photo in April, so focus on Michael's luscious ginger locks if you're looking out for us at Grumpy's!)

We hope these changes will make visiting where's the beef? all the more fun and functional, and that you'll pop by and say hi on the 23rd!

Eat Drink Blog

Eat Drink Blog, Australia's first food bloggers' conference, is being held here in Melbourne on Sunday March 21. It's an all day (and all night!) affair with panel sessions on:

• how and why we blog
• practicalities of photography
• copyright, ethics and legalities
• SEO and how to be social
• making money through blogging

There'll also be plenty of time to socialise and eat with fellow food bloggers.

Participation is free but places are very limited. If you'd like to attend, fill in this form to register and cross your fingers for an invite!

Keep up to date with the conference by checking out the Eat Drink Blog blog.

November 9-December 24, 2009: Support Streetsmart

Streetsmart supplies grants to small, grassroots organisations that are combatting homelessness. In the six weeks leading up to Christmas, you can help Streetsmart help these organisations help the homeless (phew!) while dining out at some of Melbourne's great restaurants.

Where?

You can check out a full list of participating restaurants, Australia-wide, at the Streetsmart website. We've been to a few of them before! Check out our reviews of Abla's, Anada, Birdman Eating, Cumulus Inc, Ezard, Gingerboy, Laksa Me, Misuzu's, Oskar, Oyster Little Bourke, Red Spice Road, The Commoner, and The Town Hall Hotel.

How?
Leave a donation when you pay your bill at a participating restaurant. As the Streetsmart logo above hints, as little as $2 can make a difference! You can also make direct donations to Streetsmart through ourcommunity.com.au. Spread the word via Facebook, Twitter, your blog or by (gasp!) speaking directly, in person, to your friends, family and coworkers.

We plan to visit and review a few Streetsmart restaurants during the campaign. We hope you can find a way to pitch in too!

800th post, 2nd giveaway

Today this blog reaches another little milestone - 800 posts! It's a good time to update our where's the best? guide. New home cooking highlights include:

• caramelised onion dip
• broccoli soup with lemon-chive cream
• heaven-sent haloumi
  
• eggplant lasagne rolls
  
• tempeh lasagne
• believe-it-or-not broccoli burgers
• the cheesy tuna bake that isn't
  
• mushroom paprikash (this is old news but we've only really grown to appreciate it recently)
• raw lime pie
• red velvet cupcakes

Out and about, we've loved:

• Babka, Mitte, Mixed Business and Juanita's for breakfast,
• La Panella and the Vegie Hut for their cheap vegan faux meats,
  
• Peko Peko and Idea Fine Food and Wine for a mid-priced meal, and
• Ezard and Circa, the Prince when we're really splashing out.
  

Sadly, we've had to remove Filter, Vina Bar and Three One Two from our favourites as they're no longer open for business.

This is also a good time for another giveaway, right? Up for grabs are a couple of winter-friendly items that we've recently been enjoying ourselves - a copy of Soup For All Seasons, written by Las Vegan's Lia Vandersant and Liam Davies, and a canister of Monsieur Truffe Hot Dark Chocolate Mix.

To enter the draw, tell us about your favourite veg-friendly recipe for winter in the comments section below. Give us enough information that we could try making it ourselves, or just link to the recipe if it's already available online. We'll make and blog the winning entry, and any others that especially take our fancy!

If you don't wish to add a contact email address publicly to our comments, then email us at wheresthebeef_blog@yahoo.com.au as soon as you've posted your entry so that, if you win, we can arrange delivery of your prize. We won't share your email address with anyone else or hassle you ourselves once this giveaway's been given away. Entries close at midnight on Tuesday June 30.