Food sits at the very heart of Fitzroy, making it one of the best places to eat anywhere in the world. So what does Fitzroy taste like, and what does it take to run a restaurant here? Join long-time food journalist Dani Valent for a morning coffee and pastry as she hears from Audrey Shaw (Carnation Canteen), Mischa Tropp (Toddy Shop), Ricardo Garcia Flores (El Columpio) and Mario Maccarone (Marios) about what it takes to get your food to the table.
About Dani Valent:
Dani Valent is one of Australia’s most respected food communicators. She is a longtime freelance journalist and restaurant critic, award-winning cookbook author and host of the Dirty Linen food podcast. Dani writes food news, features and restaurant columns for Good Food and travel stories for publications including Gourmet Traveller and Luxury Escapes. She was named a Legend by the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival in 2022 and was honoured for her Outstanding Contribution to Hospitality in the Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Awards 2023.
About Audrey Shaw:
Architect-turned-chef Audrey Shaw worked at London’s legendary River Cafe, followed by a stint with Brigitte Hafner at Tedesca Osteria in Red Hill. That experience is evident in her elegant weekly-changing menus, where whole charcoal grilled fish is the only real constant.
Carnation Canteen is the brainchild of Audrey and her husband, Alexander. Shaw designed the restaurant, stewarding the architectural drawings, project and construction management, and helped on the tools. Her design was influenced by former boss Kerstin Thompson - with whom Shaw worked on the design for Sunda and Aru – as well as her mentor, restaurateur Con Christopoulos of Siglo, City Wine Shop and Kafeneion. “His philosophy was always, ‘Do less, let the building breathe, and you’ll be okay’.”
The same philosophy applies to Shaw’s cooking, too. “We want to honour the hard work of the producers we work with, who are doing really beautiful things,” she says. “That takes restraint and clarity. Working directly with farmers helps guide our menus. We stick to the seasons, some things are simply unavailable, and that makes us savour them more.”
About Mario Maccarone:
Marios was established in 1986 by Mario Maccarone and Mario De Pasquale, two Italian-Australian waiters with a radical vision for a new, inclusive dining experience in the largely abandoned bohemian quarter just north of Melbourne’s CBD.
A welcoming but uncompromising attitude was key: muted jazz, starched white tablecloths and smartly dressed waiters; offset by simple, classic, inexpensive dishes to dramatically enhance the experience of budget dining.
An instant fit with the less orthodox lifestyles of artists, musicians, actors and shift-working cab drivers and nurses, Marios became the hub of an exploding new Fitzroy community which thrives to this day.
About Mischa Tropp:
On the Melbourne food radar for more than a decade via pop-ups, a pub residency and a raved-about lockdown-era butter chicken business, Tropp has attracted increasing attention through his embrace of regional Indian food, in particular the cuisine of Kerala. His work has been integral to the surge of awareness of the diversity of India’s cuisine that’s become a feature of Melbourne’s dining culture in recent years.
It started with family influence. From the food his mother, whose roots are in Kerala, would cook at home and from his father, who sometimes made a living from cooking and often had young Mischa in the kitchen with him helping out. From there it was learning to cook commercially in European-style restaurants before a trip to India in 2014 opened his eyes to how little of the stupendous regional variety of Indian cooking was available in Melbourne.
Ricardo Garcia Flores:
Ricardo, a native of Mexico City, opened El Columpio on Johnson Street in 2024. After spending time in kitchens across Melbourne, Ricardo wanted to offer diners a taste of homestyle Mexican food, which he’d struggled to find elsewhere in the city. At El Columpio he showcases traditional-style specialties like pozole, mixiote, and barbacoa estilo Hidalgo.
The Fitzroy Writers Festival is made possible through the generous support of the Thomas, Samuel and George Ewing Trust, a fund that fosters literacy, libraries, and a lifelong love of learning for the benefit of Fitzroy residents and visitors.
The Fitzroy Writers Festival will be Auslan interpreted.
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