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Avido is a new Paddington restaurant designed by Matt Woods, of Bloodwood fame.

Chinatown, at the southern end of Sydney’s CBD, is jam-packed with amazing restaurants. A couple of months back, I spent a few fun afternoons walking around the area, photographing some of the top spots for Urban Walkabout‘s new Food Lover’s Guide to Chinatown & Haymarket.

Funky new dumpling bar Bamboo in Surry Hills, featuring interior design by John Williams, owner of eclectic Asian antique boutique Mao And More.

Lee Tran’s full review is up over at The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Hungry.

Head chef and co-owner Tinh To

Bloodwood is a new restaurant that’s recently opened in Newtown. I snapped these for Interior Designer Matt Woods, for his portfolio.

A few snaps I took recently inside terrific new Darlinghurst watering hole The Pond.

Constructed out of a 160-year-old sandstone heritage cottage, the pop-up bar feels like it belongs in a different time and space to the seedy Oxford Street dives nearby.

Read more over on The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry.

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Baffi & Mo is a cheeky little cafe tucked away in Redfern. We checked it out after reading about it in Time Out magazine’s guide to Sydney’s Best Breakfasts, and it’s become an instant favourite. You can read more lashings of praise over on Lee Tran Lam’s blog, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Hungry.

Infinite sunshine, drool-worthy Mexican food, street festivals, endless cups of coffee – for the last two weeks, I’ve been soaking up the culture of Venice Beach, Santa Monica and the surrounding areas in Los Angeles, California.

I was there on business, so most of my time was spent trekking up and down the freeways and working out of the Animal Logic office, but I was free on the weekends to venture out and explore.

Morgan and Jay work in the Animal Logic LA office.

Orly Olivier, an LA-based photographer – we checked out her amazing polaroid exhibition in Silverlake.

It took us an hour of waiting in line to get our hands on one of Pink’s hotdogs.

Pushing my way through the throng down at the Abbot Kinney Street Festival, I was pretty stoked to discover Soko performing live – I’d missed her show at the Oxford Art Factory last Christmas, so this was an unexpected treat.

Harry Perry, legendary rollerblading guitar player of Venice Beach.

From a work perspective, one of the highlights of my trip was meeting legendary makeup & prosthetic effects wizards Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr, and getting a tour of their workshop. This massive sculpt of an Alien fighting a Predator was part of a jaw-dropping display room next to their foyer featuring highlights of their past work.

A friendly local.

These are some macro shots that I took last weekend at my final ACP Lighting class – something a bit different to the hastily-snapped, restaurant-based food photos that I usually do.

The cakes are from the excellent Adriano Zumbo patisserie in Balmain.

Here are a few photos I took while visiting Clipper Cafe in Glebe, recently. I’ve only eaten there once, but the experience was so good it was enough to shoot the place right up into my top five favourite Sydney breakfast joints (possibly even surpassing the previously unbeatable Ruby’s Diner).

Tasty, familiar breakfast food with a unique twist; a breezy, unpretentious atmosphere and a lovely waitress (Helena, pictured below) – all boxes ticked.

Click here to read Lee Tran Lam’s much more eloquent and insightful review over at The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Hungry.

Sunday breakfast at Ruby’s Diner in Bronte. Its my new favourite place, mainly due to their amazing hand-cut fried potatoes – the coffee is also pretty damn good.

Dinner on saturday night at Opera Bar, Circular Quay. It’s one of our all-time favourite places to eat in Sydney.

Cafe Ish, Surry Hills.

Super-delicious, lovely people.

Full review to come shortly over at The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Hungry.

I’ve been working some ridiculous hours lately, and most of my weekends have vanished as our deadline looms – so it was good to take a bit of time out to have breakfast at Fratelli Paradiso in Potts Point on sunday. We don’t usually traverse that way in search of new food haunts (we generally gravitate Surry Hills or Newtown-wards), but this place has been on LTL’s radar for a while now. The visit was short, but sweet – it’s been marked down for further dinner investigation.

More food photography… sunday lunch at Sobo, Bondi.