A Few of My Favourite Things !

We went to the Taste of Melbourne on a Friday afternoon again this year to avoid the crowds, and what a lovely way it was to spend a rainy afternoon. Thanks to Green & Black’s, entry was free so we just had to buy crown currency to use at the stalls. Despite concentrating solely on food and skipping all the wine stalls, we still managed to spend a leisurely three hours at the impressive and gorgeous Royal Exhibition Centre. My friends who went the next day, and did all the wine stalls as well as the HSBC VIP Lounge, stayed until they got kicked out at 4:30pm.

Onto the food then and in order of appearance:

Mezzo Bar & Grill’s organic slow braised pork cheek, white polenta, raisins and marsala sauce. So delightful that the woman standing across from us felt a need to share with us how much she enjoyed hers. Maybe it’s not a bad thing that Mezzo has gone Italian since reinventing itself after Oyster Little Bourke.

Melbourne Wine Room/Mr Wolf‘s Livornese seafood stew. Just one whiff of this could have sent me to heaven however I nearly broke my tooth on that bread stick! Such an appropriate dish for a cold, grey day so more of the broth would have been welcome. That said, it didn’t diminish our enjoyment of the stew, especially as we watched the queue crawling slowly towards The Palace for Luke Mangan’s Wagyu Burger. Being the most substantial dish and for just 10 crowns may have explained the lines, but we had been forewarned that the burger was nothing special.

Mmeh, The European’s duck tortelloni with pea puree & truffle oil really did not do it for me. One bite and I was happy to leave the rest to A. who ate it more out of hunger than desire.

Thankfully, it was a completely different story when we got to Comida Bebe. We chose to eschew the more popular Paella Fiesta for the baby chorizo glazed in cider, served on a skewer with candied and fresh apple and topped with an apple toffee sauce and boy, was it worth it! The chorizo was smokey, chewy and mouthwateringly moreish. They really should do more than just pop-up here and there.

Next door was the Libertine/Le Traiteur stall where the entire menu had my eyes popping. As I was getting quite full though, we skipped the pissaladiere feuillete and smoked duck, apple & walnut rilettes for the game consomme and truffled rabbit agnolotti – clear broth spiked with amontillado sherryl. A very delicate dish that A. enjoyed more than me.

Onto the opposite side where the (IMO) most eye-catching stalls had been set up – Longrain and Longrain Bar. Although the yellow curry of wagyu beef with cucumber relish looked tempting, I immediately wanted the salted Western Plains pork prawn sweet roll with pickled vegetables. Unlike Circa’s try-hard version of the banh mi last year, this one hit the mark and was one of my favourite dishes of the afternoon. Crackling pork skin with sweet chilli sauce – I could have had 3 of these if I wasn’t so full.

We also had their vanilla tapioca pudding with poached pears and jackfruit.

Charcoal Lane is restaurant, supported by Mission Australia, that enables Aboriginal and disadvantaged young people to obtain comprehensive hospitality training. A good enough reason to try their food and visit the restaurant, right? But what makes it better is that the food is actually well-worth tasting. We only had the seared Kingfish, red curry, puffed rice and coconut dish but it’s enough for me to want to schedule in a dinner there soon.

To finish off, we had the pistachio ‘panna cotta’ with caramel salted popcorn from Sarti. Salted caramel is really taking off in Melbourne in a BIG way but so few places get it right (I think the only place that A has give the thumbs up to is the creperie in Hardware Lane). Unfortunately, this was one of them. The popcorn did not taste of salted caramel at all but it was saved by the amazing pistachio panna cotta.

Well, we finished up at the restaurant stalls but, of course, there were a few other things we had to taste =) The original Monaco Bar was one of my favourite ice creams as a child so when I first read about Pat & Stick’s ice cream range in Gourmet Traveller about, oh, 6 years ago I knew that I had to try it. Unfortunately, their products were not stocked in Melbourne so I’ve had to wait until now for one of their sandwiches. Apparently the Caramel Pecan is one of the more popular so that’s what we got. It was good but, really, it could be SOOOOO much better. The cookie could and should have been nuttier and it reminded me of the cheap peanut cookies that you can get at Aldi. I hope the rest of the range is better but I’m more inclined to make my own next time.

Then there was the Green & Black’s chocolate fountain. A pile of skewered marshmallows to hold under the flowing river of chocolate, it was funny watching a woman tentatively reaching her skewer towards the waterfall and pulling back just before it touched. So good that I had two and would have gone back for a third before heading out the door before remembering that this afternoon was already going to mean extra gym time.

We enjoyed Dello Mano’s gourmet brownies so much last year that I made a beeline as soon as I spotted their sign. Of course, it helps when you have an owner like Bien who is passionate about their product and wants you to enjoy it as much as they do (unlike a certain fussy helper at the King Island Dairy stall).

We bought a few chocolates from The Chocolate Master but haven’t tasted them as yet as we are fairly chocolated out right now.

Who else has been and blogged (so far)? I have to slowly make my way through all these posts over the next few days…
Jeroxie
I Eat Therefore I Am
Travelling in Mary Janes
My Food Trail
Iron Chef Shellie
Green Gourmet Giraffe
Kitchen Wench
…It Pleases Us
Melbourne Gastronome
MEL: hot or not
The Chronicles of Ms I-Hua
Sweet Cherrie Pie

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 at 11:29 pm and is filed under appetisers, chocolate, festivals, melbourne, restaurants/cafes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.