Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2023: Best things to eat, drink
Dees star Christian Petracca wil slip on the apron and don the tongs for the ultimate celebrity sausage sizzle in the city. Here’s how to snag a taste.
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Dees star Christian Petracca is a confident man, both on and off the footy field.
This weekend the Tik-Tok famous midfielder will slip on an apron for the inaugural Celebrity Sausage, for the final days of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
“I cook a lot of barbecues at home so I’m quite confident in my ability to cook up a delicious snag,” he told the Herald Sun.
“I’m so excited to cook for the public. This is my first time cooking for others on a public scale and I’m definitely up for the challenge.”
The star-midfielder will hop behind the barbie to sizzle his lamb and harissa snags this Saturday as part of the free, two-day Baker’s Dozen event at Federation Square.
The star-studded sausage sizzle will also showcase the best snags in showbiz land, made by TV chef Karen Martini, media personality Jacqui Felgate, radio star Chrissie Swan, rapper Senator Briggs and more.
Petracca said cooking had always been a huge passion of his since childhood.
“My parents and my nonna are amazing cooks and they instilled in me a love of cooking,” he said.
“But my biggest inspiration is my nonna. She is an amazing cook with a deep love of food and family. One of my favourite pastimes is making pasta with her and picking tomatoes from her veggie garden.”
Melbourne speciality butcher Meatsmith helped Petracca create his lamb and harissa sausage, which will be served with a yoghurt sauce, parsley and pickled onion salad cradled in fresh Bakers Delight bread.
Celebrity Sausage presented by Bakers Delight is part of a free, two-day Baker’s Dozen event at Federation Square.
Cray cray for crayfish
Foodies can go cray-cray on a budget this week.
Yakimono executive chef Daniel Wilson is providing a taste of luxury on a pinch as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
For $148, seafood lovers can enjoy a four-course lobster feast at the sold-out Cray Cray at Yakimono dinners, which kick offTuesday night.
Wilson will bung Apollo Bay caught-crayfish on the barbie seasoned with Yakimono’s signature Japanese flavours.
“With the trade deal with China, its making crayfish more affordable in the Australian market,” Wilson said.
“The price has remained fairly stable (over the last few months) which is making it more approachable.”
Wilson said crayfish usually found its way on the Yakimono menu during the holiday season or special events.
“We had plenty on during the lead up to Christmas and I have an inkling we’ll have more for this weekend’s Grand Prix,” hesaid.
“I do love crayfish, enjoyed simply, to allow it to be the star. It’s always on our Christmas table.”
The Cray Cray at Yakimono menu includes charcoal deep-fried crayfish swiped in squid-ink mayo, cubed hako crayfish sushi,barbecued cray skewers glazed in yuzu togarashi butter and Jopser-grilled crayfish with rice in a chilli bisque.
The sold-out event is part of the festival’s bumper 2023 program, which has resumed to its full schedule after three yearsof Covid pauses.
Cray Cray at Yakimono, 28- March 30, mfwf.com.au
Four quirky drinks to sip at food festival
Charge your glasses for these unique Melbourne Food and Wine Festival pours.
1. Calamansi Cider Crush: $22 for four pack ($109 case)
Filipino citrus fruit calamansi is bubbling into the mainstream with this cool cider collab between Philippines collective The Entree.Pinays and Macedon Ranges Darraweit Valley Cider House. Chief cider maker Marc Serafino blends the zippy native citrus with heritage cider apples to create a refreshing sweet and tangy pour. Available at the Seafood, Stars and Stories at Seafarers event or at independent retailers.
Hudsons Road Wine & Beer, Spotswood
2. 7-Eleven Slurpee Pink Creamy Soda cocktail: $14
Nagambie Brewery slushes its 3608 classic dry gin with a generous lever of store’s creamy soda mix. Also try the pine lime with Killik Silver rum.
The Convenient Store
3. Caretakers Cottage’s Loneliness Remembers cocktail:
The Caretaker’s Cottage lads’ fizzy creation uses their housemade clarified strawberry vermouth. They juice and hang the fruit, before blending it with rose. Then it’s sweetened and fortified with gin, mixed with Nagambie Brewery vodka and topped with Capi yuzu soda.
Festival Bar
4. A Glass Of … Pinot Noir: $12
Try this new age way to drink wine, with A Glass Of … selling its 200ml pouches. Winemakers Gilles Lapalus and Neil Prenctice are behind the three pours on offer: The 2021 Studebaker pinot noir, made from Moondarra Wine’s Gippsland-grown grapes, and Bertrand Bespoke’s 2022 vintages of rose and greco.
The Convenient Store
Say cheese
Thought your dinner party cheese board was over the top?
Take a leaf out of Maker and Monger founder Anthony Femia’s playbook with a whopping seven-metre tasting station at A Fromage Fiesta.
The Prahran Market takeover for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival has been years in the making, with Femia forced to pump the brakes thanks to last-minute Covid lockdowns.
The sold-out after-dark event will let guests sample the cheesy centrepiece filled out with fromages from here and abroad, as well as a molten Swiss raclette over baked spuds, cacio e pepe pasta fresh from the cheese wheel and Baker Bleu country rolls stuffed with ham from market fave Gary’s Meats. Wine will be available to buy by the glass and bottle.
And it’s not the only event you can get your dairy dose.
The Studd Siblings, Ellie and Sam, are taking over Shadowfax Winery in Werribee for a one-off, four-course cheese and wine dinner.
A Fromage Fiesta, Thu 30 Mar, SOLD OUT
Get Cheesy with the Stuff Siblings, Sun 1 April, $169 per person
City’s convenience store snack game is strong
When Pat Nourse took the job of Melbourne Food and Wine Festival creative director in 2019, he had one request.
The 10-day food and wine extravaganza should be accessible to everyone.
“Part of my own remit and personal interest was making sure the festival was not just staged in fine dining restaurants,” he said.
“We will always have that component within the festival, but it was important to me that it was accessible to a wide range of price points.”
Food and Wine Victoria, the not-for-profit organisation behind the festival, will this year continue its relationship with global giant 7-Eleven, marking the return of bougie snack supplier The Convenient Store, this year housed at the festival’s Federation Square base.
While some may see the partnership as, ahem, conveniently feeding the festival’s approachability narrative, Nourse said the union was actually serendipitous.
“Convenience inspired food has been on the up for several years now. There’s an obsession with this food in Japan, the bottle shop and snack bars of Germany... the bodegas in the US and even our own corner shop mixed bag culture,” he said.
“This seemed like a good place to play around with those ideas and make (The Convenient Store) a visible hub for the festival, showcasing some of the best Victorian players.”
Last year pop-up was a runaway hit at Queen Victoria Market, with cult snacks such as the Luther’s Scoops and American Doughnut Kitchen’s hot jam doughnut ice cream flying off the shelves.
This year more than 60 limited edition items have been made by the state’s best chefs and producers, including Enter Via Laundry’s Helly Raichura, Lollo’s Adam D’Sylva and former Bar Saracen chef Tom Sarafian.
Think spreads, ready-made-meals, hot sandwiches and sweets.
“This year is bigger and better, with expanded dwell space,” Nourse said.
“They have put a bit more time into the visual merchandising to make it prettier — and it’ll be around for the full ten days for breakfast, lunch, dinner and cocktails.”
As for what to order? Nourse’s game-plan is strong.
“In one hand I’ll have Victor Liong’s spicy lamb sandwich and a Melbourne Food and Wine Festival cocktail in the other and in my third hand maybe a pine lime slurpee. I might also get Tom Sarafian’s labne to smear on that sandwich as we’re all about a hack twist and customisation. And I’ll probably be having some of Chappy’s Bloody Mary flavoured chips.”
The Convenient Store will pop-up at Federation Square from March 24-April 2
Brunswick ice-creamy’s cool treat
Is it called banana bread or cake?
A trivial argument chef Christian Williams refuses to be drawn on.
“Technically it is a cake. I won’t argue semantics about that, but it’s banana bread in this context,” he said.
The Michelin-trained pastry chef turned ice-cream king behind Brunswick’s Luther’s Scoops is making another limited-edition frozen snack for this year’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival: a 7-Eleven banana bread-inspired flavour.
Williams was behind the runaway hot jam doughnut ice cream, which he made with Queen Victoria Market food truck American Doughnut Kitchen.
“This year we are making a banana bread-flavoured cream (made with overripe bananas) which we roast with brown sugar and vanilla bean then puree with ice cream,” he said.
“Then we are adding banana breadcrumbs that have been cooked in brown butter.”
Helping spread the banana bread love is Lollo chef Adam D’Sylva, who has created a french toast recipe also using the cult snack.
Only 500 tubs of the 7-Eleven Banana Bread x Luther’s Scoops Ice Cream will be available at The Convenient Store, alongside D’Sylva’s recipe cards, during the 10-day festival.
Williams said they will sell the flavour at his Sydney Rd store later in the year.
“We will serve it at the shop at some point. It won’t be immediately after the festival, so we can maintain that exclusivity, but it’ll make a good winter flavour for the shop,” he said.
Watch Instagram for an update.
7-Eleven Banana Bread x Luther’s Scoops Ice Cream will be sold at The Convenient Store for $8.
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