TIME OUT: Gloom busters

Stop searching. We've found this weekend's top five:


1. Get inspired to rattle those pots and pans in Sydney

Remember when "cocooning” was a lifestyle choice, rather than a suggestion from your financial adviser? Visiting The Book Kitchen in Sydney's Surry Hills you can pretend it still is.

It is both bookshop and early-to-later eatery. The food is hard to pin down but the range of styles and approaches is strength here, rather than a disappointment. The breakfast menu is a good example. Yes, there's Bircher muesli and eggs with chorizo, but it's hard to imagine where else you'll also be offered date and fig pikelet with poached pear, rhubarb and vanilla ricotta, or South Australian kippers in a bio dynamic omelette with pickled carrot. The common factor is seasonal, sustainable produce.

So treat yourself to breakfast out (tell yourself you're saving money really, compared to what you'd spend going out to dinner). After you've been delighted by what's on the plate in front of you, you can peruse the shelves to find inspiration for an evening in, cooking up a feast. Click here for more.

2. Seek out a heritage escape in Brisbane

If you're looking for a Brisbane bolt-hole and can't face another night in a hotel room that looks like a corporate office with a bed dropped in it, try the Inchcolm. A quaint little gem housed in a former medical building, it's well located on the high side of the city and retains a satisfying period feel.

The ride to upper floors is via an atmospheric old cage elevator and the accommodation (all suites) combines a nice sense of 1930s heritage with mod cons. It feels as though you're staying in an appealing apartment rather than a soulless hotel.

Downstairs is Seasalt at Armstrongs, a small restaurant that achieves a surprising level of quality. At breakfast time, it's one of the few places in town you can get a good meal plus sunshine and the space and peace to read the paper from cover to cover. Click here for more.

3. Tune in to feed your mind

It's been a rough month for Radio National, with at least nine shows on the ABC's most thoughtful arm facing the chop. Fortunately, All in the Mind is not one of them. At least not yet. So this weekend, if you haven't discovered it already, make a point of listening to the show as it goes live on Saturday at 1pm, or subscribe to the free podcast and listen at your leisure later. Get in on it while the going's good.

Consistently intelligent and thought-provoking, the half-hour program goes to air each week with almost no fanfare, in contrast to its RN stable-mate and lead-in, The Science Show. Key to its success is the show's creator, Natasha Mitchell. Bright, curious, good-humoured and humane, she has a wide remit: anything to do with the mind, brain and behaviour.

It doesn't matter whether she's interviewing a Nobel-winning researcher or someone whose life has been derailed by mental illness; the conversations are almost always profound and captivating. Previous topics have included the history of amphetamines, the predictable irrationality of human behaviour, what being on death row does to your mind, and the stone-age brains in our 21st Century skulls. (The majority of programs are locally made, but Mitchell also occasionally runs quality work from other public broadcasters around the world.) For more, click here.

4. Enjoy an artistic oasis in Melbourne

Clear your head of the 24-hour news cycle this weekend with a visit to Klippel/Klippel: Opus 2008 at the National Gallery of Victoria's Ian Potter Centre. The exhibition is an unusual "collaboration” between two creative generations, sculptor Robert Klippel and his musician son, Andrew.

What makes it so unusual is the fact that Klippel senior died in 2001. But this is no crude cashing-in. It's a significant collection of works by the man consistently referred to as Australia's most notable post-War sculptor — someone held in the highest esteem by critics and collectors, yet little known among the wider population. An intense, prolific artist, Klippel worked in various media, but his signature pieces are assemblages of found objects. There are almost 200 of his miniature pieces on show, as well as one of his largest creations, a piece he was preparing to have cast in bronze at the time of his death; his son arranged its completion for this exhibition.

Andrew Klippel's own creative part of the project has been to develop a soundscape which is triggered by visitors moving around the pieces. The combined effect is a kind of mental oasis; a place where sight and sound and thought can take you far away from everyday life for an hour or so. Click here for further information. If you find yourself inspired to seek out more contemporary art, click here for NeoNeighbourhood's Melbourne art crawl.

5. See how it should be done in Perth

Perth's Beaufort Street Merchant is a textbook example of how to reinvent retail. Formerly a ho-hum "corner shop” that also sold liquor, it has been turned into a combination of gourmet grocer, wine store and cafe by siblings Scott and Angie Taylor. It's so cleverly done that for those living in the city it would be worth moving to Highgate just to have this place as your local.

The feel is as relaxed and friendly as an old-fashioned milkbar, but bigger and more grown up to fit in with a contemporary lifestyle. Every gourmet foodie item you can think of is here, from savoury to sweet, with a small, select range of wine designed to accompany the dishes.

It's open for business most of the day and night, and spills onto the street as the balance of patrons shifts from those filling their pantries to those pleasing their palates. So it doesn't matter when during the weekend the foodie mood hits, and it doesn't matter whether the urge is to eat out or to indulge in a bit of pleasurable foodie shopping, the Merchant will satisfy. Click here for more.