Melbourne Food and Wine Fest 2018

From the smug to the downright gifted, Melburnians are passionate purveyors of flavours, experimental eat-innovators and culinary trailblazers. And when it comes to sipping, nomming and carousing, the event at the top of the food chain is the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

What started as a modest 12-event mini-festival has grown into a state-wide celebration of over 300 food and booze-themed parties, markets, tastings, master classes, lunches, dinners, second breakfasts and inbetweeners.

Headlined by award-winning chefs and expert winemakers, Melbourne Food and Wine Fest is the Melbourne food equivalent of Coachella. The city’s many eateries, laneways, basements and rooftops are the stages, and instead of a sideways peace sign and floral crown selfies, there are mouth-watering flat lay food snaps.

From the button-popping Melbourne Food and Wine Fest line-up, we’ve selected a few events that tickle our fancy, and that might tickle yours as well.

Tales of Liquid Friendship

Sold as “bold, boozy and brash – an afternoon you hope to remember”, A Promise of Barmen: Tales of Liquid Friendship is a cocktailing and storytelling barfly adventure by Finn Vedelsby and Tim Wastell.

One a local cocktail champ and the other a former Australian Bar Manager of the Year, the two are great mates and have many a debaucherous tale to tell and concoction to taste.

The Best Butter Chicken Pop Up 

Chances are, this will leave your local high and dry and be the best butter chicken you’ve ever tried. Internationally acclaimed Indian Chef, Saransh Goila, is famous for his Mombai BC.

And to top it off, Greek gods mixologists, Nikos Bakoulis and Vasilis Kyritsis from The Clumsies – ranked number six on The World’s 50 Best Bars 2017 – will be pouring cocktails.

An Ethiopian Banquet

Thick meaty stews, delicious vegetarian side dishes and sourdough flatbreads from the horn of Africa. In this exquisite feast served up at Konjo Café, the food is as important as the procedure – you eat with your hands and finish with a coffee ceremony.

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival will take place from the 16-25 March in various locations around the city.

words by niall roeder