What better a way to celebrate my birthday than to be granted an interview with American Photographer, Artist and Biologist Natacha Merritt! Check out the full interview here.

Miles enjoying some sun (and his new Mambo hat!).

He’s growing SO fast!

MMMM! Miles, Mum, Mie and Min!

My cousin Harris with Miles.

Totally random, but totally awesome. Simon McIntyre, whom I went to Design School with, just posted this up on Facebook. It’s an album that Shannon, Arron and I recorded and distributed on cassette tape circa 1993, or so (?!). I remember cutting and pasting the cassette cover using art from a Heavy Metal comic book, kinda digging the hand drawn logo design too!

I’ve still got the original recordings online. I’m on guitar, and it’s me singing (if you can call it that), Shannon Taylor on drums, Arron Fletcher on Bass. If you care to listen visit: http://www.justinfox.com.au/thejury/

I went for the Spag Bol this time. Couldn’t help myself. Big serving, great value at $14.

Nanami went for the Spaghetti Picante. Anchovies, chilli and bread crumbs made for a taste and texture explosion.

Felix went for their signature dish, the Parpadelle with Duck Ragu.

Tiramisu was the lightest and naughtiest I’ve had to date. Delicious!

Panna cotta was awesome too.

Had a long overdue catch-up with Di and Felix last night. Di being the foodie we hit Il Baretto in Surry Hills for some real deal home styles Italian food. I knew it was going to be a busy night. We got there just past 7PM, the place was packed as expected and we were going to have to wait 1.5hrs if we were to get a table.

We decided to wait it out, the pub across the road was way too packed so we hit Tokonoma Lounge on Crown St. for a drink and a snack. Lovely interior design, sorry no photo as the manager gave me the no no, dangerous place to be in though, $20 cocktails will rape your wallet hard before you know it!

At 8.50PM we were still waiting for our table, out in the cold (and getting very cold). We finally got our table and the staff were quick to bring us a serving of Bruschetta, on the house to apologise for the long wait (lovely!).

Despite the long wait, food and company were great :)

One of the lesser explicit spreads.

I’ve been a Natacha Merritt fan since picking up her first book at Ariel bookstore in 2000. It was so confronting (even for me!) that I had to have it. I even remember being a little shy to hand it over the counter due to how explicit it was.

In 2002 I got to meet her when she came out to AGIdeas conference in Melbourne (here’s a photo of her and I), and despite a lot of people writing her work off as porn not art I was all the more convinced she’s the real deal.

A few weeks ago I got an email from her publisher in relation to her new book. I’ve not kept in touch with what Natacha’s been doing since 2002, turns out she’s now a biologist and her latest book Sexual Selection compares and contrasts the sexual intricacies of plants and insects with her own elaborate sexuality.

It’s awesome. I love it. Not everyone’s cup of tea, definitely not for the everyday coffee table, but definitely sits proud on mine :)

Low Power Honda Crew.

A cute L-Plater couple came in to Zen today (yup working, we’re now officially open weekends). He rode a Honda Postie Bike, she rode this mint Honda Zoomer. Was nice chatting, and comparing my modified Zoomer to her dead stock one. Kinda jealous when they set off to ride in the glorious Sydney sunshine!

Modern Pet is a little business I formed with Christina, my sister Jamie and her husband Richie. Sadly it never took off… it’s not losing money, but it needs more energy in order to really make more sales and right now, especially since little Miles is in the world, it’s time no-one has to spare.

I’m still proud of the branding and online shopping cart design. It’s running on Opencart and I worked farking hard to get it looking as clean as it does. Jamie found a site for selling sites, interesting! We thought we’d give it a go, check the online auction here: http://flippa.com/auctions/2732864/site

PS: We’ve still got some awesome stock left and if you enter the code “MAY” on checkout you’ll save an additional 40%. Visit: http://modernpetshop.com/

Nana’s off-the-cuff pasta dish was so so yummy.

When with Japanese you must eat real Japanese! We made the hike out to Killarney Heights to visit Fuji Japanese Bakery – they’ve been making traditional Japanese style bread and pastries since 1984, looks like the little shop has never undergone a renovation since then either!

Be sure to try a steamed pork bun, the curry bun is great too!

Traditional Portuguese chicken from Frango in Petersham. Super tender, the chilli is perfect (not at all too hot), the chips are awesome too.

Some goodies from Japanese supermarket Tokyo Mart in Northbridge. I’ve brought this stuff into Zen today to see if it fits in our vending machine. Bit risky to have the ramune in the machine as the glass could break when the machine drops the drink for delivery, the small coffee can doesn’t fit but the taller ones are fine. Tokyo Mart didn’t stock Coffee Boss but I’ve just downed the Pokka Milk Coffee and it’s awesome!

Deluxe Sashimi (had to have this).

Jewfish.

Tofu cheesecake was so naughty.

Someone mentioned ‘Sushi’ yesterday morning… despite a slightly foggy head from drinking the night before I had Sushi on the brain all day and by dinner time I couldn’t resist. Nana and I hit Masuya again. So good.

My Zoomer + Monkey.

Our growing library.

Our gallery.

Our retail space.

Rob, myself and John.

The guys at THE-LOWDOWN have featured Zen Garage. Find many more photos and the full feature here: http://www.the-lowdown.com/zen-garage/

Luca handing out my Bike T-Shirt.

Our speakers.

Our Apple talk featuring type obsessed creatives Luca Ionescu, Gemma O’Brien, Keith Morris and Wayne Thompson at Apple Store kicked ass last night. Click here for more images.

Steamed Bun. David Chang’s signature dish, believe the hype, it’s really that good.

Slow cooked (for 8hrs) Pork served AFTER dessert!

It was Christina’s B’day last week, to celebrate I took her to David Chang’s Momofuku at The Star. Reservations have to be made online, 10 days in advance. If you’re 15 minutes late to the restaurant they take your table away. If you cancel your booking on the night they take $175. All of this pre-booking stuff had me in two minds. 1) It’s probably how they roll in NYC, 2) It’s all a little bit pretentious and silly!

We were there early, and managed to walk past the restaurant twice. It’s so dark and subtle from the outside and inside (no signage) that we had to ask for directions (the lady who helped us stated that many people have a hard time finding it!). On walking in we were greeted by a chongy Chinese man wearing what looked like Chinese Pyjamas. Funny looking guy! I liked him. We sat at the bar and had a pre-dinner drink. Living Color’s “Cult of Personality” came blasting on the stereo. Impressive!

Looking around there’s a massive kitchen, and bar seating, and only very few small square tables on the floor, spaced quite far apart from each other.

We were sat at the bar, with an amazing view of the kitchen. Nearly every chef had tattoos. Momofuku serves up a 15 course degustation menu. I appreciated almost all 15 dishes but thought it was way too much food and found myself struggling after the 10th dish!

Strangely they served up slow cooked pork after dessert. No cutlery either so you had to use your hands to eat it. I asked the head chef (seen on the far right of the kitchen picture above) “What’s the deal with pork after dessert?!” and he was happy to have a chat and give us a few insights. Basically David was serving dinner to staff and staff family and friends one night, dinner was over but he had this gorgeous slow cooked pork ready to go, and David being David he thought he’d just serve it up in any case and it just stuck from there.

His steamed bun was as good as everyone makes it out to be. It’s basically like a peking duck pancake in flavour, and by the time the last little bit disappears in your mouth you want more. The menu is more diverse than you might think. Heavy rock music was belting all night, apparently some customers hate it, and ask to have the volume turned down. Personally I loved it! The attitude of the place let’s Chang’s personality shine through. I had to complement the head chef by saying I wasn’t expecting anything amazing, if anything I was bracing myself for something a little “fake” but ultimately I really enjoyed discovering the food, the atmosphere and I thought it was far from fake.

Amazingly there was no queue when we first got there, we even got a table inside, but as we left the queue was massive.

I’ve chowed down on awesome Bourke Street Bakery goods before, but I’ve never actually bought anything form the original Bourke Street Bakery on Bourke Street in Surry Hills. Now I have :)

The Mighty Car Mods guys were at the JDMST meet the other night. Marty asked if it was alright if he intereviewed me and without hesitation I said “yes”. I then instantly started to regret agreeing as I hate being in front of the camera. I got nervous and felt like I mumbled a lot but after watching the video I think I did OK! Glad I didn’t say anything stupid!

Look out for Mark Pakula, Sergio and John in the video too! :)

Earlier at Zen getting ready to pack up the shop.

We packed everything into the mini van. She did great!

Setting up our Zen Garage stall.

Our trade stand at the meet. We brought along all the new Illest gear (as well as some run-out specials).

Wing it!

Sergio’s S15.

RE kit on this FD was awesome, gold wheels definitely different!

Real deal Z-Tune.

Epic. The biggest JDMST Meet so far, no doubt.

Last night’s JDMST EOMM @ WSID Eastern Creek was massive. Cars were pouring in from 6PM and the queue went all the way out to the main road for hours. At it’s peak, around about 8PM the carpark was almost at full capacity (that’s a 2,000 space car park!). Due to the way cars were parked (spaced out in parts) I’d say we had about 1,200 cars on the night which makes it the largest JDMST Meet to date.

We had a Zen Garage stall on the night and we brought all the new Illest gear which we just took delivery of in the past few days (perfect timing!). We sold a lot of hoodies and crewnecks, no surprise as Sydney is getting cold about now!

Massive thanks to the guys at Top Secret Imports for making the venue happen for us. Massive thanks also to the Zen Garage team + Sergio, Claudio and Anton for helping us throughout the day and night.

All the above shots were taken by the talented photographers on JDMST. View many more images here: http://forum.jdmstyletuning.com/showthread.php?43719-NSW-JDMST-X-TSI-EOMM-APRIL-2012-WSID