Melbourne Gastronome is three years old

Today is the three year anniversary of the start of Melbourne Gastronome, and I wanted to mark the occasion by thanking all of you for reading. I'd especially like to thank those of you who leave thoughtful comments and/or send emails giving recommendations and feedback - it means a lot to me when I hear that people are getting something out of this little hobby of mine.

I had a surreal pseudo-virtual-celebrity moment on Thursday when a guy came up to me as I was sitting having lunch with a friend, and asked if I was "Claire from the Melbourne gastronomy blog". It turned out that he recognised me because I was wearing my signature earrings from my profile photo (!). Though I should point out that he recognised me in EARL Canteen, a place I've been frequenting incessantly over the last fortnight. :)

I celebrated the blog's birthday with an exceptional dinner during the week at Attica (to be written up soon). Oh, and there was another milestone this week: I've been keeping track of blog stats since November 2007 using Statcounter, and on Monday the site surpassed 500,000 hits. Again, thanks everybody for reading!


And here's a list of my favourite terms or phrases that people have entered over the last few months into Google, with a search result that brings them to Melbourne Gastronome:

-'where to eat if having an affair, melbourne' (if I were to write a post on this topic, I'd definitely title it 'Clandesdining', har har)
-'Places to eat in Melbourne city, not greasy crap'
-'ok to wear jeans at cookie melbourne'
-'restaurants in hardcore lane melbourne' (Hardware Lane is pretty hardcore, I guess)
-'cute bouncer in russell st bottle shop melbourne'
-'what is the name of the street where visitors can delight in sweet treats melbourne kilda'
-'buy gentleman's relish in melbourne'
-'where to find non drunk girls having a good time melbourne'
-'good questions to ask a gastronome'
-'melbourne gastronomique blog'
-'clair gastronom' (missing an e or two)
-'two fathers two sons go into a restaurant and all order the main meal riddle'
-'how does mugaritz get there peas to stick together'
-'zumbo macarons vs lindt macarons' (Zumbo, easily)
-'coffee syphon coma'
-'pizza heroin'
-'green and sleezy cocktail'
-'cheapast brothel in melbourne'
-'flinders peninsula prostitutes mums' (You stay classy, internet!)