Eating Melbourne

My crazy eat-myself-to-death schedule at the Melbourne Food & Wine festival continues… with tonight’s dinner at MoVida Aqui by guest chef Thomasina Miers, from Wahaca in London.
Ms Miers is the London-based winner of Masterchef UK; she specialises in modern Mexican food. Given the venue (MoVida Aqui – which I haven’t dined at yet, but loved the look and feel) I was thinking it would be sort of a Mexican version of Frank Camorra’s modern Spanish at MoVida.
The MFWF event was $110 a head for “5 courses including matched wines”.  J and I attended with the lovely Claire and her b-f-K. (I should add at this point that I had J’s camera and not my own, so my photos are a bit hit-and-miss; I’m guessing Claire’s will be better than mine so you should check her blog too.)
Upon arrival, we discovered that one of the five courses was the plates of hors d’oeuvres that were passed around while we were having drinks and waiting to be seated. The crispbreads with manchego cheese, quince paste and serrano chillies weren’t bad, but the three chilli and octopus tostado with avocado wasn’t great – the octopus pieces were kind of spongy and chewy, so you couldn’t really bite them without having to gulp down the whole piece.
Once seated, our tables had been set with little tumblers of tequila (not the nasty “I did WHAT last night?!!” tequila, but the proper agave kind, according to Miers) and a spicy tomato sangria.
I refuse to believe that tequila can ever be my friend. Lord knows we’ve all had those nights where we promise ourselves we will NEVER EVER EVER drink tequila again. I had a few sips of mine, and yes it did taste better than whatever crap we used to put in those margaritas at uni parties back in the day, but there was still no way I was going to be embracing tequila as a long lost amigo.
Anyway, moving on. The second course was “chilli water with scallop, cucumber and fresh lime”:
Or as I liked to call it, “lime with cucumber limes and gratings of lime”. Holy moley this was acidic. I had a couple of sips, felt my tongue shrivelling to the size of a bean and didn’t drink the rest.
Next up, vermicelli pasta cooked with sweet crab and chipotle paste:
Not what I would consider a Mexican dish, but hey, we’re being modern, so rock on. This was OK; I didn’t love it, but I did like the way the spice of the chipotle kicked in about three minutes after eating the last mouthful.

The final savoury dish was a slow cooked mutton in an ancho chilli marinade with fresh cabbage salad and chile de arbol salsa:
  This was served with warm tortillas so that we could make our own little wraps with them, along with the special chilli sauce that was on the table:
“What’s the chilli sauce like?” asked b-f-K. “Really frickin’ hot,” I promptly replied. And so it was.
Mutton and potatoes, Mexican food?  Hey, I’ve never been to Mexico, what would I know. It’s not what I would expect. The dish was ok, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the US$4 fish tacos that I had at the ferry terminal in San Francisco. Not as much freshness or zing. Possibly that means I am a Philistine, but there it is.
For dessert there was a Mexican flan with a hint of tequila and poached figs:
I couldn’t taste the hint of tequila; but given that, to me, a “hint of tequila” tastes kind of like a hint of imminent hangovers with an undercurrent of projectile vomit, this is probably a good thing.
I liked the flan. I don’t know if there is a difference between a flan and a creme caramel; someone please tell me; but it was creme caramel to me, if a very nice creme caramel. Very rich though, I only ate about half of it.
And finally, with tea and coffee, a plate of chocolate truffles:
Think about the chocolatiest chocolate you ever had, and then take half the sugar out, and roll it in more chocolate powder, and you will have an idea of these truffles. As you may know, I’m not that much of a chocolate person, so I just had a nibble.
And that’s pretty much it. Except for MoVida’s very pretty teacups, which deserve their own picture: We were served wine throughout, but not exactly what I would call “matched wine” in the sense of my previous MoVida event with Spanish Acquisition – it was pretty much their house wine I think. For $110 I did not think this was particularly good bang for buck and was a bit disappointed.
But we shall press on! Next: rooftop bar art crawl!

Buckle your seatbelts (loosely) over your stretchiest pants, fellow eaters – we’re in for a big couple of weeks, now that the MFWF has kicked off!

My first event was tonight at the Heat Beads Hawker’s Market, held at the Vic Markets. It’s on for the next two nights too; it’s $45 a head if you book online or $48 at the gate, and you get four vouchers per person that you can redeem for a single plate at any of the food stalls. They do have drinks stalls too (Scotchmans Hill wines, James Boags beer, or San Pellegrino water and soft drinks) but you have to pay cash for those. (Which I think is a bit crap – why can’t you redeem a voucher for a beer if you want? And you should take your own bottle of water, as many dishes are quite spicy but you’ll have to pay $3 for each tiny 250ml bottle of Acqua Panna.)

Anyway, I went with regular dining companions Dan, Noush and J. We had booked tickets for the 8.30pm session, but arrived early so had to wait outside for all the 6.30pm session people to leave. As agonising as it was to wait outside with an empty belly and be smelling all those delicious smells, I recommend you do the same, as we got passed at least eight spare vouchers from people leaving who hadn’t used all theirs – win!

There were 12 different stalls, 30 dishes to choose from. We wanted to try as many of them as we could, so we each took turns going up to get a different dish, and then put them all in the middle and shared.

Get ready… for FOOD COMA.

Pork cheek from Pan Asian. Quite nice flavours but very fatty.	Balinese chicken from Warung Agus. Mmmyeah not bad.
Sushi hand rolls from Kenzan @ GPO. These were really quite good.	Tsukune (chicken meatballs) from Sake & Grill Maedaya. Not bad, not terribly exciting.
Pho from Co Do. Loved this. So fresh tasting.	pho accompaniments
Beef bulgogi from Hallah. Not great. A bit cold and chewy – needed to be cooked fresher to order.	Beef vindaloo from Chilli India. Really tasty.
Sichuan BBQ (prawns, pork, chicken) from Dainty Sichuan. Dish of the night for me, especially the skewer prawns, but very very spicy. “I fell into the burning ring of fire…”	Funny little skewer things from Dainty Sichuan – tofu, fish ball, some kind of sausage. Didn’t like these. Stick to the BBQ skewers.
Cold noodle salad from Dainty Sichuan. At least I hope it was supposed to be cold.	I don’t actually know what this was or where it was from. Curry of some kind. Food blogger f ail
Ikan panggang (grilled fish in banana leaf) from Laksa Me. Lovely. Great flavours and the fish was cooked perfectly.
Okonomiyaki and candied potatoes (?) from Sake and Grill Maedaya. It was OK. Getting pretty full by this point so only had a tiny taste.	Fried dumplings from Dumpling King. Why on earth did they not have steamed ones? Boo. I skipped these.
	LEFT: BBQ chicken sticks with green papaya salad from Cookie. Chicken sticks were overcooked and tough, flavours quite nice though. ABOVE: also from Cookie, a sort of seafood pancake thing with mussels. The pancake was very gelatinous, the texture gave me the willies a bit.
This was a banana fritter with icecream from Dumpling King that did not last long enough to be photographed. As you can see, we liked it.	Green tea pancake; I’m not sure which stall this came from, but it was awful. Cold, chewy, ick.
	LEFT: black sticky rice pudding from Warung Agus. It was runnier than other black sticky rice dishes I’ve had before, and we didn’t love the flavour – everyone had a tiny mouthful then left the rest.

The event wasn’t too crowded, although maybe that’s just because it was the first night (and a Monday). In any case it was easy to get served, except for at Dainty Sichuan where there was a long line all night. Don’t think “I’ll go back later when the line’s not so long”, just suck it up and stand there, because that line ain’t gettin’ any shorter.

We all had a great time, and stuffed ourselves to the gills. Highly recommend you go, it’s good fun.

More info: http://www.melbournefoodandwine.com.au/the-festival/a-focus-on-melbourne-events/heat-beads-reg-hawkers-market

NEXT: the Thomasina Miers dinner at MoVida!