A dining strip that continues to pump is Bondi Beach, where Paper Planes opens its doors this week at 15/178 Campbell Parade. After success at LL Wine & Dine in Potts Point, Chris Barge, with his brothers Matt and Tim and business partner Phil Capaldi, says Bondi is on the up and up. ''We were sold on the amount of investment going on here: the Swiss-Grand and the massive Hakoah development on Hall Street, where more restaurants will go in,'' Chris says. Paper Planes, in the development already home to Miss Chu and Sonoma, has a ceiling lined with skateboard decks and aluminium origami. Chef Jin Kung's modern Japanese menu, which includes prawn gyoza with lemon wasabi foam, isn't afraid to head off-piste into Italian territory with a squid-ink buckwheat risotto and tomato miso sauce. The biggest success of the new Bondi arrivals is Andy Ruwald's Bucket List, which has taken up residence in the former Nick's site at the Bondi Pavilion. It launched in summer as a pop-up but its resorty beach furniture is now in place, along with a fireplace for winter and former Bistro Moncur chef Tom Walton in the kitchen.

A bright spot in the Oxford Street downturn is the success of Buzo wine bar spinoff The Wine Library. And it's about to have company, with Mr Cooper's Wine Bar opening after Easter, taking up residence at the site of the short-lived Avido at 438 Oxford Street. The food should be worth a decent detour, with John Rankin, the chef at The Owl House when it was named best bar with food in the 2012 Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide, signing with Mr Cooper's. Rankin left The Owl House early this year. Mr Cooper's owner, Clinton Mervis, who has a background in pub management, says the wine bar gets its name from Sir Robert Cooper, an ex-convict entrepreneur and gin distiller who built Paddo's Juniper Hall. Ian Summers, who opened Avido 18 months ago as an 80-seat restaurant and wine garden, says trade dramatically worsened on the strip midway through last year. Summers says Oxford Street needs an influx of new retailers ''you don't see in Westfield'' and projects such as a food and wine festival to boost a revival. Mervis is confident his timing is right. ''The only side that is dying is retail. The street needs more of these types of venues.''

Krishna takes a hygiene hit

Restaurants and fast-food joints are the standard fare of the NSW Food Authority's Name and Shame list. But the inspectors appear to be expanding the brief. The Hare Krishna Temple in North Sydney is the latest to appear on the list, fined $880 for failing to take all necessary steps to prevent the likelihood of food being contaminated. Not that the inspectors have given up on their regular beat. Ripples at Milsons Point has joined the list, fined for failing to maintain fixtures, fittings and equipment to the required standard of cleanliness.

Brothers bid arrivederci to Italian favourite

Leichhardt will lose one of its best family-owned restaurants on Saturday, with Osvaldo Polletti shutting its doors. Opened five years ago by Joe and Franco Napoliello in the middle of Norton Street, Osvaldo Poletti's southern Italian fare attracted a string of good reviews. Joe says he and Franco would like to find a new home for the restaurant. In the meantime, they have plans to open a food store at 55 Crystal Street, Petersham, in coming months, selling Italian olive oils, dry goods and family-made products.

MoVida move a boost for Surry Hills

Our tip (smh.com.au, March 27) that must-visit Melbourne restaurant MoVida is heading to the Cotton Duck site at 50 Holt Street is a refreshing change of pace for Surry Hills. After a tough few months of closures in the suburb, there's finally a warm front of good food news moving across the 2010 postcode. Word on the street is the Crown Street site where chef Alex Herbert recently closed Bird Cow Fish has been leased. But rumours Toko has taken the site to expand its empire are evidently off the money. Toko co-owner Al Yazbek tells Short Black he's been told the site is leased but it isn't Toko going in. And work has started transforming the former Le Pain Quotidien site at 414 Bourke Street into a new spinoff restaurant from Four in Hand chef Colin Fassnidge. 4Fourteen is slated to open next month.

Mentoring program keeps women in the kitchen

The recent women-only Taste of Young Sydney event showcased the serious talent of the next generation of female chefs. Attracting and keeping women in the industry is a major issue. Tasting Success, a mentoring program supported by the Office for Women, is making inroads. In August, Good Living followed student Thi Le on the day she was off to meet her mentor, Christine Manfield. We've checked back, and Le is now a part of the team at Manfield's Universal Restaurant in Darlinghurst. This year's mentors include chefs Mark Best, Peter Gilmore, Kylie Kwong, Matt Moran and Justin North.

Food diplomacy down Mexico way

In the spirit of David Thompson taking Thai food to Thailand, Sydney-born Cat Brown has become a just-add-water expert on Mexican food in the past decade. Brown, owner of The Little Mexican Cooking School in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, is in New York City this week as a finalist in the entrepreneur category at the International Association of Culinary Professionals Awards. A food nut with an obsession for trying street food, she worked as an event producer at the Sydney Olympics. "I moved to Puerto Morelos, Mexico, in 2002, with not a word of Spanish or any idea of Mexico other than that I found this delightful town on the Caribbean coast and immediately fell in love with it," Brown says. "Our classes are peppered with the history and culture of Mexico. Students leave and return to create dinner parties that spread their new understanding on Mexico, creating a ripple effect of understanding. It's food diplomacy."

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow has taken to Twitter to dispute a report that she used a ghostwriter on her cookbook, My Father's Daughter.

LONG BLACK

Record warm winter temperatures have wreaked havoc on maple trees in the US. One producer in Massachusetts isn't tapping its trees, saying the sap content is 1 per cent sugar when it's normally 4 per cent. If tapping had gone ahead, it would have taken 340 litres of sap to have made 3½ litres of syrup, rather than the usual 162 litres.

New York Times