A Kingdom of Mushrooms, Five Senses, Infinite Wonder and You review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Artitude Studios

I love mushrooms. If there’s a meal with mushrooms in it, chances are I’m ordering it - and demolishing it. But I’ve never really thought about mushrooms beyond eating them. Until now. Presented by Off The Spectrum, A Kingdom of Mushrooms, Five Senses, Infinite Wonder and You invites audiences to do exactly what it promises - step into this mysterious, magical world of fungi. This isn’t limited to sight and taste, either. It’s a full-blown sensory trip through the life of mushrooms, engaging all five senses… yes, even sound.

Upon arrival, we’re greeted by our host and co-creator, Jasmin Lefers, who kicks things off by offering us a themed mushroom cocktail. It might be 11am, but this is Melbourne Fringe, so naturally I accept. I opt for the umami martini, infused with shiitake and a touch of ginger. It’s divine, earthy, and with the perfect level of unusual.

Step Inside the Kingdom of Mushrooms: An Immersive Sensory Adventure (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

A Kingdom of Mushrooms, Five Senses, Infinite Wonder and You. That's the name of the show, and in this immersive participatory experience at Melbourne Fringe Festival, audiences are invited to journey through five distinct installations, each transforming a single sense into a mushroom-fuelled world of discovery.

Jasmin Lefers, one third of Off The Spectrum, felt compelled to translate this small, seemingly simple organism into something so immersive after an introduction to a Dutch pioneer in the world of food and design. "It all started with late-night/early-morning educational sessions over Zoom," she explains. "Aaron, one of the trio involved in putting this together, introduced me to one of the pioneers in food design Marije Vogelzang. From there I put myself through a few courses such as Food & Design Dive. Being in the Netherlands the class times were anything from midnight to 4am. It was bloody incredible. Eye-opening, mind-blowing, and tiring."

Perpetual Stew review (Midsumma Festival)

Perpetual Stew is a sketch comedy of scenes that play out around food, and while some of these take place at the dinner table, there are many that give a very creative interpretation of what a "dinner table" may be, including two ants carrying food on their backs for their Queen and a Do It Yourself fruit salad table spread.

With all the sketches revolving around food, the writers (Milly Walker, Charlie Lawrence and Victoria Barlow) ensure that each of these scenes is unique and that there isn't repetition or monotony in what we see. Various pairings of the four cast members alters dynamics and everyone gets a chance to play different types. Highlights include the aforementioned ants and their pondering of purpose, a roast dinner for a visiting critical mother and an influencer family getting together to discuss some life changing news.

Cooking up a storm with Charlie Lawrence and Perpetual Stew | Midsumma Festival

Good dinner scenes in film, TV and theatre are filled with plenty of awkwardness and drama, with a group of people confined to one place and forced to get along for the next few hours. For Midsumma Festival, writers Milly Walker, Charlie Lawrence and Victoria Barlow will be bringing their own variations of the dinner scene to life through a number of bite-sized courses full of absurdity, drama and comedy with Perpetual Stew, where every guest brings their own baggage to add to the pot.

It was an idea that had been with the three for quite some time and just needed the right moment until it boiled over into something more concrete. "At the early ideation stages we were playing with different story formats and structures and decided that we wanted to write a show that could fit all three of our distinct voices," Lawrence tells me. "During this process we all became drawn to exploring the dinner scene as it allowed us to explore a range of stories and gave us space to add our voices in a harmonious way. Not only did the dinner scene hold appeal structurally, but it also enticed us with its place in society and art. To us, food has always been a tool in which we share, whether it be deep truths, love, or commiserations."

Long Prawn is cooking up a conversation on food with its Live Leisure Yabby Fishing Restaurant at Melbourne Fringe

If there's one rule to be aware of when going to the Melbourne Fringe Festival, it's to expect the unexpected and open yourself up to new adventures. Okay, so maybe that's two rules. But in Long Prawn's Live Leisure Yabby Fishing Restaurant, both these statements ring true. During the last weekend of the festival, the public will be given the chance to flex their fishing skills as they are given a rod for an hour to go fishing for yabbies. Catch one, and pass it to renowned chef Lorcan Kan who will cook it for you on the spot and create a delicious yabby snack.

For the brains behind Long Prawn, Frederick MG Mora and Lauren B Stephens, the appeal in putting together an event likes this stems from wanting to offer unique dining experiences while subtly asking people to think about the various stories of where our food comes from.

Trapped Inside a Fat Old Lady review | The Butterfly Club

Forming the artistic portion of her PhD, Pauline Sherlock's Trapped Inside a Fat Old Lady is the auto-ethnographic ruminations of a middle-aged woman ranging on topics such as body image, mental health, intimacy and menopause. Through storytelling, stand-up and singing, Sherlock opens up on these and the impact they have had towards her journey of self-acceptance and self-love.

The show plays like a TED talk with Sherlock hooked up to a mic, pacing around the stage with small gesticulations and pausing between sentences as she smiles and looks out to the audience. This cool and calm demeanour puts her in a position of authority, which is particularly fitting as this is the story of her life, so we are swiftly drawn in and eager to hear all that she has to say.

Sweet & Sour Dilemmas - Melbourne Fringe Festival review

Chef Chung is the head chef of the Happy Dragon Chinese Restaurant in Gisborne where he spends his days preparing his famous sweet and sour pork dumplings, or what he refers to as White people Chinese food. Set entirely in the chef's kitchen, Sweet & Sour Dilemmas has Chef Chung questioning his decision to migrate to Australia with the approaching birth of his first child.

Partially based on his father's experience of moving to Australia, Brendan Wan finds great sensitivity in his retelling of a migrant story that we don't often hear about; Chef Chung lived a life of luxury and wealth but gave it all up when he came to Australia for love. The soon-to-be-father welcomes a new chef to his restaurant and amidst their training he begins to share his thoughts on uprooting his life and if it has actually been worth it.

Wan makes some considered observations on belonging and identity as Chef Kung grapples with the choice of moving back to Indonesia where there would be a sense of community and acceptance but life would be hard, and staying in Australia where everything is relatively easy despite constantly being seen as an "other". His cooking throughout the show plays as a reminder of his pride in his roots and culture but at the same time, it seems like the only acceptable employment for him is to work in a Chinese restaurant, where he puts on an accent to his customers and must beguile them with ancient stories about how his recipe for sweet and sour pork dumplings came to be.

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Cooking For - Melbourne Fringe Festival preview

Australia has always had a love for cooking shows including, Ready Steady Cook, The Great Australian Bake Off, Masterchef and Jamie's Kitchen. The latter, hosted by chef Jamie Oliver, eventually led to Oliver's 30 Minute Meals, where a healthy, instagram worthy meal could be prepared in 30 minutes. As part of the 2019 Melbourne Fringe Festival, theatre company Stage Mom (Alberto Di Troia and Hannah Fallowfield) have taken this idea and brought it to the stage with their show, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Cooking For.

A live art culinary event held in an inner north Melbourne home, the evening consists of a Fringe Festival artist cooking one of Oliver's 30 Minute Meals live in front of an audience. "It's interesting how easily cooking translates into a performance setting. Cooking is already highly performative and we're simply pointing it out!" Di Troia and Fallowfield tell me. "The show is an intimate and site-specific experience for audiences, with some very tasty treats and surprising participatory elements that we promise aren't at all scary! We have a number of extraordinary Fringe Artists being taken out of their comfort zone and will hopefully have everyone seeing Jamie Oliver in a completely different light."

Crunch Time - Next Wave Festival review

Imagine having a five-course meal with a group of strangers, where you must democratically vote on all the ingredients that will be used. What if someone is vegetarian or has allergies to pineapple? Or simply doesn't like spicy food? Presented as part of Next Wave Festival, Counterpilot's Crunch Time has its participants doing just that, and as a result, leaves them thinking about much more than just their food choices.

Co-founded by Sandra Carluccio and Nathan Sibthorpe, Counterpilot's performative dinner party sits us around a table and through the use of some interactive tools, we vote on each ingredient that our guest chef will prepare in a kitchen that is a few metres away from where we dine. The chefs for each session are public figures in the arts world and include Georgie Meagher, the Director and CEO of Next Wave, and Simon Abrahams, the Artistic Director of Melbourne Fringe. In our session, we are treated to the culinary expertise of Wesley Enoch, the Artistic Director of Sydney Festival.

Dumpster to Dinner Plate and End Sexism Now | Big West Festival preview

Presented as part of the Big West Festival, filmmaker and photojournalist, Melissa Davis has two short documentaries screening, Dumpster To Dinner Plate and End Sexism Now. The latter delves into ‘ordinary sexism’ and institutionalised misogyny that is so prevalent in our society. Dumpster to Dinner Plate on other hand, looks at one household’s approach to shared meals and "dumpster diving." While dealing with two different social issues, they are equally passionate issues that Davis has.

"End Sexism Now is from a much larger documentary I intend to make. The grabs you hear from speakers come from quite meaty, longer interviews, which cover a range of subjects from Tony Abbott, to men's rights, to the importance of language, to the right for a woman leader to be just average instead of exceptional," she says. 

One Suitcase: Four Stories review

In Italian culture, family and close friends always enter the house from the back door. The thinking behind this being that the back door leads to the kitchen and the kitchen is where everything happens. So, in Barking Spider Visual Theatre's latest production, One Suitcase: Four Stories, it's only fitting that we are taken round the Northcote Town Hall and enter from the back entrance.

Our host, Linda Catalano, welcomes us with open arms into her 'kitchen', and by looking at the set design by Tristan Shelley, you would think it was a real kitchen that has been in use for years and filled with many stories to tell. We take our seat at one of the five dinner tables with six other people and immediately, we all have a sense of familiarity with each other and conversation and jokes flow. Such is the power of good food! 

The Humble Tumbler and The Gin Queen gin masterclass

When it comes to alcohol, the only thing I drink is gin. Since I came across it at a London bar in 2010, it has become my drink of choice, which I generally drink with apple juice (yes, it sounds weird but give it a go and let me know what you think). Such is my love for gin that I currently have over three litres of it in my house just waiting to be consumed.

So when I came across The Humble Tumbler (Clare Burder) and the The Gin Queen's (Caroline Childerley) gin masterclass, I knew it was something I had to partake in. Throughout the course of the evening, Childerley and Burder take us on a journey through the early beginnings of gin and provide tastings of nine gins from across Australia and around the world, each with its unique distillation, botanicals and taste.

It is an intimate dinner party style setting for 14 people, all strangers except the two people I attended with. The table is adorned with the varieties of gins we will be drinking along with some mouth-watering olives and cheeses. I'm not a big cheese fiend but I immediately fell in love with the Meredith Feta and the L'Artisan Le Fermier. 

It's GIN-tastic!

There are only three beverages that I drink; water, fruit juice (except orange) and gin. That's it. I don't like the taste of wine, coffee, tea and the rest of them. Weird I know. So when my friend advised me that a Bombay Sapphire inspired gin pop-up bar was opening in Melbourne for a limited time, I got more than a little excited!

Called Project Botanicals, Bombay Sapphire created a unique bar with ten brilliantly designed gin cocktails, each one specific to one of the botanicals found in Bombay, including juniper berries, coriander seeds and bitter almonds. Paired with these cocktails were some mouth-watering tapas style dish created by chef Gary Mehigan.

For a $38 entry fee, you received two cocktails and accompanying dishes, which is more than reasonable but I was a little disappointed by the lack of vegetarian options. There were two desserts that were meat-free but of the 8 'tapas' dishes, only two had a vegetarian alternative. Fortunately, you could mix and match your dishes, and so I ended up with:
Cubeb Berry Fizz and Tartine of Field Mushrooms and
Orris Root Aviation and Strawberries and Cream.

30 Days of Vegetarian: Day 29 - The Calm Before...

The penultimate day...not much to report, had a busy day preparing things for the next challenge, which starts on MONDAY! But more about that later.

Tonight's dinner was ricotta and spinach tortellini with spinach and garlic - starting to develop a bit of a love affair with the spinach I must say. Broccoli still retains the title of being my favourite vegetable though.


That's about it for tonight...short and sweet...looking forward to tomorrow, not so i can eat meat again but because I will have completed my first of 12 "30 Day Challenges". Whoop!

30 Days of Vegetarian: Day 28 - Junk food!!!

It's amazing how your diet and food intake can be so much affected by what's going on in your life. When I'm nervous, anxious or stressed I don't eat. And that's what happened today. I won't delve into what or anything as that's not what this blog is about. It's about my experiences of not eating meat. So after a really long day, I was really exhausted and lethargic I decided to get a vegorama pizza from Domino's - yes, I hear you groan, Domino's. Not exactly the world's best food but it's close, cheap and convenient. Was actually pretty good but does not even come close to comparing to the pizza I made in the beginning of the month.

As I near to the end of my challenge, I felt it necessary to remind myself of the vast array of reasons why I should continue to be vegetarian. Especially as I seem to have fallen into that trap of  cooking the same foods and the laziness I have in preparing food - hence the pizza tonight.

I found this documentary online, Myth and Truth about Vegetarianism - For Earth, for Animals, for Yourself which its description states it 'systematically analyzes the scientific basis of claims thart vegetariansim is unnatural for humans and thart we require meat". Just a reminder as to the benefits of being a vegetarian.

Ironically, those who say we need meat in order to stay healthy, I came across this news article today; A spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill - a burger place with burgers names such as "the triple bypass' died of a hear attack. Whilst sad, it is also ironic. What's even more frightening is that they offer "diet plan eating" to customers with items such as the Double Bypass Burger, Flatliner Fries and Full Sugar Coke - although I am genuinely hoping they are having a laugh. Anyway, I may have digressed a bit from the vegetarian thing but it's just a reminder to me that eating meat is not always the best thing for a person.

30 Days of Vegetarian: Day 27 - Tivall

Mock schnitzel

Coming in to the home stretch. For dinner, I have sampled another mock-meat company; Tivall - founded in 1985, is the world's leader in ready-made vegetarian food products. In their website it states: 

"Tivall products are specifically designed to be a complete source of protein and to provide all the amino acids necessary for a healthy meat-free diet. They contain natural sources of egg protein, soya protein and wheat protein."

Having learnt to be a little sceptical of the healthiness of vegetarian meals, I have done some research and from what I can see egg and wheat protein are good for you as the support each other in storing and using protein. I know about soy but again, it's not like I am having massive amounts of it. So I think this might be a good one, but again, in moderation.

Also got a response from Grill'd regarding my Vitamin C question. What do people think? Is this all above board or are they just talking it up to make it seem like it's that great? How much vitamin C can you actually get from a few slices of tomato and tomato relish?

30 Days of Vegetarian: Day 25 - Bad Day for Eating

Breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Stayed away from meats, so no fretting there, but it was a terrible day for eating. I was extremely lazy and up until 8:00pm, all I had to eat was a banana and some nuts, which are considered to be healthy for you but when that's all you have...not so good. Just an extremely lazy day. Dinner was quorn and pasta again, so not an exciting food day.

However, in my day of laziness I did find a website called 100 thoughts and facts on vegetarianism. It contains facts about animal welfare, sustainability, environment and health reasons as to why being a vegetarian can be good for your health.

With five days to go, I am pretty certain I will not go back to red meat or fish. Chicken, I am still torn over. If I do go back to chicken though it will only be free range which is a step better than eating for battery hens and so forth. Unless anyone out there knows of where I can get some mock chicken products!

30 Days of Vegetarian: Day 24 - Quorn and Micoprotein

I had quorn mince and pasta for dinner tonight. Was pretty much like mince, the taste wasn't the same - that I can remember - but it was still very nice. Mixed in some garlic and onion tomato sauce and filled up my stomach.

I did look into quorn and what it actually is. I just assumed it was something like tofu that was made to be mince. Then I found out this bit of information; Quorn is a micoprotein and quorn is just the brand name like kleenex for tissues. So then of course I had to go looking into what micoprotein is and this is where I get confused.

Micoprotein is produced by a fungus called Fusarium which is provided with nutrients and then produces the protein rich Micoprotein. This micoprotein is extracted and flavoured to taste like meat, as micoprotein does not taste of anything.

Another site stated that mycoprotein (don't even know which is the right way to spell it!) is an ingredient common to all Quorn products. It's a health, meat-free form of high quality protein and is also a good source of dietary fibre.

So, this makes me believe that Quorn is healthy to eat. Unlike tofu. Until someone proves me wrong with quorn too. Then I'l be all confused again.

30 Days of Vegetarian: Day 22 - Hare Hare!!!

Lunch at Crossways

So today I went to a Hare Krishna vegetarian cafe in the city, Crossways. Was all you can eat for $5-7 and even though there's only one item on the menu, it changes daily. Today was chickpea clinch curry and basmati rice with date and orange halava with custard for dessert. Really nice place, very relaxed and thankfully you don't have to put up with their annoying music. Haha...

Veggie burger BBQ

For dinner I was invited to a vegetarian friend's house for an impromptu BBQ. I just assumed everyone would be vegetarian but no. So there was still free flowing meat, (kangaroo sausages!) and my ultimate temptation, BBQ chicken - drool to the power of two.

But again, once we sat down, didn't notice the smell and was more than happy with my beet root and lentil burger. Genuinely. And lots of salads.

30 Days of Vegetarian: Day 20 - Not Eating Meat Is Easy...

The not eating meat part of being a vegetarian is so easy. In 20 days, perhaps I have been tempted three times. All were fleeting moments and it's not like I was face-up to a piece of steak, salivating and inhaling it's scent. However, and I think I have touched on this before, I am finding it incredibly hard to maintain a healthy diet. Ironically, since I became vegetarian I have halved my junk food (choklit, candy, crisps) intake too. I guess when you start making a conscience decision about what food you can/cant' eat, it easily rubs off to others too.

Based on a "readers comments" I have looked at some health sites about the best foods and stuff I should be eating. It is quite overwhelming and am struggling of a way to slowly make the switch. So beans and legumes - and that word alone is weird - are two of the best foods I cna be eating. Yet, I am clueless as to how to use them, what beans are the best and what to make with them. It seems, that everyone and everything disputes everyone and everything. Black beans or red beans? Lentils or peas? They all do different things so how do I pick the best?

I know broccoli and garlic are great foods, and i try to incorporate them a lot. A friend of mine would cover a clove of garlic in honey and eat that every night. Is minced garlic still got health benefits? If I make a broccoli pizza in the oven, is it still healthy? All this makes me head hurt!

However, despite all this, I have found I am eating more, almost at three meals a day! :) And filling ones too. Lunch was a gnocchi with greek salad from a food-court in Southbank. It was actually really good, and might even surpass my falafel salad from the same food court. Dinner again was the tofu/tomato/mushroom sauce with pasta and even though tofu isn't even healthy for you, it must have some health benefits to eating it. Especially if I eat it twice a week. I guess it's just not the super food I thought it was.

Is it weird that I am thinking about all this 20 days in? I am two thirds of the way in to the challenge and only now starting to think about the food I eat and what it's actually doing to my body. Although, I guess this is something I should have been thinking about for 30 years. Like I said in the beginning of this post, it is easy to cut meat out of your diet. It is hard to maintain a healthy diet without it.