By Richard Cornish
Hawthorn Craft Market
The last monthly market is on tomorrow. More than 40 local makers will offer fashion, candles, plants, knitwear, soaps, stationery, pottery, biscuits, cakes, skin care and homewares. Some stalls will have Christmas items such as origami Christmas cards and beautiful floral table wreaths. Love. Eat. Cake. By Lisa will be selling white-iced biscuits embedded with rosemary and silver dragées. With a performance by the Sing Australia Choir, this will be a pleasant way to kick off the festive season.
340 Camberwell Road, Sunday, December 4, 10am-3pm, hawthorncraftmarket.org.au
Boorondara Park is, at first glance, quite English-feeling.Credit: Richard Cornish
Boss Pizzeria
Johnny Logue and Daniel Barrese have been making pizza around town for years. Now, after training at a pizza academy in Naples, they have set up their own corner joint next to Camberwell station. Come here for slow food done fast. Start with fresh ricotta cooked in the wood-fired oven and served with caramelised onions, currants and olives. Order a fine-based pizza made with three-day fermented dough and good quality toppings. This intimate restaurant seats 14 inside and 24 outside. This is a place for excellent pizzas, great tunes and good wine.
25 Cookson Street, Wednesday to Sunday, 5.30pm-10pm, 9813 1894, boss-pizzeria.com.au
Naples training is behind Boss Pizzeria.
Tom Cooper
Some people don't get Tom Cooper's dry sense of humour. That's OK. That means more incredibly good, hand-cured and hand-smoked fish for the rest of us. A legendary Canadian-born smoker, Cooper has prepared fish and other ingredients for the best chefs in Melbourne for two decades and now has his own shop in the Camberwell Market. It also doubles as a salmon and champagne bar. You can buy an excellent smoked salmon bagel or a plate of gravlax with Billecart-Salmon champagne. If you want a side of smoked fish for Christmas, call today as his order book is almost full. Call in over summer to pick the state's best cured fish for your picnic basket.
Shop 23, 519-525 Riversdale Road, Tuesday, Thursday to Saturday, 7am-5pm, 0412 200 148
Sainsbury's Books
When Sainsbury's second-hand bookstore opened more than 30 years ago, Camberwell had five bookstores. Now there are just two. Sainsbury's specialises in art, architecture and photography. You'll find posters from San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom and prints from a 1960s surfing expedition to South Africa. The beautifully curated shelves are organised in themes. One has photography books portraying the theme of loss, and includes a book of French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue's images of life in Paris in the mid-1800s. Alongside this is Snapshots of Melbourne by Ian Kenins and books showing the changes in Shanghai early this century. This is a place where bibliophiles can lose themselves for hours.
534 Riversdale Road, daily, 10am-5pm, sainsburysbooks.com.au
Rivoli Cinema is now owned by Village.Credit: Richard Cornish
Boroondara Park
With oaks sprawling out over well-kept lawns, Boroondara Park has a very English feel. Until a dad calls to his son: "Kick it high, kick it straight. Make it a goal and not a point." The small boy succeeds in punting the ball between two straight trees, pleasing his father no end. The park has a good off-leash area for dogs and a fenced-off children's playground. It is part of a linear park network that follows the old Outer Circle railway line that once connected the Gippsland line at Oakleigh to the Hurstbridge line at Fairfield. A 16-kilometre rail trail runs from East Malvern, follows the Alamein Line, heads through Camberwell and connects to the Yarra Trail.
Beaumont Street
Rivoli Cinema has retained its art deco charm.Credit: Richard Cornish
Rivoli Cinema
This grand, art deco picture palace opened in 1940 during the grim years of the Second World War, so it was a place where people gladly lost themselves in the fantasy of the silver screen. Built as a twin cinema, the old girl was converted into a modern nine-screen multiplex in 2000 as part of a contentious redevelopment. Although part of the Village chain, the Rivoli has maintained a distinctive character with its dark wood-panelled interiors and curvaceous stainless steel balustrades. An outdoor bar in Camberwell Road allows patrons to enjoy a drink under the neon glow of the red tubes that spell out this local icon's name.
200 Camberwell Road, Hawthorn East, villagecinemas.com.au/cinemas/rivoli
Hawthorn Craft Market.Credit: Richard Cornish
Next Week: Yea
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Tom Cooper's gin-cured gravlax.Credit: Richard Cornish