Can't get a table at MoVida? Never mind, just head Next Door. By John Lethlean
Let me tell you about a perfect day. Because it revolves around Flinders Street and what we might now call the MoVida precinct, the point of this article. And if days this great happened too often, they just wouldn't be, well, perfect, would they? Merely near-perfect. Close, but no filthy tobacco-leaf thing.
So, technically, I think you'd call this splendid outing a half-day, since it started at the MCG about 2.15pm watching a team whose four-point games are alarmingly rare. This was a nugget. Me, a friend and various kids and friends of kids. We sang. We waved flags. We grinned. And then, clutching a ticket to see Paul Weller at the Forum, I walked - hoarse and happy - from the Ground to MoVida Next Door to kill some time in splendid post-match solitude with a magazine, a Spanish beer and nibbles: olives, golden cheesy croquetas, quail breast with chicken liver parfait cooked a la plancha and a cold Alhambra.
Just saying it makes you feel better.
By 5.30pm on this Saturday evening, it was full. MoVida Next Door had been open only a couple of weeks (not that the interior looks anything other than well-used and better loved). And by 6.30pm, it was time for early dinner, next door. Not at MoVida Next Door, but the mothership, with fellow concertgoers. People just kept spilling into the place, clutching Weller tickets and looking for a drink. I left Melbourne's only real tapas bar with a heavy heart.
MoVida and Movida Next Door are obviously the spawn of the same parents - timber, metal, glass, sherry - but that corner location and more assertively "bar" identity make Next Door a better place, I think. I kept wondering why I hadn't just stayed there; some of MoVida's best personnel are running the kitchen and bar, and it shows.
Nevertheless, in the grown-up restaurant, we ate, we drank red wine, we had a marvellous time, before walking a full 75 metres to the Forum to sway and tap our feet like most of Weller's aged audience. We drank a few more beers. That's entertainment.
And then ... back to MoVida Next Door for a post-concert bottle
of wine. I slept well. It was a long and precious day. Or half-day.
A hoot.
A great introduction to an even greater little bar.
When the Spanish say "bar", they mean a place for sherry, a glass of wine and tapas - morsels. MND speaks to the Spanish version. It clearly speaks to a lot of Melburnians too, people who recognise the kernel of authenticity at the heart of the place.
Live marron crawling disoriented around the seafood display. Split them, rub them in a lemony garlic and parsley paste, throw them on the plancha (flat grill) with salt. So this is what Paul Hogan was talking about?
Outstanding (if expensive) calamari cooked similarly for about 10 seconds and served with squid ink and a delicious green sauce.
A kind of flat bread - but light, like pastry - smothered with a paste of salt cod, topped with char-grilled, lightly pickled artichoke halves. The lady next to me ventures that the artichokes overpower the fish ... it's that kind of place, MoVida Next Door. I don't agree, but she's charming, so I nod. And more of that quail, moistened with liver mousse and served with a cornmeal crumb: glam tapas.
The lady next door says she's just back from Spain and Portugal and this food is better than 90 per cent of what she encountered. I have to agree. Eating great food in Spain requires patience and research; the myth of a great tapas bar on every corner is just that.
But MoVida Next Door is a great tapas bar on a corner. The vibe is real, the staff friendly, the food a tribute to the curiosity, painstaking research and uncompromising attitude to produce of chef Frank Camorra. Perfect? Very nearly.
MoVida Next Door
164 Flinders Street, city, phone 9663 3038
Licensed
AE DC MC V
Open Tues-Sat 5pm-late
tapas $3-$8
raciones $9-$35
desserts $10-$12
