When the Boy and I heard that the Taste of Melbourne would be making it’s rounds again this year, we got super excited and bought tickets really early on… and receiving 30 crowns (the denominations used for food in the event/festival) for 5 dollars less…

For the uninitiated, $1 = 1 crown and you can only use crowns to purchase food/drinks/items in there (although I did hear a lady ask the Nando’s seller, “Do you take cash?” To which he responded, “Yes and I also take tips!”)

Thinking that we would be assayed once again with the BIG names and BIG guns in the food scene as last year’s Taste of Melbourne, we were really excited to see this year’s line up of participating restaurants and chefs!

On twitter, a whole bunch of excitement and high expectation was generated… a bunch of foodies and food bloggers decided to have a Tweetup courtesy of Nuffnang Australia and arranged by fellow blogger Penny from Jeroxie!

Unfortunately I was bitten by the shy bug and only said a passing “hello” to the gang before I quickly dispersed into the crowd! What had gotten into me? Hell knows…

It wasn’t as crowded as last year, and I think this was because there was no Gary Mehigan or George Colambaris pulling Masterchef fans in… even so, there was still quite a few (I lie, there were heaps) of people roaming the Royal Exhibition Building

First pit stop, was Stokehouse… and at Stokehouse we returned again and again…

Both Stokehouse Restaurant and Bar were around and we delved straight into the menu

There were only 2 major highlights from the event for me… One was Stokehouse and the other was Embrasse…

The first course we sampled was the Seared Atlantic scallops served with lardo, breadcrumbs and a gazpacho dressing (12 crowns)

The scallops were amazingly cooked and that lardo… oh my.. that lardo…

The Boy had the Wagyu beef cigars with artichoke tapenade and horseradish (12 crowns) which he said was nice… hmmm

We took a walk and ate many other things (will be featured in Parts II and III)

And came back to sample the amazing Bombe (Alaska) which a few fellow people kept saying was amazing!

And amazing it was!

The Bombe – strawberry sortbet, white choclate parfait and toasted meringue (10 crowns) was amazingly sweet and delicious

However, after all that sweetness, I had to wash it down with something…

This was a drink that I’d pay good money for and on our second day (Sunday), it was discounted!

Everywhere we went, we saw remnants of this delicious Espresso Martini

Double Espresso, Kettle One, Remy Brandy and Kahlua (12 crowns and Happy Hour price for 10 crowns)

It was an instant “Wake UP!” for me and absolutely deliciously coffee-ish!

We’re definitely going to make a booking at Stokehouse as both their service and food at this very busy event was amazing!

Stay tuned to more posts coming soon…

In the meantime, read more from these other exciting bloggers =) I”ll put more up if I can keep up!

Jeroxie
Mel: HOT OR NOT
Iron Chef Shellie
Kitty’s Drawings
Off the Spork
The Very Very Hungry Caterpillar