Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2012

Gaz and I went to the second day of Melbourne Food and Wine Festival last week. Gaz had carefully planned our day around the free events that took place during the Festival. The Food and Wine Festival is held across Victoria where participating restaurants can offer from sample plates to full courses matched with wine and stalls are set up to introduce new products. During the month, it felt like every foodie is out around town tasting their way across Victoria.

We started our day with a free sample of Peking Duck Pancake in the middle of Fed Square. The event was limited to only 30 people per session, 1 session per person. There were other dishes offered in other sessions such as Tacos, Fish and Chips and Pavlova. The first session, the pancake started at 10am. We ended up at Fed Square early by one whole hour on a chilly, drizzling morning. The city was deserted save for some trucks sweeping the streets. We passed our time browsing through the BMW Edge watching people setting up their stalls for the Saturday Book Market.

Soon it was... 9:30am and we sat close to the big screen tv in the square watching the news about floods in regional Victoria. It has been raining everyday everywhere in Victoria since our return from holidays. A lot of good it did, seeing the rains hadn't spread itself out during our absence. All our plants dried up while we were away on holidays. The strawberries were reduced to a mass of brown leaves, the tomatoes which showed so much promise with at least 10 fruits hanging off the vine dried off without the fruits managing to mature into juicy toms and my new roses, planted because it was a particular species I had been looking for (the smell is incredible!), died. It was very upsetting. The only plant that did well was the ginger, since ginger loves the heat and can get by with limited water.

10am came and went, still there was no one at the 'restaurant' which was a few poles that drew together upwards decorated with hanging pots of bougainvillea and strawberry plants. Little garden tables and chairs sat underneath the structure. We finally took a seat when trays of duck pancakes were sent out from a nearby restaurant.

There were generous slices of duck in each of the two pancakes but the skin was not crispy. In the pancakes were spring onion and cucumber slices. We ate the pancakes with hoisin sauce. It was a morning tea!

We then walked off the snack by browsing through the National Gallery of Victoria in Fed Square. There were some interesting exhibitions going on, including a big model of the Fuel and Gas building which used to be on site before it was Fed Square. The building comprises of two big brown blocks, quite similar to the Menzies Building in Monash Uni. I was quite glad Fed Square replaced the outdated blocks although a NGV guide we spoke to preferred the old building better.

Soon it was lunch time, so we took a water taxi (free for the weekend, specially for the Festival) to Southgate where the tasting plates are. The first dish we bought was a little Piggy $8 - tender pieces of roasted pork wrapped in flat bread and topped with chutney from Ludlows Butchers Grill. It was awesome as the pork was tender and plentiful and the chutney was not too sour or sweet.

We passed by Joost - a much talked about pop up restaurant whose claim to fame is serving sustainable food. There is a toilet underneath the restaurant (r'ant on second and top level accessible by staircase), some noisy generators and big barrels of herbs such as basil etc nearby. The link of processed human manure - fertilizer - herbs - my plate in the restaurant - mouth and that put me off immediately.

We next went to Tutto Bene and ordered one each of their tasting plate for $8 and $10. I cannot remember the exact description of this dish but it has tuna, ham, oyster infused cream sauce which was absolutely heavenly. We enjoyed the sauce a lot.

This one is salmon and there is some sweet caramel to contrast. It was a surprise to taste the crackly caramel but I enjoyed the salmon more.

We also went to Salsa's and ordered tacos for $2 each. Initially we wanted 2 each, but accidentally ordered 5 in total instead so we brought the extra one home.

We passed by a row of stalls selling sweets but did not browse further because the rain was starting to get heavy. We hopped on to the water taxi to Harbour Town, Docklands instead. The whole journey took us about 20 minutes and during that time the rain eased a little. Harbourtown was empty, I suppose the rain did not help because the shops are not enclosed in a mall, they only have a little awning and not much protection from the rain and cold wind that blows through from the harbour during the winter months. I think it is my least favourite shopping place solely because of how unprotected it is from the cold, and I dislike the cold very much!

I had wanted to purchase a pair of runners but by the time we found Rebel Sports, we had ran out of time. We caught the water taxi back to Fed Square just in time! We really enjoyed the Food and Wine Festival this year. Although some of the events can be a little pricey, such as full courses over $150, but there is a good mix of free and reasonable priced activities too.