Eating Melbourne

Lunch. 10 courses of tapas. 13 different Spanish wines. MoVida, the Spanish Acquisition and Rathdowne Cellars teamed up for this special event, and what an awesome lunch it was.

MoVida was packed to the gills with excited foodies and booze hags – the whole restaurant had been booked out for it. At the door we were greeted with a glass of Cava, 2006 Raventos i Blanc “L’Hereu” Reserva Brut. “Oh that’s nice,” I thought, “they’re starting us off with a full glass before getting into the tastings.” Little did I know that the full glass was a sign of things to come…

No sooner had we taken our seats than suddenly our glasses were being refilled with another Cava – this time the 2006 Raventos i Blanc “L’Hereu de Nit” Rosé. Absolutely delicious too! This was teamed with the very first tapa, boqueron (pickled white anchovy pincho):

Yum yum yum. I do love Spanish anchovies. And next up – yay – more anchovies! This time it was anchoa, hand filleted Cantabrian anchovy on a crouton with smoked tomato sorbet. Always one of my favourites at MoVida. The matched wine for this dish was the Delgado Zuletta “La Goya” Manzanilla sherry, a very dry sherry that tastes to me a bit like sea air, but went beautifully with the food.

So at this point we’ve already had three wines. And not 20ml “tastes” either. They just keep topping ‘em up…
…and then suddenly there are another three wines for tasting in front of us. The 2008 Orden Tercera Verdejo was very bright and fruity, a bit too fruity and sav-blanc-ish for me. The 2008 Pazo San Mauro Albariño was a little drier, I liked it. And then the 2008 Capçanes “Mas Donis” Rosat de Garnacha – I adored this, it remained probably my favourite wine of the day. (I think I may have ordered some. Maybe. The end of the day was a little fuzzy.)

We drank these three wines with la trucha del océano, cured ocean trout with beetroot and horseradish cream; pulpo, slow cooked octopus with potato; and de ternera con atún, braised veal cheek with yellow fin tuna and piquillo pepper.

Five tapas and six wines down. We’re only halfway through. Press on!

Onto the reds now. I didn’t finish my whites/rosé in time so had to pour the remainders in the spittoon – the shame! The first three reds were the 2008 Artazuri Garnacha; 2007 Telmo Rodriguez “Gaba do Xil” Mencia; and 2008 Telmo Rodriguez “LZ” Tempranillo. They were teamed with two raciones (= larger sharing style tapas): confit green asparagus with slow cooked eggs and jamon Serrano; and slow roast baby goat. I really dug the asparagus – would make an excellent brunch dish!

It was about this point that things start getting messy. So messy in fact that I got a picture of the next three red wines, but not the next two food dishes.

The final bracket of reds were all tempranillos from Rioja – quite intense, very dark in colour: 2005 Remelluri Reserva Tempranillo, 2006 Artadi “Vinas de Gain” Tempranillo, and finally 2005 Roda “1” Reserva Tempranillo. I confess I do not remember a whole lot of detail about these wines. (I know, I know… I’ve let you all down… I am an embarrassment to booze hags and food bloggers everywhere.) I do however taking my first sniff of the Roda “1” and thinking “oh HELLO!!” Very very beautiful nose on it. But so it should have for $145 a bottle.

There were two matched dishes with this final red bracket: menestra, tomato braised spring vegetables with jamon Serrano; and carne de wagyu, braised wagyu intercostals with Jerusalem artichokes. The wagyu was delicious.

Executive chef Frank Camorra and his head chef David then came out to say a few words about their food:

I have to say though, this wasn’t the best food I’ve had at MoVida. Everything was nice enough, but without the “oh-my-god-oh-oh-OH”-ness of the cecina (air cured wagyu with truffle foam and poached egg). Where was the Pedro Ximenez braised beef cheek? the quail, jamon and cheese croquettes? the scallops with jamon and potato foam?

But I’m getting ahead of myself – we haven’t even had dessert yet! Which was a chocolate fudgey thing with olve oil sorbet and fennel torta, served with a glass of Sanchez Romate Moscatel “Ambrosia” sherry. (Pardon the pic – my sorbet melted while I was busy gasbagging with the very lovely Claire (from Melbourne Gastronome) and Anna aka Eatnik. And Claire’s dad, who is so exactly like my dad it’s hilarious.)

Eh… I don’t go much on chocolate desserts, so it was a bit wasted on me.

Speaking of wasted… oh my god. Thirteen glasses of wine in four hours?! And then they gave us the wine order forms, the cheeky buggers. I know I ordered a few bottles but I don’t entirely remember what and how many, so I guess I’ll find out when I get a call from Rathdowne Cellars! I’m hoping I ordered the pink Cava (2008 Raventos i Blanc “L’Hereu de Nit” Rosé) and the 2008 Capçanes “Mas Donis” Rosat de Garnacha.

All in all it was a great lunch. Extraordinarily good bang for buck too, at $120 a head. Hopefully they’ll do it again next year – make sure you’re on the mailing lists for either the Rathdowne Cellars or Spanish Acquisition so you don’t miss out!