Piccolo: Melbourne food news

Kyneton's Piper Street Food Co, which began as a wholesale charcuterie supplier, has expanded, opening a seven-day cafe, bakery, picnic shop and cooking school in a refurbished former butter factory. "Our aim is to create a uniquely central Victorian experience," says third-generation chef Damian Sandercock. Call in for bread and milk, stay for a ploughman's lunch or salad, and pack a picnic hamper to go. It's open 7am-5pm daily at 89B Piper Street, Kyneton.

Fresh from opening Moor Please in Hepburn Springs with chef Joseph Abboud, Jason M. Jones has taken on the Domain Road, South Yarra, site that housed Lynch's for 30 years. Vacated by Davis Yu in 2013 after brief spells as The Millswyn and Louie, it will open in early December as Entrecote. Jones says the "playful, cheap and cheerful" Parisian-style restaurant-bar will serve only the entrecote cut (sirloin) with a small salad, fries and bread for $39 and will open daily for lunch and dinner.

After 146 years, the Vine Hotel, Collingwood, will serve its last sirloin on December 24 when the pub makes way for a redevelopment. Chef Ron O'Bryan and his wife, Kirsty, have run the pub and dining room since May 2011, garnering a following for the quality of their steaks. O'Bryan will become executive chef and hospitality operations manager for the Trimont building group, which plans to revamp the East Brunswick Hotel in early 2015.

Israeli-born chef Eitan Doran is living the dream, opening The Deli Counter in Melbourne's legal district and serving sunny Mediterranean dishes he creates from scratch daily. Breakfast might be shakshuka with smashed avocado or challah French toast. At lunch, it's a changing tableau of salads, vegetable dishes, roasted meats and pita pockets crammed with things like roasted cauliflower, tahini and pickles. It's open Monday-Friday, 7.30am-3pm, at 211 Queen Street, Melbourne.

Former Hare and Grace head chef and The Age Good Food Guide Young Chef of the Year finalist Kah-wai Lo has won this year's Gordon Ramsay Excellence Award. Lo (aka Buddha), who has worked at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Royal Hospital Road in London since April, competed against five other Gordon Ramsay employees in the final.