Eating Melbourne

Foodie Little Sis and I ended up at MoVida Next Door on a Friday lunchtime, after failing to snag tables at Coda or the original MoVida.

Ostensibly, MoVida Next Door is a “pared-back” version of its outrageously successful sister, MoVida Bar de Tapas. My guess is that it’s really there to take the overflow from the original MoVida, which is one of my favourite places in Melbourne, but these days you have to book about three months ahead to get a table (no exaggeration). Who cares – I’m just happy that there are more seats where one can sit and eat Frank Camorra’s food.

MoVida Next Door’s menu has about 15 savoury menu options, plus a few daily specials. I’m hopeless at choosing, so I just asked the waiter to “spin the wheel” and keep bringing out the food till we said stop.

We started with a couple of chewy, salty bread sticks:

shortly followed by one of the day’s specials – kingfish with jamon and peas:

Absolutely delicious – the kingfish was partly cured with a bit of vinegar, tart and zippy against the sweet peas and salty jamon.

Next was another daily special – tuna cheeks with onions:

I am assuming the onions had some saffron involvement, but it was about this point that there was a change of service and the new waitress did not realise that we hadn’t ordered each dish and therefore didn’t explain them. So the pictures will have to do the talking.

The spicy grilled prawns were delicious:

as were the “sardines on toast” – they were grilled on the chewy salty bread with tomatoes:

Next there were pieces of wagyu, braised with sweet caramelised onions and Pedro Ximenez:

The wagyu appeared to have been slow cooked as it fell apart as soon as I stuck a fork in it. Little bit gelatinous. Divine.

Finally, there was chicken (I think) stuffed with some kind of pate:

This was the only dish I didn’t like. The pate was REALLY funky, in a Stilton-ish kind of way, and I found it very overpowering.

They asked us whether we were still hungry after this, but we agreed that we had had an Elegant Sufficiency between the two of us. I had a glass of 2007 Muga Viura Malvasia (Rioja) with my meal, which was just ok.

The service was passable, but not up to the standard that I’ve had at the original MoVida. The staff seemed a bit distracted. There was the aforementioned issue of not explaining the dishes; plus I was not offered anywhere to hang my coat (we were sitting up on stools at the bar) and had to go looking for the coat rack myself. Small issues that could easily be remedied.

The bill came to $87 for two, including drinks. Not bad for great rustic, tasty food.