Living in Melbourne means that I can jump on my motorbike and within an hour or so, I can cruise around the Mornington Peninsula for the best chocolates in Australia, stop at Foxeys Hangout for lunch, eat locally produced beef and veggies while sipping on wine made from the grapes that are grown just outside the restaurant windows. Or I can pop into Red Hill Brewery for a beer matched to some Red Hill Cheese.
Head up to Bright in north-east Victoria and you can spend the day picking your own apples, hazelnuts and olives and afterwards pop into Milawa free-range chooks and get a chicken so you can whip up a chicken casserole at home. Or just go to Simone’s Restaurant to get excellent home-style Italian food.
On your journey around Victoria, you might stop at the Yarra Valley, Healesville and dine at Giant Steps Winery. They make their own bread, wine and roast their own coffee (they also recently installed a brewery). You could go to the Mont De Lancey food markets and pick up some great locally made chutneys, jams, sausages, free-range organic pork and then relax at Chris Helleren’s restaurant and enjoy her rabbit fricassee.
And there is more on offer. There is the Bellarine Peninsula with its mussel and abalone farm, hydroponic tomatoes, strawberries, sheep you don’t have to shear, fresh seafood, juicy blueberries, fabulous goat’s cheese, bread baked in an original 150-year-old oven and of course, Bellarine Estate wines and beers.
If you still have petrol in your tank, then head out to Gippsland; the scenery is magical and the produce even better. Get yourself out on the Gippsland Lakes and try your hand at either catching some eel or purchasing smoked eel from Bryn and Peter at East Coast Eels. Australia’s largest producer of asparagus is here along with some of the best organic lamb grown anywhere in the world! As for the bountiful array of fresh fish coming in, well what can I say? I was going to go out on John’s fishing boat, duly arrived at the wharf at 4.30 am ready to sail, got on the boat and it promptly broke down. It was a rather cold four hours waiting for the other boats to come in but I made up for it by using some of the fresh fish off the boat to cook up a bouillabaisse on the wharf for all the fishermen.
Yep, get a map of Victoria and take a magical food tour around this great state.
List of Recipes