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Cult US burger chain Five Guys opening first Melbourne store in Southbank

Post author By mangakiko
Post date August 3, 2022
No Comments on Cult US burger chain Five Guys opening first Melbourne store in Southbank

It’s Melbourne’s turn for Five Guys fever, with the US burger joint planting its first flag in Victoria next week. A 79-seat restaurant will open in Southbank on August 8, where its red-and-white branding will match the red stairs near Queens Bridge.

The first two Five Guys stores in Australia, both opening in Sydney in the last 12 months, attracted long queues of people keen to get their taste, with brand manager Robby Andronikos saying some people waited up to four hours.

While Melbourne isn’t short of burger shops, not many offer the same level of individualism as Five Guys.

Five Guys' Penrith store was its first Australian location and was quickly followed by another in Sydney's CBD. — Five Guys’ Penrith store was its first Australian location and was quickly followed by another in Sydney’s CBD. Photo: Supplied

A menu of stripped-back burgers and hotdogs is complemented by an enormous array of toppings – 15 in total – that let the diner create their own perfect burger. Or it might just be whatever feels right to them that day.

“We don’t dictate to them how they should have their burger,” says Andronikos.

From hot sauce to onions (grilled or fresh), pickles (five to be exact) and even tomatoes, everything is optional. All the extras are “free” (read: built into the price of the base burger) so whatever toppings you go for, it will cost the same as your mate’s order.

All the extras are “free” so whatever toppings you go for, it will cost the same as your mate’s order.

The team has calculated this system means there are 250,000 burger variations on its menu.

The same make-it-your-own philosophy applies to milkshakes, which can be elevated with pieces of banana, Oreo or even bacon. BLTs, grilled cheese and vegetarian-friendly grilled mushroom and pepper sandwiches make up the rest of the menu.

Five Guys claims its other point of difference is freshness and old-school attention to detail, whether it’s hand-cut potatoes or patties made fresh each day. They also famously claim there are no freezers in their stores.

Established in 1986, Five Guys started franchising in 2003. Local outfit Seagrass Hospitality, who also own The Meat and Wine Co, Ribs & Burgers, and The Butcher and the Farmer, are the master franchisee in Australia.

More stores across Melbourne and Sydney are on the way, with the next Melbourne location likely to open early next year in a central area with strong footfall. Seagrass plan to open 20 Five Guys stores on the eastern seaboard before tackling the rest of the country and New Zealand.

Each burger is purposely kept plain so the diner can choose which of 15 toppings they want to add. Photo: Supplied

Open from August 8, daily 11am-10pm

3 Freshwater Place, Southbank, 03 9938 8805, fiveguys.com.au

Tags five guys burgers, JustOpen, melbourne burgers

Technology

Restomod specialist creates lightweight Porsche 911 993

Post author By mangakiko
Post date August 3, 2022
No Comments on Restomod specialist creates lightweight Porsche 911 993

Porsche restomod specialist Paul Stephens has revealed a modern take on the revered Porsche 911 993, with drastic weight reductions and power uplifts.

Called the Autoart 993R, it combines an altered body of the standard, air-cooled 993 Carrera 2 – which was produced between 1994-1998 – with original Porsche 993RS kit, as well as the latest Porsche GT-derived components, and bespoke, lightweight parts.

This, the firm says, gives it the “rawness and charm of an air-cooled Porsche” but fitted with modern technology, lightweight engineering, which delivers enhanced performance, styling and driving experience over the original model, but with modern-day comfort.

The car, born from a bespoke Autoart customer brief but now “production-ready”, weighs in at 1220kg wet, 150kg lighter than when the 911 993 was first released. This has come from a drastic cutting of fat, which includes the deletion of the original sunroof, the steel bonnet replaced with a Porsche Motorsport aluminum version, bespoke front and rear bumpers, and lightweight racing glass fitted for the side and rear windows.

Under the bonnet, a 360bhp flat-six powerplant – based on the engine from a 993RS – is found, but with capacity increased to 3.8 liters from 3.6 litres. A cheaper 330bhp engine option is also available.

Both engines have been upgraded with a crankshaft from a Porsche 911 GT3 997, along with RSR pistons, and other parts from Porsche Motorsport. As expected, this power is sent to the rear wheels, with brakes coming from the 993RS.

Inside, the original interior has been given bespoke tweeks, which includes carbonfibre Recaro seats, integrated roll-cage, and all non-essential electronics deleted to reduce weight and improve engagement.

Entertainment

Bullet Train review – Brad Pitt choo-chooses badly with runaway vehicle | Brad Pitt

Post author By mangakiko
Post date August 3, 2022
No Comments on Bullet Train review – Brad Pitt choo-chooses badly with runaway vehicle | Brad Pitt

Let’s hope the estimable Brad Pitt isn’t giving us his leading-man swansong with this weirdly exhausting and overwhelmingly unfunny gonzo-violent action comedy set on a Japanese bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto – with the film’s frantically hyperactive tempo cranked up in homage to the locomotive speed. This film would be an awful way for Pitt’s performance career to hit the buffers and he is given lines like: “He follows me around like… something witty.”

It’s a semi-westwashed version of the bestselling 2010 novel by Japanese author Kotoro Isaka, and directed by David (Deadpool 2) Leitch, all about a bunch of wacky assassins aboard the train, their murderous destinies all chaotically colliding, and all turning out to have more to do with each other than they think.

With the whip-pans and crash zooms, the sudden flashbacks, the voiceovers, stylized punchups, shootings and stabbings and inter titles introducing the zany characters and geezer crims – two of whom are cockneys and serious West Ham fans – this is worryingly like something by Guy Richie. (Although Brad Pitt’s eccentric performance as a traveler in Ritchie’s film Snatch is better than anything here.)

Be on guard … Brian Tyree Henry and Brad Pitt in Bullet Train. Photograph: Sony/Scott Garfield/Allstar

Pitt himself, in goofy bucket-hat, nerdy glasses and superannuated surfer dude gear, plays a laidback hitman codenamed “Ladybug” whose handler (Sandra Bullock) gives him an easy job, to ease him back into the game after an uproarious series of calamities in previous missions.

All he has to do is grab a cash-stuffed briefcase belonging to two other killers: Tangerine (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Lemon (Brian Tyree Henry) who have just rescued the son of a noted mobster from a kidnapping and this money is the ransom they didn’t need to pay. They both talk with poundshop Laarndaarn accents and Lemon has an obsession with, of all the quirky-cool things, Thomas the Tank Engine – an elaborate yet perfunctory character touch which is about 47% as funny and well-observed as it needed to be.

Meanwhile there’s another bloodthirsty Brit aboard, codenamed the Prince: a psychopathic high-schooler played by Joey Prince, who has attempted to kill the infant son of a fellow passenger, Japanese killer Kimura (Andrew Koji) and retains a sinister hold over him – but may yet have to reckon with Kimura’s own father, known as the Elder, in which role veteran player Hiroyuki Sanada comes closer than anyone in the cast to actually being cool.

There’s another killer on the train called the Wolf (Benito A Martinez Ocasio) with a grudge against Ladybug, another called Hornet (Zazie Beetz) and towering over everyone in legendary evilness is the White Death (Michael Shannon) waiting on the platform at Kyoto.

It rattles strenuously on and on and on with unexciting and uninterestingly choreographed fights, cameos which briefly pep up the interest and placeholder non-lines where the funny material should have gone. Pitt’s puppyish good nature keeps it from flatlining entirely but he doesn’t have anything like the script and direction that he got from Soderbergh or Tarantino or Fincher. And the Japanese setting is handled really cursorily; there are gags about Japanese toilets which should have gone out in the 1980s. This is a tourist ride to nowhere.

Sports

Peter V’landys vs Dominic Perrottet, Stadium funding, Leichhardt Oval, Tigers, Knights, Sharks, Panthers

Post author By mangakiko
Post date August 3, 2022
No Comments on Peter V’landys vs Dominic Perrottet, Stadium funding, Leichhardt Oval, Tigers, Knights, Sharks, Panthers

The NRL are holding the NSW government to ransom over an $800 million promise by taking the Grand Final to Queensland as the Sydney stadium wars potentially head to the courtroom.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported the NRL will consider all options after NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet refused to commit funding to rebuild suburban stadiums after a handshake agreement, with flood reconstruction his main priority.

“I find it appalling that they’re using human tragedy of the floods to renege on an agreement,” V’landys, told the Herald.

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Perrottet’s decision sparked an angry confrontation with V’landys in Parliament, with the NRL now resorting to tactics that could lead to a legal battle over the future of Stadium Australia at Sydney Olympic Park.

A 2018 agreement reached by the then premier Gladys Berejiklian, stipulated the NRL grand final would stay in Sydney until 2042 as long as Accor Stadium at Olympic Park was reconfigured into a 70,000-seat rectangular stadium, which would cost taxpayers $800 million.

However, the pandemic caused the government to backflip on the plan and relocate between $250 to $350 million to upgrading suburban grounds in Cronulla, Manly, Leichhardt and Newcastle.

Leichhardt Oval will have to wait for redevelopment.Source: Supplied

While the plans to develop suburban grounds is not in writing and therefore not rubber-stamped, V’landys is adamant the original Sydney Olympic Park agreement still stands.

The Herald reported that V’landys and the NRL will now hold the government to their original Olympic Park agreement, which is in writing, despite their preference being to develop suburban grounds.

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Andrew Abdo the Chief Executive Officer of the National Rugby League and Peter V’landys the Chairman.Source: Getty Images

“When you consider the billions of dollars they spent in the recent budget, the amount they need to honor our agreement is insignificant,” V’landy’s said.

“We will press that they honor the original agreement, which will cost the NSW taxpayer more due to the way they have handled this.”

The NRL are exploring its legal options and have one of the country’s most respected barristers, Alan Sullivan QC on the case.

Perrottet released a statement saying the government were committed to upgrading suburban stadiums over a period of time, given the natural disasters and pandemic that remain a more pressing priority.

“The government has just received the Floods Inquiry Report, which will likely require a significant cost to the taxpayer, and I note right now there are still 1,366 people without a home in NSW due to flooding,” Perrottet said.

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NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet.Source: News Corp Australia

“It should come as no surprise that my top priority is therefore supporting those devastated by the major floods across NSW.”

The development has forced the NRL to consider taking the Grand Final to Queensland in response to the NSW government failing to honor their agreement.

“Everything is now back on the table,” V’landys said.

“It will be a board decision, not mine.”

Sports Minister Stuart Ayres labeled plans to take the Grand Final to Queensland “an extraordinary move”.

“We’ve got to make sure that we make investments that are in the best interests of the people of NSW,” Ayres said.

Madge’s take on Tigers coaching plan | 02:04

“It just might mean that we have to wait a little bit longer before we can spend additional money on those venues.”

The government will put on hold plans to develop Leichhardt and Newcastle stadiums, but are committed to a new venue at Penrith, which has angered Tigers chairman Lee Hagipantelis, who blasted the government for their change of policy on developing suburban stadiums.

“The government’s management of its stadiums policy from the outset has been amateurish and embarrassing,” Hagipantelis told the Herald.

“I assume if the state government is to backflip on its commitment to fund suburban stadiums, then the $300 million committed to the Penrith stadium can now be better utilized for schools and hospitals?

“It would be outrageous for Penrith to retain its stadium for the obvious political benefit of its local member.”

Tags A TIPPING POINT, Andrew Abdo, Australia, Australia and New Zealand, broncos star, chief executive officer, coaching plans, controversial hip drop tackle, Cronulla, decision board, Dominic Perrotte, extraordinary move, Fox League, Gladys Berejiklian, grand finale, handshake agreement, Herald, hip drop problem, human tragedy, Lee Hagipantelis, Luke Keary, Michael Maguire, natural disasters, New South Wales, Oceania, Peter V'Landys, pressing priority, Queensland, stadium funding, stadium policy, STADIUM WARS, stuart ayres, suburban grounds, suburban stadiums, Sydney, sydney olympic park, V'landys

Categories
Australia

Indigenous Voice to parliament referendum must be transparent

Post author By mangakiko

Post date August 3, 2022

No Comments on Indigenous Voice to parliament referendum must be transparent

Even more so, in this case, when there is no provision (as there was with the 1999 proposal for the election by parliament of a head of state) for a special majority. To say “leave it to the parliament” means, in practical terms, to leave it to whatever deal Labor makes with the Greens and one independent senator (for instance, the left-wing activist David Pocock, or Jacqui Lambie). What sensible non-Labor voter would delegate the final decision on the architecture of the Voice to them?

While the prime minister may be spooked by the failure of the republic referendum, and has taken the wrong lessons from it, there are two other recent historical precedents that are instructive. In both cases, the government was transparent about its intentions, and was successful.

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The first is the GST. This was not, of course, a constitutional referendum, but those who remember the 1998 election know that it was a de facto referendum on the GST. It was the only issue in the campaign. John Howard and Peter Costello published the most complicated tax reform for a generation, in detail. In an act of real policy statesmanship, they argued the case for it thoroughly and slowly. They were not spooked by fear of failure; they showed true policy courage. Howard and Costello bet the entire government on their signature reform, and they won.

The other recent example is the same-sex marriage survey in 2017. Once again, although it was not a constitutional referendum, it was a massive act of public choice which, like the Voice, was an act of inclusion of a marginalized minority. As attorney-general, I instructed my department to prepare an exposure draft of the amendments to the Marriage Act and other legislation that would be required to enact marriage equality. Senator Dean Smith developed his own draft bill. Both drafts were published well before the survey. During the campaign, religious conservatives raised many arguments against same-sex marriage. But they were never able to argue that Australians didn’t know what the proposal meant.

There is virtually no chance that a referendum on the Voice would succeed without the opposition on board. If it isn’t bipartisan, it is bound to fail. There is no way that the Liberal and National parties would or should support a measure without insisting the full proposal be put before the public. Even then, they may oppose it. Dutton is a very tough-minded politician, unswayable by the blandishments of fashionable opinion or abuse from sections of the media. He is also highly strategic. It would not be lost on him how devastating to the Albanese government – and personally, to Albanese himself – the loss of this referendum would be.

But the real devastation, were the referendum to fail, would be that felt by Indigenous Australians. Rightly or wrongly, they would see it as a betrayal. It would poison the already difficult relationship between Indigenous and other Australians for generations to come. As was the case with the republic referendum, the opportunity for constitutional reform would be put back for decades.

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If that were to happen, it would not mean – although some would undoubtedly claim it – that Australia is a racist nation. It would mean that an opportunity readily within our grasp had been fumbled. That would not be the opposition’s fault. Nor would it be the fault of a public only too willing to embrace Indigenous constitutional recognition if it is put to them in an honest and open way. It would be entirely the fault of those who, through lack of political courage and fear of transparency, turned a winning position into a losing one.

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Categories
US

Kansas, Missouri Primary Election Results

Post author By mangakiko

Post date August 3, 2022

No Comments on Kansas, Missouri Primary Election Results

Aug. 2, 2022 Kansas, Missouri Primary Election Results

Stay with KMBC for the latest election updates

Updated: 8:38 PM CDT Aug 2, 2022