Tuesday, March 27, 2007

March 25, 2007: Melbourne Food and Wine Festival - Wicked Sunday

My most anticipated day of the Food Festival was Wicked Sunday, which promised rich sweets of all kinds as well as some coffee and cheese. We arrived in the early afternoon and River Terrace was filled with like-minded eaters. The first stand I saw, Babycakes, was already sold out of four of the six cupcake flavours listed on their menu. Even so, I was determined to walk a round of the stalls before committing to any purchases. Michael was less strict, quickly picking up a $1 latte.



Over the next 20 minutes, I learned that Wicked Sunday was more than "filled with like-minded eaters" - it was swarming with wicked rivals! The process of glimpsing the wares of each stall, let alone hustling in for a taste-test, was just too competitive for me. The Chocolate Precinct, located in the Atrium, was even rougher. Here sampling bowls were cleared to crumbs in mere seconds! I asserted myself well enough to buy small samples from two stalls and then exited the crush.


The first two truffles are from the Chocolate Lover (I tried their mousse at the Queen Vic night markets earlier in the year): I bought two coffee and one cointreau chocolate truffle for $5. The other two are a more novel $3 pack from Cacao, an apricot cognac truffle, and a passionfruit and peach caramel. (These photos were taken after the chocs spent a few hours in my bag, one coffee truffle "disappeared" along the way so they're not pictured at their peak.) All of the chocolates were delicious, of course: the first two truffles have a slightly rough and very pure dark chocolate taste, while the Cacao shapes were more sleek and sweet to taste. None are your everyday chocolate treat, mind!

Wicked Sunday didn't quite meet my (very high) hopes but that was probably because of my inability to fight for my share of the fancy food, and not a true reflection of the quality of extravagent treats on offer.

3 comments:

  1. Hehehe, what time did you go. I got there about 12:30pm and the crush wasn't too bad. There were still lots of samples left at the chocolate stands in the atrium, and the whole range of babycakes were there still. There was still a crush as some stalls, such as the cheese stall strangely, probably because they were giving out samples so slowly, and the Turkish bread stall.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I went to one a couple of years ago - and yes, the crush was unbearable. Surely foodies don't become rabid ferals at the sight of free chocolate?!?

    BTW - love the eagle eye photo from above. It rocks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanh7580, I must have got there an hour or two after you I think. Next year I'll plan ahead and go early! Chocolate as a late breakfast, mmmm mmmm.

    Thanks, Mellie. Chocolate addict as I am, it clearly didn't send me feral enough!! Maybe I still had the previous day's cold chocolate milk coursing through my veins. :-) It was more cocoa than milk, I swear!

    ReplyDelete