Taste of Melbourne

Whew! What a weekend. We were unusually busy and cultured this weekend taking in a few different events in the City while enjoying the first hints of Spring. Friday night a delightful late night dinner at Hutong Dumpling Bar with our Melbourne friends, fellow expats, Lisa and hubby. I will emphasize how you have to grab a booking quick at this place, which remains one of the top rated restaurants in the city on Urbanspoon, and weekend dinner spots go fast. I was lucky to get a table at 930pm, a bit late for me so we first stopped at Riverland, a picturesque spot for a pint by the Yarra River. And then gobbled down our favorite dumplings - Xao Long Bao - and ate the most amazingly spicy Szechuan Beef, basically a bowl of beef, drowning in chili. I hear Dainty Sechuan in South Yarra is must try for spicy chinese. I'm game!

HuTong Dumpling Bar on Urbanspoon

Saturday we had a strict schedule: First Collingwood vs. Hawthorne at the MCG arena. Only my second time to witness true Australian sporting culture. It was an exciting game, but I just couldn't watch as Hawthorne only just beat Collingwood by three points in the last 10 minutes of the game. You can see by Richard's colors below, that we were rooting for the other guys. Boo.

Then we raced to the Exhibition Centre over in Carlton to catch the Taste of Melbourne event featuring Melbourne Restaurants, foodies, wine tasting, food & alcohol sellers. We opted to attend the Beer and Cheese Matching event, which was worth the $12. My favorite was the King Island Dairy Ash Brie and James Squire Porter Beer, though they are not meant to go together. I think we saw everything there was to see at the event and tried our best to sample every taste available. Though I will comment that the tasting plates at the restaurant stalls were way overpriced and not worth the money, the event is meant to promote those restaurants and not provide an opportunity for them to profit after we already pay a hefty entry fee. We stayed til the very end having sampled the following:

Stokehouse Restaurant, Wagyu Cigars with Artichoke tapenade and horseradish, Yum! (Thanks for the free ones at the end of the night)

Esposito, Oyster tempura - a paltry single oyster, pretty boring. 

I loved the Vanilla Pannacotta with Blood Orange Jelly from Melbourne Wine Room & Mr. Wolf, just the right balance of creaminess, mixture of textures, and tangy orange jelly and raspberries.

Wallaby tataki from Charcoal Lane was nothing to write home about. 

And I don't know why everyone was lining up to try the Palance Wagyu Burger. It was just a $12 mini-burger. Lame. 

There was lots more to try, but we moved onto booze. Australian Wine, Australian/Fiji Rum, Absinthe finally caught a taste of the very fancy Patron Tequila (extremely smooth, I want my own bottle - but maybe from the states where it will definitely be much cheaper), Sagatiba's rum in a tasty Caiparinha. Mix all that together and you end up with a hangover like the one I enjoyed the next day.

Sagatiba Capairinha

Vanilla Pannacotta  and blood orange jelly

Stokehouse bar's Espresso Martini

Mm, Melbourne Wine Room & Mr. Wolf stall