Good Food and Wine Show 2010

I’m well beyond the age of wanting stuff for my birthday, so this year, I wanted go to the Good Food and Wine Show at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre last weekend.  And since it was my birthday, we splashed out and got tickets to a session at the Reidel Decanter Bar.  This was my first ever food-related convention (and practically my first non-anime or geek convention), so I probably over-prepared myself by bringing two cameras, and both backup batteries and memory cards.

And yes, I totally over-prepared for it.  It’s not that there wasn’t good opportunities to take pictures, but rather that I was having far too much fun tasting and talking to people that I just didn’t care to interrupt myself by taking photos.  I kind of did assume that anyone carrying a dSLR who wasn’t obviously a GFWS staffer was a food blogger, and yet, I haven’t seen anyone’s writeups about it.  Maybe I’m just impatient?

The photo above was almost our entire haul – minus all the miscellaneous bits of paper or single-serve samples that we got in showbags.  The Doctor was completely invaluable as a willing packhorse, though he did enjoy himself being a bit of a snob at the Coffee Experience exhibit – and with good reason to, since his father roasted coffee beans for two years.  Hopefully he didn’t actually see the $135 coffee tampers, otherwise I might have to spend a bit more on his next Christmas present!  We were a little surprised that one of the coffee bean vendors (Green Bean coffee) stated that roasted coffee beans must rest for five days after roasting to “develop their flavour fully”.  Coffee beans are at their peak immediately after roasting, and deteriorates with exposure to air and light – much like any other spice.  This was probably our only case of “smile-and-nod” at a vendor who obviously didn’t know what they were talking about.

Unfortunately, the lighting at home went rather wacky (or maybe it was the post-con wine), so my detail haul photos didn’t turn out very well.  However, I’m quite happy with getting:

• Dutch process cocoa and bourbon vanilla extract from Equagold Vanilla
• Satay sauce (Numbat Nibble) and sweet chilli sauce (Todd River Dust) from the Chilli Factory
• Baileys Coffee flavour (if only because they’re discontinuing all the other flavoured Baileys)
• Reidel O series stemless wine glasses (freebie from Decanter Bar session)
• Kizakura Yamahai sake, one of the sake breweries that we visited in Japan

We also indulged in the lunches at the GFWS restaurant – I had the chill mussels on rice with Asian herbs (basil, coriander and parsley), with a glass of Hardys Oomoo Grenache Shiraz Mourverde.  This came from Shaun Bowles, executive chef at the Melbourne Convention Centre.  This looked like it might not be enough, but I think I got more than 10 mussels!  They just kept piling them on!  The chilli seemed to come from an oil base, since there were no chunks or slices of it in the finished dish.  I would probably have liked more rice, but… well, I’m Asian.

The Doctor had pecorino, cracked pepper and ricotta tortellini with salsa verde from Pete Evans, owner-chef of the Hugo’s group of restaurants (warning, site is one of the most annoying Flash websites I’ve ever seen, but at least it doesn’t have auto-starting music). The bite I had was very good, almost mild, but luckily the Doctor told me to hold it in my mouth and let the olive oil warm up.  The flavour absolutely bloomed, and you could really taste the difference between the cheeses and the almost-fluffy texture of the fresh pasta.  $24 for each dish, plus the glass of wine actually made this more than a fair price.

The meals offered at GFWS were basically an inoffensive balance – two red meats, one white meat, one vegetarian and one pescetarian.  Looking at what other people got, I’m quite confident that we got the tastier meals.  We passed on dessert, since there were so many other vendors to buy from, and we also still had the Penfolds tasting to get through.

Speaking of which!

To save me typing it out, here is the wine list.  They didn’t reveal the RRP of the wines until after we had finished the tastings, but unsurprisingly, my favourites were the Pinot Noir (4th) and Shiraz (6th).  I also tried writing tasting notes for the first time, but they mostly went along the lines of what foods I thought they would pair best with.  Again, not a big surprise that salmon kept appearing on my notes…

One of the funnier stories from GFWS, and also a cautionary tale for sommeliers, is to never tell people that you’re on your last tasting session for the day.  And to not turn your back when a bunch of winos are still seated at the table, with open bottles of wine in front of them.  Because an ambitious little person (not me, I swear!) will snitch a $170 bottle of wine and start pouring for everyone.  I will probably never see that woman again, but I’m sure she made quite a few instant best friends when she did that.

And on that note, I’ll finish off with our drinks haul.  From left to right:

• Dance with the Devil 2009 Shiraz Tempranillo blend (Margaret River) – freebie from Decanter Bar session
• Dance with the Devil 2009 Sauvignon Blanc (Margaret River) – freebie from Decanter Bar session
• Angostura LLB – showbag freebie
• Bellarine Estate 2009 Pinot Noir
• Gosling Creek 2008 Rosé (Gippsland)
• Reidel stemless wineglass
• Kizakura Yamahai sake
• Baileys Coffee flavour

All in all, I had a wonderful time at GFWS 2010.  Can’t wait for the next big food event!