Hey Nina, how are you?

Hope you didn't mind what I said about your last article.

There's just a couple of teensy things about your most recent cover story you may want to know about.

You wrote,

'...the "Bavarian pear preserve" that went black when Northfield used a pair of black stockings as the setting agent...'

I've been around a while, seen quite a few extraordinary things, but never, I repeat, never, have heard about using stockings of any colour for a setting agent. You didn't mean straining agent perhaps?

And what have you done to my old Beefsteak & Burgundy Club, you pruned their name, didn't you, along with any comments they may have had. It's probably the biggest food club in the entire world, with several chapters in Melbourne alone; apart from not getting the name right, you couldn't find not one single person to interview?

What about all the other food clubs you didn't mention, names that ought to be well known to a food writer/editor. Swiss Club ring a bell? How about the German Club or Danish Club?

In your travels around town, you've never heard of the local branch of Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, another food club with a world-wide membership? How about another one, Les Toques Blanche. A little esoteric perhaps, but still worth a mention, for its membership roll has some of Melbourne's finest chefs, they read papers too.

Look, I'm not running a bring back Matt Preston campaign, from what I've heard, he's a little too wounded for that. But what Preston has is the sense for the bigger picture along with some pretty good research.

He's left some mighty big shoes to fill.