GEORGINA ROBINSON – Totally destroyed … Cafe Otto. Photo: Nick Moir

A Sydney restaurateur says he is devastated by the second major fire in just over a year to tear through one of his businesses.

Neil Mirani’s Glebe restaurant, Cafe Otto, was completely gutted yesterday, just 13 months after a kitchen fire at his Paddington cafe caused $900,000 in damage.

“We don’t believe it,” Mr Mirani said.

“I feel like I’m destroyed as well because I’m 21 years [in Glebe].

Yesterday’s blaze broke out before 3am, police believe, and took 20 firefighters more than two hours to extinguish.

The restaurant’s roof collapsed inwards as the flames tore through the dining room’s timber interior.

It was an even more vicious replay of events from December 2008, when an exhaust motor or shorted wires were believed to have sparked a major fire in Mr Mirani’s Paddington eatery, Mickey’s Cafe.

“That took about six or seven months to rebuild and we finally got it up and running,” he said.

“It destroyed the kitchen but there was a lot of smoke and water damage as well.”

The final repair bill came to about $900,000, said Mr Mirani, whose restaurants were both insured.

Police said they would not be able to pinpoint the cause of yesterday’s fire until heavy lifting equipment was available to lift off the collapsed roof

“[Fire investigators] want to look under the roof first before they give their final suspicious or non-suspicious ruling,” Leichhardt police duty officer, Inspector Sean Daley, said.

Inspector Daley said police were aware of the earlier fire but did not believe there was any link to yesterday’s incident.

Mr Mirani said he did not know how the fire started but police told him it appeared to have smouldered for quite some time before flaring up.

“My neighbour called me at 3.50am and he said ‘Get over here; your place is on fire’ and I raced over,” he said.

The restaurant was closed from 11pm on Tuesday. Mr Mirani left earlier, about 9.30pm, he said.

“My supervisor said she went to do a double check [there was nothing left on] and she said no,” Mr Mirani said.

“I asked all the boys in the kitchen … it was a bit of a quiet night. They said: ‘We cleaned things extra [well] and made sure everything was bright.’”

Mr Mirani said he would probably rebuild.

“I don’t know what else to do after 21 years,” he said.

“It’s funny going to work six or seven days a week and all of a sudden it’s not there.”

It has taken generations of great chefs and rich patrons to perfect the frozen treats we now take for granted, explains Matt Preston of MasterChef.

If you love him, feed him. That’s the opinion of the author of this light-hearted recipe book, writes John Bastick.

Lana Vidler is a 28-year-old who has self-published the book Meals Men Love – How to Catch a Man in 3 Courses. She has concocted recipes that are “simple, wholesome home-cooked food, nothing frilly or fancy”, all with a hefty dollop of humour. Her recipe names include “Land a man lasagne”, “Nana was married for 69 years because of these cookies” and “Gentlemen prefer brulee”.

Her intention was to have a bit of fun and to provide good, easy, simple recipes with an onus on food men traditionally like.

“There are no tofu recipes in there,” she says. “There are a thousand cookbooks out there and mostly they’re by professional chefs and whenever I cooked anything from them my boyfriend always found it too fancy. I’d do something simple like a schnitzel and he couldn’t stop raving about it. That’s where the idea for the book came from.”

The former Ascham School student works as an office manager for a homewares company and has a degree in marketing from the University of Sydney. The book’s inspiration, she says, came from what she saw as a yawning gap in the market.

A year in the making, the book has 168 recipes she says she unashamedly pinched from friends, family and colleagues.

“I really researched what recipes went into it,” she says, “I’d ask boyfriends what they liked to eat, male friends, even girlfriends what they cooked for their boyfriends and husbands. The book’s for any woman who likes to impress a man with food. It could be your boyfriend, your husband, a mate, your dad even.”

Vidler says many of her generation have lost their zeal for home cooking and prefer to eat out, while many young women simply don’t cook at all.

So, for the truly hapless, the book comes with tips to ensure a successful evening at home. These include: have everything pretty much ready for when he arrives, don’t forget to clean the house, set the table and don’t use flimsy glassware – men hate that, apparently.

On the other side of the coin, the biggest error a man can make, Vidler says, is to fail to turn up. “That would break a girl’s heart.”

As a measure of her own success, Vidler says her lasagne helped woo her current boyfriend, a surgeon at Sydney Children’s Hospital.

“Well, I’m sure he loved me too but the food helped a lot,” she says. “He’s got a tough job, stressful, with long hours, so for him to come home to a home-cooked meal, he just loved it. And I happen to think leftovers are one of the best presents a girl can give a guy . . . it’s a lovely way to show you care.”

Her critics could argue the idea of winning a fella’s heart by fattening it up is, dare we say it, an old-fashioned one. Vidler baulks at the claim and argues she’s a thoroughly modern young woman.

“When my sister heard about the book, she said, ‘You’ll put women back 20 years if you write that.’ But even she’s come around, she’s using the book, she’s cooking for her man and they recently got engaged, so I like to think the book played a small part in that.”

Undeterred, she has plans for book No. 2 – a curry book for men.

Meals Men Love by Lana Vidler, $19.95, is sold online. See mealsmenlove.com.au.

Erin McWhirter, TV Editor - The Daily Telegraph

SWIM star Eamon Sullivan hopes his next major TV turn after winning Celebrity MasterChef will be on a lifestyle or travel program.

The Olympic silver medallist won Australia’s first Celebrity MasterChef series after cooking off against Miss Universe Australia Rachael Finch and INXS guitarist Kirk Pengilly last night.

The Perth-raised 24-year-old, who lives in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, said he was yet to be approached by a network for more TV work, but hoped to continue his small-screen career.

“If an opportunity came up for a cooking and travel show or doing a cookbook or something I would love to do that outside of swimming,” he said, adding he was not interested in being a commentator or general presenter. 

Despite stumbling in round one of the TV show, he triumphed largely due to a 30/30 score for his chocolate delice dessert.

“It was pretty stressful – I was very lucky,” Sullivan said from Canberra, where he’s competing in the AIS international swimming meet.

Sullivan had gone into the Network Ten cooking competition determined but said he was surprised to win after struggling through the taste test when he mixed up rosemary and thyme in a Spanish paella.

“I thought I was probably going to stuff up the rest because I was so angry,” Sullivan said.

“I was lucky enough I could get some nerves together and muster up something to get back in the competition.”

Sullivan won over the judges in the second round, cooking a chocolate delice with judge Gary Mehigan even licking the plate.

“I kid you not, that is one of the top three desserts I’ve had this year – that is absolutely stunning,” Mehigan said.

In the final round contestants were required to cook a roast chicken in salt crust and hay created by Melbourne chef Andrew McConnell, with Sullivan struggling before coming good.

Sullivan attributed his cooking prowess to his lifestyle.

“You learn early on when you’re a sports person how to cook for yourself and how to cook the right things for yourself and that teaches you the fundamentals of cooking something well,” he said.

INXS member Kirk Pengilly came second, with Miss Universe Australia Rachael Finch third.

By Caris Bizzaca

Celebrated Australian chefs Tony Bilson, Tetsuya Wakuda and Cheong Liew have launched a new Sydney gastronomic festival incorporating food, culture and art.

Cuisine NOW begins on January 11 next year and over two weeks will feature a variety of culinary events, ranging from masterclasses to a gala dinner.

Seven internationally renowned Australian and European chefs are involved in the festival, and each will conduct a two-hour masterclass, followed by a five-course luncheon celebrating their culinary career.

The three international chefs – Michel Roux, Nicolas Le Bec, and Reine Sammut – will also be preparing lunch and dinner at The Shangri-La’s Altitude Restaurant and at Bilson’s in the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Sydney.

Four years in the making, the festival was devised by legendary chef and restaurateur Tony Bilson and will become an annual event.

“It’s about getting different artists together as a celebration, because for us, food and wine is a part of the joy of life,” Bilson said at the festival launch at his restaurant on Thursday.

He said Cuisine NOW, which runs concurrently with the Sydney Festival, is not just a gastronomic event.

“We’re celebrating the mixture between gastronomy and art,” said Bilson.

To emphasise this, a series of performances from Australian opera and cabaret stars will complement the different lunches and dinners in the festival.

Award-winning Japanese-born chef Tetsuya Wakuda, who will be involved in the masterclasses and gala dinner, said he was looking forward to working with Bilson again.

“I came here (to Australia) with nothing and Tony showed me what makes a restaurant,” Wakuda said.

“He’s the reason I am standing here today, so when he asked me about Cuisine NOW, I said, ‘Whatever it is Tony – if you do it, I’ll do it’.”

Wakuda, who is famous for his Japanese-French inspired cuisine, said the festival is also a reflection of Australia’s multicultural society.

“The Japanese always say ‘food is culture’ and I believe that. It’s a celebration of the weather, city, food and people,” he said.

Bilson agreed, saying that the different chefs, food and wine will show off Australia’s complex culture.

“It’s not the simplistic British culture it was in the ’60s and ’70s, and in a lot of ways this really symbolises those changes in society and celebrates them,” Bilson said.

The next phase of Cuisine NOW will be in September 2010, when Bilson plans to take a group of Australian chefs to Paris.

“This is not just a local idea, but an international and interstate idea too,” Bilson said.

Tickets for Cuisine NOW go on sale on November 26. Visit www.cuisinenow.com.au.