Sunday, August 29, 2010

A Very Brief Taste of Melbourne

Stokehouse Wagyu beef cigars, artichoke tapenade and horseradish

Friday night I was fortunate enough to attend A Taste of Melbourne for the first time with some friends thanks to SBS Food and Green & Blacks Organic Chocolate.  Unfortunately for me due to a sick little boy who needed a visit to the Dr I didn't arrive until 8.30pm & couldn't make it again due to a very busy weekend.  The doors close at 9.30pm & the bar closes at 9.15pm so 1 hour was really not that long to spend there.  Luckily I had printed out the menu and knew some of the dishes I wanted to try.  Thanks to the map I even managed to find these places though I only got to try 2 savoury dishes & one sweet & only managed to visit the Green & Blacks produce stall.  I have to say I was very disappointed as there was so much I wanted to try, maybe next year I will have better luck.

My first stop was The Stokehouse for the fabulous beef cigars, artichoke tapenade and horseradish.  Wow, I am so glad I tried these as they were luscious, crunchy pastry, moist & delicious filling & the tapenade was the perfect partner.

Next I dropped into Green and Vlacks to say i & thanks for the tickets & tried the chocolate and raspberry cheesecake brownies & butterscotch choc chip cookies, both were great & are from the upcoming new cookbook, I will be very interested to see the book when released, I already have one of their books & love it being a true chocoholic.

Longrain was next on my list so I headed upstairs only to be very disappointed to find EVERYTHING sold out, even the cocktails, not very happy!!!!!!   So it was off to Charcoal Lane for the  Seared Kingfish, Red Curry, Puffed Rice & Coconut.  I loved the flavours in this dish though I think the temperature put me off a bit.  It was quite cold & I think I would have preferred it warmer even though the guy dishing it up assured me this was the temperature it should be served at. 

By this stage I only had 6 crowns left out of my 60 (yes I managed to spend a lot in a short time without even getting much as there may have been some glasses of wine going down too).  I stopped by the Melbourne Wine Room & Mr Wolf stall and they were kind enough to let me sample the Vanilla pannacotta and blood orange jelly.  Nice though by this stage I was more interested in drinking more wine than sweets so headed out the door for a long night at the Brunswick Green and Retreat!

Apologies too for the lack of photos, I did take heaps more but they were completely crap, I really need that new camera  which current financial circumstances have had to put on hold again for now....

Green and Blacks samples

Looking forward to next year & hope I manage a bit more time next visit.

2 comments:

K_Bom said...

Oh Ange - I'm sorry you didn't get to spend much time there. And chin up about the pic's, you're being too hard on yourself. Those Chockies from Green and Black's look delicious.

I had fun at the Taste festival today - I don't know how you managed to squeeze in so much in an hour?

Ange said...

Hi K, thanks and dont worry when I set my mind to something I can get things done real quick! My poor guests didnt know what him them but luckily they were happy to be led around. Glad you enjoyed the show too.