Food style setter Stephanie Alexander lists in Hawthorn after 25 years
Former restaurateur Stephanie Alexander has listed her Hawthorn home of two decades for March 1 auction.
The author of 14 books bought the 1890s house on its 900 square metre block in 1989 for around $600,000.
Naturally its kitchen is a real feature with Carrara marble benchtops, St George double oven and mobile island bench. Plenty of open shelving and storage including a butler's pantry.
It forms the heart of the three bedroom house on Robinson Road, marketed as a professional's kitchen, but with a warm and friendly environment.
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There's also an outdoor eating and entertaining area and a solar-heated swimming pool and an extensive edible garden of fruit, nuts, citrus and olive trees, an extensive range of vegetables and herbs. There's water tanks with a total 15,000 litre storage.
Belinda Anderson, of Fletchers, is quoting $2 million-plus in the days leading to its first open for inspection on February 8, marketing it as a "feast for the senses."
Behind its front yard lemon tree, it comes with a beautifully maintained period facade with polychromatic brickwork, bay window and deep verandah.
Inside the original features include high decorative ceilings, Baltic pine flooring and an elegant hallway arch.
The Alexanders opened their own restaurant, Stephanie's, first in Fitzroy and then in 1980 in the grand Italianate mansion, Kawarau, aka Warrington in Hawthorn. The family had renovated downstairs as a restaurant, and lived upstairs of the property they bought for $174,000 in 1979. Kawarau, at 405 Tooronga Road, was built in the 1890s for Robert Robinson, a Melbourne grain merchant, but most remembered for the ownership by F. J. Cato, the co-founder of the grocery business of Moran and Cato, the first chain of stores of any kind in Australia.
Apparently Stephanie Alexander has her eyes on something, and won't be going far, though its means her lengthy association with Hawthorn will conclude following the March 1 auction.
