Race day in the kitchen

Confession time. We went a little feral on Melbourne Cup Day this week. A group of friends from our apartment complex booked a table for the annual “Race that Stops a Nation” lunch at Claire’s Kitchen on Oxford Street. We spent the afternoon getting entertained by several drag queens and a live band. It was a fun-filled lunch that subsequently morphed into one too many cocktails at the nearby Riley Hotel. It would be fair to say Garry and I were a little rusty the following morning.

I recently learned that The Riley Hotel opened in 1860, making it one of the oldest licensed premises on Oxford Street. It was previously known as The Brighton Hotel. According to the City of Sydney, Oxford Street evolved from an Aboriginal track ('muru') that crossed east along the ridgeline and around the bays to the southern headland of the harbour. In 1803, convicts cleared this track to provide access to the signal station at South Head, which had been built a decade earlier.