The food at the Melbourne Italian Festival at Federation Square last weekend was a lil’ unimpressive. There were only a handful stalls – one selling gnocchi napoli for $10 a plate (expensive?!). Another stall sold rolls with salami and cheese or porchetta, and one was roasting fresh chestnuts.
I was perplexed. Where were all the food stalls? Were the places who attended previous festivals in Lygon Street boycotting for the change in venue?
The one other food stall that made an appearance was ChoriOz. Being more Argentinian than Italian, ChoriOz are a regular at farmers markets and festivals. The meat comes from their own stud called Monte Allegro in Nar Nar Goon.
I was impressed with their attempt to do an Italian style beef sausage, shaped in a spiral (or “snail” as they called it) and served with BBQ’d leeks and parsley chimichurri on a sour dough roll. It was damn tasty.
But where were all the big fat juicy pork continental salsiccia? And the cannoli?
You can still get those sausages in Mareeba at Angelina’s Deli and at the rodeo/Mareeba show which is on in july. And they do taste really good.
The festival sounded disappointing, considering all the wonderful Italian food out there!
Sorry to hear the festival was a bit meh… you’d think now they made that new fancy ‘piazza’ on Lygon just south of Casa del Gelato that it’d be the perfect venue for the stalls!
That salsiccia in a roll looked tasty though..
Perhaps it was just bad planning this year. The Polish festival held at the same venue had tons of great food.
Hey mountain – uh huh, you can’t beat a good Italian snag.
Hi cherrie pie – I really was confused. The Italian contingent in Melbourne are always offer such a strong presence.
G’day mutemonkey – Yes, the piazza would have been the perfect venue for it. I don’t know why it wasn’t held there?!? And the salsiccia was really tasty
Hi neil – I agree. Practically every other festival I have been to at Fed Sq has really rocked, food wise. Which just made me wonder whether something else was afoot, politically.
I went in with two friends, ready for a day out of tasting and maybe a fabulous lunch at the end. We couldn’t believe how tiny the ‘festival’ was – tres disappointing. We headed homewards and ended up at the Peacock in Northcote instead