Taste of Melbourne 2011 preview

Brace yourself: Taste of Melbourne is back next month. If last year’s 20,000-strong crowd proved anything, it was that once you get a taste for this mammoth four-day food fest, now in its fourth year, you can’t help coming back for more.

This year promises some of Melbourne’s biggest names in food and wine – think Longrain, Stokehouse, Botanical, European and Sarti – along with French cooking demonstrations by Jacques Reymond, expert wine panels hosted by Gourmet Traveller WINE, and of course the Gourmet Traveller Taste Kitchen hosted by the GT team.

In fact, Taste of Melbourne is like having your own growers’ market, cellar door, chef’s table, cocktail bar and restaurant dégustation in one. Where else could you try Stokehouse’s seared scallops, green chilli aïoli, almonds and celeriac rémoulade – “scallops were a huge hit last year so they’re back,” says chef Anthony Musarra – along with Pat and Stick’s homemade ice-cream sandwiches, Longrain’s muddled-to-order cocktails, Sarti’s pistachio panna cotta with caramel salted popcorn, and excellent regional Victorian wines, all within a single afternoon?

“We absolutely love being involved in Taste,” says Natalie Pizzini from Pizzini wines. “It offers producers like us the opportunity to connect with customers in a way that’s not normally possible considering we only have a cellar door in the King Valley.”

We’re particularly excited about the chance to taste some giant octopus – something you just don’t see on enough menus these days. Botanical chef Cheong Liew says the texture is something like “a poor man’s lobster” – tender, but with a little bit of resistance. “You want a bit of bite in there – that’s the nature of octopus,” he says. “We confit the octopus in really hot oil, with herbs and lots of burnt olives which gives it the great smoky flavour on the outside. The inside tastes like the salty sea with the added natural sweetness of the flesh. Anyone who likes seafood, I think, will like it.”

If giant sea creatures aren’t tickling your fancy, just try to resist the suckling lamb with pearl barley and truffled pecorino being prepared by Sarti. “We bone the whole lamb and stuff it with anchovy breadcrumbs, cook it overnight sous-vide style, then roast it in the oven to caramelise,” says chef Riccardo Momesso. “When those doors open, and thousands of people pour in, it’s just insane – but it’s fantastic, it’s such a great way to see and hear what customers want and to see what’s happening in the food world,” he says.

Assuming you will – and you really should – try no fewer than, say, five dishes, then move on to the Toulouse-style cassoulet with confit duck from Libertine and Le Traiteur, the pulled pork panino from The Kitchen Cat, and the steamed seafood dumplings from Mahjong Black.

Whatever your bag, it’s here – just make sure you bring one along to fill with fresh produce for home to get the full Taste experience.

This article was published in the August 2011 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller.