This inner-city terrace serves outrageously juicy katsu and boss-level drinking food
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Sometime around 2005, wood-fired pizza became the default accessory to a tasting paddle of beers. Craft breweries – endlessly creative with what they put in their beer – began to feel like a hall of mirrors when it came to their menus. Get harissa lamb ribs over here, but harissa lamb skewers at a rival beer hall. This one skips chicken tenders, instead you get buffalo chicken ribs. Would you like your fried calamari with lemon or lime?
Benchwarmer, a West Melbourne craft beer hangout, breaks that mould. It's not a brewery but it sure gets behind them, which must be a godsend for struggling independent brewers right now. Since opening in an old Victorian terrace in February 2020, it's gradually grown more Japanese-focused with each change of chef and trip to Japan taken by owner Lachlan Jones. The front half holds a few blond wood communal tables and stools (very Japandi), cosy window seats, a small bar and a big beer fridge. The back half is a bit more grungy.
New chef Geoff Marett has a CV that makes a lot of sense for a venue that's striving to be an izakaya: the loud and loose Japanese joints where food is there to soak up the copious sake and beer slammed down.
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SBS Australia
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SBS Japanese Newsflash Monday 18 August
LISTEN TO SBS Japanese 04:27 Japanese Listen to SBS Japanese Audio on Tue, Thu and Fri from 1pm on SBS 3. Replays from 10pm on Tue, Thu and Sat on SBS1. Listen to past stories from our podcast. Download the free SBS Audio App and don't forget to visit SBS Japanese Facebook and Instagram page!
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- The Age
‘I can't do this forever': Comedy festival boss to hand over baton
Next year the Melbourne International Comedy Festival turns 40, and for 30 of those years, Susan Provan has been at the helm. 'I can't keep doing it forever,' she says, in what amounts to an exclusive near-reveal, given how vice-like her grip on the top job has been. So, does that mean she has a succession plan in place? 'We are talking,' she says. 'I'm talking with board members about what happens.' Is there a timeline – will you be leaving after the 40th, or could you still be there for the 50th? 'We're not looking at a particular thing at the moment, but I'm certainly not doing another 10 years,' Provan says. 'I am actively thinking about what next. I am actively thinking, 'I can't do this forever.'' Maybe not. But she kind of has been there forever. Although she wasn't officially part of the festival team for its first decade, Provan was there at the outset. 'I was a waiter at The Last Laugh during the first comedy festival,' she recalls, referencing the Collingwood venue whose owners, impresario John Pinder (founder of Circus Oz) and his business partner Roger Evans, were among those who conceived the idea for an event to rival the likes of Edinburgh and Montreal as a showcase for the world's funniest performers. In 1986, the Victorian government was persuaded to stump up funding for a research trip overseas to investigate the feasibility of the idea. The following year, with $170,000 of government funding and a program of 40 acts, the festival was launched, at a packed press conference, by Australian cultural envoy Sir Les Patterson (aka Barry Humphries) and English comedian Peter Cook. Sir Les got his penis out for the attendant press, and duly pressed it into a batch of wet cement (that's one way to make an impression), while Cook – one half of the foul-mouthed and hilarious Pete and Dud (with Dudley Moore) – obligingly dropped an F-bomb. And they were off. The festival has been on a more or less unbroken trajectory of growth ever since, interrupted only by the COVID-hit years of 2020 (when it was cancelled entirely, less than a fortnight from opening night) and 2021, when attendances were down about 45 per cent and box office by a third on the pre-COVID results. Attendances still haven't reached the 2019 peak of 776,737 (including free events and tickets), but in all other respects 2025 was a record year. The festival staged 696 shows in 182 performance spaces, for a total of 7804 performances. There were 646,864 paying customers (and 707,388 total attendances, including at free events) for a box office of $22.9 million, up marginally on the previous year's then-record $22.6 million. And after a couple of years of running deficits, the festival this year turned a small surplus. 'We've bounced back,' says Provan. 'We were a bit worried about this year because everybody's talking about cost of living … but it wound up being the biggest festival ever. We are the biggest comedy festival in the world right now, despite what Montreal might say about itself.' Bigger, even, than Edinburgh? 'No, but the Fringe is different – it's part of a bigger festival. Melbourne is the biggest standalone festival of comedy.' Still, Provan walks a fine line when talking up her festival's success. 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ABC News
15 hours ago
- ABC News
What does Snoop Dogg's Grand Final invitation say about the AFL's commitment to preventing violence against women? - ABC Religion & Ethics
The AFL Grand Final is one of those sporting events that reaches deep into the cultural psyche of this country. The last Saturday in September is marked by friends and families getting together around the television or, for those able to get a ticket, cramming into the MCG to watch the game together. The pre-game entertainment garners almost as much attention as the final game. And this year is no different. When the AFL announced last week that Snoop Dogg would be the pre-game artist, many of us involved in preventing and responding to men's violence against women and children were aghast and somewhat mystified. His lyrics are explicit in their misogyny and celebration of violence against women. While he has been called out for them by heavyweights of the music business and has described himself as reformed, he still often features these songs in his set lists. The decision from the AFL has prompted Victorian organisations addressing violence, including our own Respect Victoria, to put out a joint statement last Friday questioning this decision and calling for the AFL to rethink it. It's a deeply unsettling decision and has been made at a time when Victorians are mourning five women who have been allegedly killed by men they know in the last four weeks alone. Yes, this is the fatal tip of a national crisis of men's violence that continues to have devastating consequences across the whole Australian community. We also know that the Grand Final is a time when calls to crisis support services and police spike because of increased instances of family violence. In Victoria, police data shows that family violence incidents consistently rise on Grand Final day and the day after, with some services reporting up to 30 per cent increase in demand. This is a predictable and preventable pattern — and one that makes the decision to platform an artist with a history of glorifying violence against women all the more alarming. A general view of the 2024 AFL Grand Final match between the Sydney Swans and the Brisbane Lions at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 28 September 2024 in Melbourne. (Photo by Adam Trafford / AFL Photos via Getty Images) Over the last week, questions surrounding Snoop Dogg's selection by the AFL have sparked conversations about whether we should sanction an artist that has been called out for his misogyny by the likes of Dionne Warwick and Pharrell Williams, and who fans say has changed his ways. The question being asked online and in the media is: should we give Snoop Dogg a second chance? To us the answer is simple: he continues to profit off a catalogue of songs that espouse violence — especially sexual violence against women. He still performs these songs and they are still highly popular and influential. So, it's not a question of giving him a second chance. The question is: should we give him arguably the biggest platform in the Australian sporting calendar when we are in the midst of a national emergency of domestic, family and sexual violence? The answer is abundantly clear: No, we should not . With so many talented Australian artists who champion respect and equality, this should be an opportunity to showcase performers whose values align with the AFL's stated commitment to ending violence against women. Platforming a performer with a public history of boasting about violence against women directly undermines the AFL's own commendable work in recent years to support violence prevention initiatives. Dr Dre, Mary J. Blige and Snoop Dogg perform during the Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show at SoFi Stadium on 13 February 2022 in Inglewood, California. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images) Sport has enormous power to influence culture. By elevating an artist with a track record of degrading women, the AFL risks sending the message that misogyny is entertainment. The Grand Final regularly attracts a crowd of over 100,000 people at the MCG, and a television audience of millions — that's why the artists we choose for this event matters. When questioned on the choice of entertainment earlier this week, AFL CEO Andrew Dillon described Snoop Dogg as culturally relevant after performing at the Paris Olympics and the Super Bowl. Culturally relevant to whom? In the midst of a national crisis of violence against women, relevance should be measured by the values we want to model for young men and boys, not by global fame built on a history of degrading women and disrespect. For the AFL, this decision damages its credibility. It was only last year that Andrew Dillon declared that 'the only acceptable figure' for violence against women is zero, and that the AFL was committed to doing more to end it. Those words ring hollow when the league's actions point in the opposite direction. The AFL has an opportunity to align its entertainment choices with the culture it claims to champion — this decision misses that mark. It undermines the credibility of the AFL's own public commitments to preventing violence against women. The AFL's decision to platform Snoop Dogg is a grave mistake and should be urgently reconsidered. Actions speak louder than words. It is time for the AFL's actions to match its rhetoric on championing equality and respect. Kate Fitz-Gibbon is Professor (Practice) with the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University and an Honorary Professorial Fellow with the Melbourne Law School at University of Melbourne. She is Chair of Respect Victoria. Helen Bolton is the CEO of Respect Victoria.
