Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2023: Curtis Stone headlines bumper food week
Victoria’s most ambitious food event – featuring a mammoth 1800 guests, 5600 dishes, 70-odd chefs and 400kg of duck – has kicked off the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
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Victoria’s food scene showcased why it “punches way above its weight” as the World’s Longest Lunch kicked off the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
About 1800 diners, seated along half a kilometre of tables in Treasury Gardens, devoured an extraordinary 5600 dishes designed by Lake House Daylesford’s Alla Wolf-Tasker and prepared by 70-odd chefs from Peter Rowland Group and the William Angliss Institute.
Peter Rowland executive chef Matthew Haigh said his team put in “about 450 hours’ worth of prep” before arriving on site from 6am to complete the dishes in portable kitchens.
Mr Haigh said they used 18kg of peas to create the entree of tartlet of late-summer vegetables, goat’s milk custard and pea puree.
About 400kg of duck, 1000 figs and 300kg of hand-rolled pastry were needed to make the duck brik main, plus 1000 apples for the “autumn apple” dessert.
“This is one of the most iconic events in Melbourne,” said Mr Haigh, a veteran of 12 World’s Longest Lunches. “It sings Melbourne.”
Ms Wolf-Tasker said pulling off the lunch had been “a village effort” – one, she admitted, she had not made easy for the chefs by giving them “some challenging things to do” in the kitchen.
“The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival cements the idea that … Victoria punches way above its weight in production of great food and wine,” she said.
“How many places can say they’re going to get 1800 people turn up in the middle of the day on a Friday … regardless of what the weather is going to be like (to) eat food they’re not really sure about?
“It really is painting a picture of a city and a state that cares about its food and wine.”
The festival runs until April 2 and features more than 200 events.
Stone surfs into town for mega food fest
Global megastar Curtis Stone will serve some Aussie attitude alongside Californian charm when he brings his Los Angeles restaurant Gwen to Melbourne next week.
The celebrity chef will be back in his home city to host a one-off dinner for this year’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, which kicks off today with the sold-out World’s Longest Lunch at the Treasury Gardens.
Stone’s event, also sold out, will give locals a taste of his newly Michelin starred Beverley Hills restaurant for the first time at this scale — and celebrate the flavours of his two homes.
“You can certainly take some big swings at what’s different between American and Australian (restaurants),” Stone told the Herald Sun.
“They are pretty broad. Is there more sweetness in the food? Probably. Is the bread different? Is coffee different? Yes, yes. There is a big difference in the way we eat.”
“But when you’re talking about great restaurants, I don’t know that the great restaurants of Melbourne have some through lines of what sets them apart from the great restaurants of California or New York.”
LA-based Stone often returns to Australia for work, sometimes with his American friends, who always have kind things to say about Melbourne’s food scene.
“Then they will talk about the style of our dining scene, how active it is and how impressive it is — it genuinely is — even the professionalism in our service. The industry does take it seriously in Australia and that’s something we should be really proud of,” he said.
Stone is one of several big local and international names part of the 10-day food and drink extravaganza, which starts Friday and runs until April 2.
London’s Jeremy Chan (Ikoyi), New Zealand’s Vaughan Mabee (Amisifield) and Japan’s Yoshihiro Imai (Monk) are flying in for the event, with Lake House Daylesford co-owner Alla Wolf-Tasker and Beatrix Bakes founder Natalie Paull headlining the flagship World’s Longest Lunch and Brunch respectively.
Free events also play a major role in this year’s festival, with an open-air bakery Baker’s Dozen setting up shop at Federation Square on April 1-2,
A star-studded sausage sizzle, Celebrity Sausage, will also take place on the same weekend and feature snags cooked by Dees star Christian Petracca, comedian Rhys Nicholson, radio star Chrissie Swan and chef Karen Martini.
Let the festivities begin
Welcome to the 31st Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.
For the first time in three years we are back with a full-strength program with more than 200 events happening across the city from celebrated international chefs cooking in some of Melbourne’s most prestigious dining rooms, to community events and a heap of free (and tasty) activity happening at Fed Square.
A special warm welcome to the international guests celebrating with us including Melbourne’s own Curtis Stone who joins us from LA, New York’s Danny Bowien, Lee Tiernan and Jeremy Chan jetting in from London and Kyoto’s Yoshihiro Imai.
But we’re also about celebrating local heroes.
We kick off today with our signature event, the World’s Longest Lunch presented by La Trobe Financial.
Culinary icon Alla Wolf-Tasker will be bringing a slice of Daylesford to the Treasury Gardens, preparing a menu for 1800 diners across half a kilometre of dining tables.
We pay tribute to Melbourne’s cafe culture with the World’s Longest Brunch tomorrow which is presented by JAZZ apples and headlined by cult baker Natalie Paull of Beatrix Bakes.
If you haven’t secured a ticket to the Festival yet, don’t worry!
Come and join us at Fed Square over the next ten days where The Convenient Store, presented by 7-Eleven, is popping up with a curated collection of bespoke eats and treats with some of Victoria’s finest talents (fried chicken by Hero’s Karen Martini! A Szechuan lamb sandwich by Lee Ho Fook’s Victor Liong! Slurpee cocktails with Nagambie Gin and Killick Silver rum!)
From 31 March, the Festival Bar opens with drinks by Caretaker’s Cottage and food by Tom Sarafian and on 1-2 April, we take things up a notch with our Baker’s Dozen, Celebrity Sausage and That’s Amore Cucina springing to life.
Go to melbournefoodandwine.com.au for details.
Thank you to our destination partner Visit Victoria, the state government and the City of Melbourne for their support.
The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival is an essential proof-point of the international standing of Victoria’s food and drink offer.
It’s a locus for visitation and storytelling driven by the quality, diversity, depth and richness of the state’s restaurants, cafes, bars, brewing, winemaking and distilling.
More than 70,000 people are expected to join us over this March program and our Regional Edition later in the year celebrating all that is great about Victoria’s world-class food and drink scene.
I look forward to raising a glass (or a sandwich) with you.
Anthea Loucas Bosha is the chief executive of Food + Drink Victoria.
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