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Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2009 wrap-up

Check out our video interviews with Heston Blumenthal, Sat Bains, Shane Osborn and Ryan Clift from this year's Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.

It just keeps getting better. The summit weekend of this year’s Melbourne Food & Wine Festival was a foodist’s paradise, and the jewel in the event-studded weekend’s crown, the Langham Melbourne Masterclass, presented by yours truly, saw a huge increase in numbers with more than 1000 gourmet travellers packing the halls to see the cream of the globe’s culinary talent strutting their stuff. The winningly down-to-earth Heston Blumenthal held everybody rapt as he took us through his highly unorthodox approach to Christmas dinner, a presentation replete with an Oprah-esque “and now, if you’ll reach under your chairs” moment when everyone found a breath freshener strip-like film of frankincense and a communion wafer designed to smell like fresh babies. Pied à Terre’s Shane Osborn made it clear why he’s the first Australian to win two Michelin stars in Europe with his quietly devastating ocean trout with green olive and vanilla velouté. The Square’s Philip Howard, in his Modern Basics session, demonstrated that a keen intellect and a sense of humour can co-exist fruitfully in the kitchen. Sat Bains, the Nottingham-based rising star of British cuisine, dispensed belly laughs and gems of insight with equal aplomb.

It wasn’t just the international visitors who shone. Maggie Beer, reunited with her Pheasant Farm dream-team of cheesemaker Steve Flamsteed and pastry chef Nat Paull, charmed everyone with her candour, not to mention her pheasant salad and verjuice custard. Frank Camorra won ever more MoVida fans with snaps from his last research trip to Spain, his summer potato salad with preserved tuna, and his chocolate with bread.

Over the course of the weekend, we bobbed for burrata at the Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons Roman Block Party, puzzled over Milanese wonder-chef Carlo Cracco’s sea urchin and coffee combo, celebrated the Stars of Europe at the gala dinner peopled with satyrs and nymphs, and dazzled international guests with dinner at Cutler & Co or lunch at Cumulus Inc and drinks at the Supper Club. We ate chocolate with Ramon Morató, talked golf with Thomas Keller and clinked glasses with Roberto Anselmi, Pierre Larmandier and Alex Moreau. We downed an alarming combination of vodka and beer with Iñaki Aizpitarte and the boys from Châteaubriand, traded racy jokes with the comedic master of the world food scene, Antonio Carluccio, and drank absinthe with Heston and his posse at Gerald’s Bar in North Carlton.

Special mention must go to the dinner given by René Redzepi, chef at Copenhagen’s acclaimed Noma restaurant, in conjunction with Melbourne’s own Raymond Capaldi. Whether it was the calamari with “sea juice”, horseradish snow and dill or the raw chestnuts, salmon roe, rye and sea plants (the latter co-foraged by Attica’s Ben Shewry), it was food of such freshness and clarity that one guest was moved to say everyone else’s tasted like mud in comparison. We certainly polished our plates.

How can we possibly top this in March 2010? We’ve got a few ideas, friends. Stay tuned.

This article appeared in the June 2009 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller.