Movida

1 Hosier Lane, Melbourne
Phone 03 9663 3038

Friday. 8.30pm. EG and I were already half tanked after boozing it up at Hell's Kitchen following a particularly hard week at work for the both of us. By this stage I had sunk four pints of Coopers and was well on my way to feeling oh-so-good, more so because I had a dinner reservation with friends at Movida, which unbelievably, I had never been to before.

I anticipated my first Movida experience to be a little different to how it actually played out. But I guess the fact that I was a little drunk helped me (us) deal with what you are about to read. But I'll get to that in a tick.

Movida was not at all how I imagined. I thought it would be a little more Spanish; more dark wood, more cramped, more intimate. What I found was a rather arty industrial space - high ceilings, white plaster, tiled floor, bronze, a bit of wood, subdued lighting and a wicked bar-to-roof wine rack. It did feel a tad aloof though.

The rather extensive menu had been uhmmed and aahed over, but by this merry stage I was having a hard time focusing on the words (many of which were in espanol). Alas I knew they did a degustation/set menu, which is a convenient way of handing over the ordering reins. We all concurred this would be a great way to proceed ;-)

Whilst we waited for our first dish to arrive, it gave me the opportunity to spy on the surrounds. On a table just to the left of us were what some would term "the dining dead", a rather glum looking couple who didn't say a word to each other all night. I was transfixed. They ate their meal in complete silence. This would be in stark contrast to the couple who would next fill their seat (keep reading).

The first round of dishes arrived, starting on the left with the Ortiz, a Cantabrian artisan anchovy on a crispy thin crouton with a quenelle of smoked tomato sorbet. I am SO bummed I didn't get a better photo of this, as it really was the prettiest dish. The crouton was as long as your finger, and running the length was a sexy plump fillet of anchovy. I picked it up and bit halfway, getting a mouthful of crunchy fried bread, salty to the extreme anchovy, and the most stunning smoked tomato sorbet, which is up there with the essence of tomato at VDM. Friggin awesome.

Next up was the vieira y espuma, an oven baked half shell scallop, dressed in a herby oil and topped with potato foam. The menu actually stated this came with jamon, but it wasn't in the dish that came to us. But we didn't miss it at all, cause dang, this had us all aaahing again. The potato foam was surprisingly potatoey - I don't quite know how they captured the soul of the spud. It was partnered superbly.

Little deep fried croqueta, flavoured with smoked eel and horseradish surprised us with their very salty smoky flavour. Ms.P actually thought they were a little too salty and smoky, and perhaps it would have been helped with something creamy or tart to dip them into.

Okay, this is one dish I was quite surprised to find - the famed jamon iberico. Served on a lukewarm stone dish with home made grissini, the intramuscular fat had started to melt ever so slightly, making for a sumptuously smooth mouth feel. It was savoury and salty and deliciously meaty. The grissini too were wonderful, and tasted of olive oil.

The caball ahumado, or smoked Spanish mackerel with pine nut gazpacho sorbet was rocking. It was very salty (...are you getting the gist), but the fish was divinely unctuous. What surprised me was how well the pinenuts partnered with the smoke flavour - a real culinary marriage. The sorbet acted to counteract the salt somewhat, venturing down the creamy tangent. I always thought gazpacho was a cold tomato and bread soup, but originally it was a just a cold bread soup made of stale bread, garlic, olive oil, salt and vinegar. No tomato. Hence the tomatoless pine nut gazpacho sorbet.

At this point our friends, the dining dead, had vacated their table. The next peeps to fill their seats were a very fashionable thirty-something couple. They were rather full of themselves, making much ado about the place, ordering and drinking MUCH of the expensive wine, being very demanding of the staff etc. Hmm...I wonder where this will lead?

Okay - now for the devestator. Are you sitting down? This is cecina, voted "dish of the year" by The Age Good Food Guide 2007. It is air cured wagyu beef thinly sliced with a truffle foam and poached egg.

This is what cecina looks like when you enthusiastically stab it with your fork. OMG. I cannot begin to tell you how wonderfully amazing this dish is. Okay, it is salty, but cripes, the air cured wagyu is so voluptuously rich and savoury, the perfectly poached egg yolk coating it like thick cream, giving a mouth feel that is deliciously naughty. And if that wasn't naughty enough, a heady truffle foam grabs both the wagyu and the yolk by the hand it leads it on a merry little dance to your tastebuds. Mr.Camorra needs to be spanked for this one.

And yes, there is still more! Perfectly cooked frenched lamb cutlets, pink on the inside and nicely charred on the outside. Topped with a salsa verde (well, it wasn't a typical salsa verde, but it was a sauce and it was green, so heh!), it was amazingly vinegary and vibrantly green. I couldn't quite figure out the flavours in this one (by this stage I had a couple more cervesas under the belt), but it was great.

To go with our lamb cutlets was the espinacas con garbanzos, or sauteed spinach with chickpeas and spices. I have a real soft spot for chickpeas, and found this dish to be rustically satisfying. The gravy was heady with cumin, and I guess shows the wonderful Moorish influence on Spanish cuisine.

These little bruschettta-like bites are not on the regular menu, so I don't have a nice swanky Spanish name for them. Basically they were an olive oil infused crostata topped with a herby/oniony/tomatoey salsa and a strip of jamon. They were good, but interestingly they arrived more towards the end of the meal than the start.

Finally (...yes, we got there) was a lip-smackinly salty loin of wild boar, sitting on a salty (!!!!) silverbeet and raisin stew. By this stage I was really quite over the excessive use of salt in the food, it really was WAY too much. It didn't stop me eating the boar, cause it was bloody fantastic and a shame to waste. But I was somewhat put off by the extreme sodium overload. For one thing, it just made me want to keep drinking beer *light goes on* ;-)

Dessert doesn't come with the $48 degustation, but how can one not try the churros? Sadly, this was one of the very reasons I wanted to come to Movida - for the damn churros! So were they as good as I imagined? Well, the churros were good - nice and donutty and covered in cinnamon sugar. But the rich drinking chocolate served alongside was a little, er, mysterious. I was thinking it would be pure melted chocolate, when in fact it was more like a dark chocolate floury custard. I dunno. The "chocolate" tasted watery almost - it wasn't creamy or milky at all. Hmm...perhaps I don't know what I'm talking about, but it just didn't really do it for me.

The fashionable dining couple by this stage were looking a little worse for wear. The lass had her head on the table, and her partner was patting her back, trying to rouse her to leave. My glance kept moving from them, back to my friends, back to the waiter pouring our drinks, back to my friends, back to the fashionable couple stumbling (literally) towards the front door, back to my friends, back to their table and a big pile of vomit on the ground, back to my friends.....WHAT THE?!? This chick had vomited all over floor!!!!!

We all gasped simultaneously and then burst out laughing. I guess having had a few ourselves, this otherwise icky situation turned out to be one that proved extremely amusing.

Between guffaws, we managed to wave STOP to the waiter when he was almost about to walk into the nastiness. He dropped the f-bomb (as I'm sure I would do in a similar situation), grabbed a napkin off the table and placed it delicately onto the pile, and then scurried away for some help. He returned with the maitre'd, who shook his head in disgust confessing that the fashionable couple didn't even have a booking, and had "name dropped" to get in to the place. I asked who's name they dropped (I wanted the goss!!), but unfortunately he was not very forthcoming ;-)

They offered to move us to the bar, but we decided at this point to call it a night. How could you top that?