Editor. Writer. Traveller. Keeping tabs on all things fab. susan@excessallareas.com.au
A gleaming new fleet of bespoke motor yachts does the rounds of Sydney Harbour It’s not every day a man asks you if you’d like to see his engines. Bruce Scott does, and it’s hard to refuse. If what’s below deck on the highly polished, immaculately designed and kitted out 73ft motor yacht Komotion has…
Art vs shopping ? Tough call. If you had just one day in Paris … The Paris shopping playground that is Galeries Lafayette came to Sydney this week to spruik its “nouveau chic” makeover and new customer treats over pastries and smoked salmon at the Sofitel Wentworth. In the hands of one family group for…
Franck Muller makes the coolest, craziest, watches. In Sydney to open a new store, we find out what makes him tick Swiss watchmaker Franck Muller is attracted to precision, power and perfection. Which might explain why his inspiration in recent times has reached from the high seas to grand prix racetracks to nature’s underbelly….
Just what every blue-blooded ice-cream lover needs this summer… The “Cameo Service” made by the Sèvres Porcelain Factory in France in the late 18th century for Catherine the Great, is one of the grandest and most expensive dinner services ever made. It comprises more than 700 pieces (taking care of dinner, dessert and coffee, including a very divine…
While fine dining temples such as the reborn Bennelong and the scheduled Noma summer pop-up at Barangaroo have been getting all the press love lately, elsewhere Sydney sizzles with more under-the-radar options. Here, four hot new diners. Petrol, in Springfield Avenue, has in the past eight years become something of an institution among Potts…
Dining at the Woolloomooloo Wharf is one of the best ways to experience Sydney. It delivers the goods for both locals and visitors. Manta Restaurant and Bar, between Otto and China Doll, has after nine years, undergone a makeover. Over Veuve Clicquot and a degustation to introduce the new look and feel, owner Rob Rubis…
The future of premium coffee lies as much in nurturing the farmer as the beans they produce. Editor Susan Skelly reports from the coffee plantations of Costa Rica. High in the San Ramon region of Costa Rica’s Central Highlands, a soufflé-fine mist is falling on Edgar Fernandez Araya’s coffee plants, making the already glossy leaves…
Barcelona boasts one of the world’s greatest cuisines… While locals and visitors embrace the purity of a paper cone of Manchego cheese, mandolin-fine sausage or Iberian jamon from La Boqueria, Ferran Adrià and his brother Albert have blazed a trail. Degustation menus and designer tapas abound in the city and have shaped its reputation as a…
When two earthquakes hit the city of Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island within five months of each other, historic buildings were among the casualties. But luck and dedicated custodians were on the side of the 115-year-old manor, Otahuna. Over martinis in the sophisticated lobby of Sydney’s Langham hotel last month, Hall Cannon introduced a…
A state-of-the-art watch, designer pens, and a shimmering silver tea service … Australian designer Marc Newson continues to accessorise our lives. I don’t have a Lockheed Lounge or an Apple Watch but I do have a Marc Newson dish rack. It’s lime green with orange tips in fetching injection-molded glossy polypropylene and it has made…