HOT: Alice in Wonderland featuring Little Creatures, Cafe Vue, Little Collins St, Melbourne

As I mentioned before, my birthday treat from my parents was dinner and drinks at Cafe Vue.

It wasn't as busy on Friday night as I was expecting, so we had our pick of the outdoor tables (with overhead heaters). For the next three hours, we tripped through Alice in Wonderland with drinks in hand, alcoholic for RM, non-alcoholic for moi.

First up was triangles of gruyere and mushroom croque monsieur topped with intensely fragrant truffles. A taste sensation of wintery earthiness matched with The Mad-Hatter's Tea (Pipsqueak apple cider with lime) and a blood orange juice and ginger beer concoction.

Then my favourite dish, steamed Angasi oysters with Chinese wine and brown bread. The juicy and creamy oysters apparently came from the best oyster man in Australia and each rested in an edible 'shell' - brown bread baked into the shape of an oyster shell. Served with a pint of White Rabbit ale and pineapple juice, chinotto and honey syrup mix which tasted surprisingly like the ale, without the beery bitterness.

'Cabbages and King...Fish' consisted of a topsy-turvy plate of chips that looked like fish and fish that looked like chips! The dish was served with a pint of Little Creatures Pilsner and a mocktail of mango puree, limonata, orange blossom water and soda water.

A bizarre March Hare's carrot and goat's cheese gnocchi with beetroot dressing. The 'gnocchi' was actually cheese that had undergone some chemical process so they were presented as little tubular marshmallows. The carrot had been cooked over many hours so it had infused the flavours of stock. A bit of magic went into the Pale in Thyme cocktail, which consisted of a pale ale with the initial bitterness removed by the flavours of thyme, leaving only the lemon myrtle flavour at the back of the palate. My drink consisted thyme syrup, passionfruit puree, lemon syrup and sugar syrup.

Finally, breakfast-as-dessert reminiscent of The Fat Duck. We each received an egg carton labelled Pullet Eggs (poulet, haha) where the eggs had been replaced with madeleines filled with lemon curd or topped egg shells filled with a layer of vanilla custard and tea jelly. Hmmmm.....

All in all, a very enjoyable night of creative and delicious food, lots of drinks and the great service typified by all my Vue de Monde experiences. You'll have until the end of July if you want to follow me down the rabbit hole.

HOT: The Sartorialist at Cutler & Co, 55-57 Gertrude St, Fitzroy

The Sartorialist's blog is so famous that even my mum follows him. So you can imagine the tsunami of anticipation that engulfed Melbourne's fashionistas when Time Magazine's top 1oo design influencers announced that he was holding a party to meet his Melbourne readers.

Oh dear, what to wear???

Given that most of my wardrobe was still in shipping boxes, I didn't have much of a choice of outfit. Never mind, I briefly practised my model posing, then skipped off excitedly to the hot new Andrew McConnell restaurant, Cutler & Co.

Never have I seen so many zany hats, colourful pocket squares and androgynous men in such a small area. Everyone was trying to be cool and nonchalant, while clearly eyeing everyone else's outfit. RM and I claimed a spot at the bar and entrenched our position by ordering a couple of tapas. The food at Cutler & Co was not cheap, but it was impressive. We had a delicious squid escabeche, some neanderthal cutlets of extremely tender duck confit and narrow wafers balancing shreds of crabmeat.

And then ....there he was, Scott Schumann in the flesh. People started jostling to get near him (in a cool, nonchalant way) and at one stage there was even a queue of admirers waiting to talk to him. To his credit, there was no diva attitude - he seemed quite at ease with the crowd, freely answering questions and talking about his experiences in Australia. I didn't push to get closer to him because I discovered that I didn't have any intelligent thoughts other than 'OMG, he's really really short!''. But I do wish I'd elbowed aside some of the groupies so I could have gotten a photo with me towering over him - probably the only time I'm ever going to look like a model.

HOT: Cookie, 252 Swanston St, Melbourne 3000

While this blog is new, many of the entries are of old Melbourne favourites.

I've been eating and drinking at Cookie ever since it was first launched as Kookoo. Kookoo was threatened with legal action by Koko at Crown, which meant a hasty, and still-evident, paste job on the dining room wall to reinvent itself as C-O-O-K-I-E. Over the years, it has been the site of after work Friday night drinks, Ev's birthday dinner, Amanda's hen's night and pre-Rooftop Cinema meals, and it has consistently served fresh, delicious and reasonably priced Thai food on kitsch dollar-shop plastic tableware.

Its high ceilings and funky atmosphere were the perfect place for a Sunday afternoon lunch. RM and I had eaten too many blue peanut M&Ms at the cinema, so we decided on two medium dishes - the duck jungle curry and the crispy fish salad. Our sighs of appreciation of the balance of sweet, sour and salty flavours were mingled with some gasp-inducing heat - just the way we like it. Two dishes + steamed rice = $45.

HOT: City Wine Shop, 159 Spring St, Melbourne 3000

So, the end. Or rather, a beginning....

Tonight marked the official end of my two years' journey overseas - I was back in Melbourne for good. I didn't have a job, a permanent place to live and half my friends weren't around any more. RM and Tranzie were waiting for me at City Wine Shop to mark the occasion.

RM and I turned up at the restaurant and on a balmy night, we were lucky to find an outside table. I said to RM 'oh, let's grab another two chairs for Tranzie' and he responded oddly 'oh, we'll just grab the chairs when they turn up'. Then a bottle of Mount Pleasant turned up at the table, even though I didn't drink wine. More oddness. Then RM walked out with a large package and I thought to myself 'oh goody, a welcome back to Melbourne present - I bet it's a Kitchenaid!'.

Little did I realise that I would only receive the Kitchenaid if I said yes. Well, what's a girl to do? Both the man and the machine came with a lifetime guarantee and without even a second's thought I knew that my life would only be complete if I could have both.

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur - we were a bit stunned by our new found engaged status. I think the spaghetti with meatballs might have been quite good....