A Taste of Melbourne 2011

September 16, 2011

This four day show in Melbourne brings together the city's finest restaurants and the region's top food producers all under one giant roof, where Melbourne's Foodies salivate openly at the hundreds of stalls and free tasting stations. I had attended the Good Food & Wine Show earlier in the year (read about it here), and was impressed enough to take Alison along to the Taste of Melbourne, which is billed as the best food show in town. Which makes it slightly odd that we would want to attend really, because we make a point of not eating at the city's finest restaurants, I definitely wouldn't describe us as foodies, and vegetarian dishes were not high on anyone's a la carte agendas. 



Free food and wine is however right up our street. As are the glorious Royal Exhibition Buildings in Carlton, as impressive a place to hold an expo you could wish to find.

Here's a quick run down of the show. The star attractions are the signature dishes of the city's dozen top restaurants which you can scoff for around $12 a dish. Each of these restaurants has a stall and kitchen in the main hall. Whilst the dishes sound and look mightily impressive from the photos, it doesn't quite work for me when you see the meagre portions served up on hundreds of plastic plates ready for a foodie scrum down.

But the rest of the show is where the real fun is at. Buy a plastic wine glass for $6 at the entry and wander from stall to stall tasting away: you have your pick of Victoria's great wines, and a chance to talk to the vineyard owners over a crisp sauvignon blanc, a fruity red little Shiraz number, or a surprisingly good sparkling strawberry wine. There were also plenty of independent beer brewers in town, including the fantastically named Blue Tongue Brewery (named after the lizard, not any after effects). Of course the idea is that you purchase a bottle or a case, but no one seems to mind if you're just there for the ride.

And the same goes when it comes to the food tasting part, we indulged heavily in dips, dukkahs, herbs, spices and chocolates, and we left the show armed with bags of Gourmet Morsels dukkah, and the also brilliantly named No Worries, Curry spice mixes. Both these local companies were happy to chat with us about their products and recipes, and share a joke and a smile along the way. A very pleasant way to spend an evening, even if the toulouse cassoulet of confit duck and garlic sausage really isn't your cup of tea.

The Taste of Melbourne Facebook page is here