Kate reviews: Movida Menu del Dia — ‘a generous box of Iberian delights’

MOVIDA MENU DEL DIA – Restaurant Boxes
order via: alimentaria.com.au

Let’s be honest, there are TWO reasons I want to talk about the Movida “Menu del Dia” boxes.

One – they’re brilliant. A generous box of Iberian delights to last you a weekend.

Two – Stephen Quartermain ordered one on my recommendation, misread the instructions, and ate the entire thing in one day. That will be far more amusing when you learn what one of these boxes may contain.

Stephen Quartermain misread the instructions and ate all of this in ONE day. 😲

Kate’s full review of Movida’s Menu del Dia boxes — https://t.co/v2cNtBdMQL pic.twitter.com/u53cpEHcFY

— 3AW Breakfast (@RossAndRussel) August 27, 2020

So, Frank Camorra and his team came up with the Menu del Dia idea in Lockdown One. They took over the larger of their venues, Movida Aqui, and put together hampers designed to feed a couple, generously, over a weekend. We’re talking a couple of breakfasts, luches and dinner, with a few snacks – no real cooking required, just some re-heating, plating, and devouring. A word of warning, you must be prepared to commit eating for an entire weekend. You’ll be busy.

Come Lockdown Two and the team at Movida Aqui are now busy filling orders for their new enterprise on the online Providoor platform, but over at the original Movida in Hosier Lane, the box boys are back in biz – which also means they have work for more staff than before.

So, to order one of these, you need to head to Movida’s “Alimentaria” website, their business that imports fine Spanish products for the restaurants, and to sell to the rest of us. Every Monday, the new menu for the Menu del Dia weekly box is published, you can order one for Friday or Saturday delivery, and the staff will drop them off within 20km of the CBD.

So what will you get? Well, it depends. Certainly you’ll get a menu card, with very simple heating instructions on the back. There’ll always be a beautiful house-baked sourdough loaf, which you can use across all meals. Then a box full of goodies that you can mix and match as you choose, you may need some simple veg sides for a couple of the dinners, but other than that, you should be set.

Our breakfasts – to go with the bread, there was half a dozen free range eggs; a tin of Spanish Cuca sardines in escabeche; a tub of whipped anchovy; a tremendous smoked Ocean Trout, Crème Fraiche & dill spread with home-made English muffins; and a huge house-made pork, fennel and apple sausage roll.

There were so many breakfast options, the sausage roll was held over for lunch. I’m not kidding, this was probably the best sausage roll I’ve eaten. Fresh pork belly and shoulder mince from Donati’s butcher in Carlton. Onion, fennel, and apple cooked down slowly, mixed with the meal, eggs, milk and a Piemento Espelette (a special Basque spice). It comes with a homemade tomato sauce, and I am still dreaming of both.

So what else is on offer for lunches on this Spanish-themed weekend? We had the baked Pumpkin with Manchego cheese & breadcrumbs with a garlicky baby gem lettuce salad one day, and the cold cut Smoked Lamb with parsley salad alongside the famous sausage roll the next. “Parsley salad” was under-selling it a bit, it was a flavour-packed assortment of piquillo peppers, hazelnuts, pickled onion, mint, parsley, cracked wheat and whipped anchovy. Glorious.

There were three dinner options in the box. On the first night, we paired the Sher Wagyu Estofado (beef stew) with the Milawa spatchcock with cabbage. The Wagyu has been slow-cooked overnight at 85 degrees with saffron, peppers potatoes and Spanish Fino Sherry. It’s a tender, rustic dish.

The Milawa spatchcock is brined and then steamed at 65 degrees. You’ll finish it at home in the oven, atop cabbage that has been mixed with mustard seeds, apples and softened down with ‘funky’ Basque Cider.

Night two we opted for the stupendous fish pie. The Movida guys have sourced beautiful fresh trout, salmon, rockling and barramundi from the team at Red Coral Seafoods. It’s cooked with a fish stock veloute, dill and tarragon, and topped with an insanely buttery mashed potato. We steamed up some broccoli and cauliflower to go with this one as a side.

We made the dessert last over two nights, a light, chocolatey Babka, warm from the oven.

If you don’t live within 20kms of the city, you still can enjoy some brilliant Movida dishes a la carte via the Providoor platform. And if you enjoy any of the dishes, you can find some of the imported ingredients for sale separately on the Alimentaria site, and have a crack at cooking them yourself at home!

That box full of food to cover two days will set you back $165, including delivery.

Now let’s go back to the second reason I wanted to tell Ross and Russel about this beautiful, big box of food. Have a look back over the inclusions, and now consider that Stephen Quartermain didn’t quite read the instructions and demolished the entire menu in ONE DAY. He is a machine, and while I spent a good part of my weekend just enjoying Movida’s Menu del Dia, I was also often laughing at the fact that one human being could consume it all in a twenty-four hour period. We still had food left on the Monday.

NOMINATIONS FROM LISTENERS – RESTAURANT BOXES  

Stanley Street Kitchen Lockdown Care Packs – stanleystkitchen.com.au

The team behind Fonda Mexican launched Stanley St Kitchen during the first round of lockdown to keep their brilliant kitchen team busy and to make it easy for the rest of us to stock our fridges with fresh heat-at-home meals. They’ve also got a great range of lockdown care packs you can send to family and friends who might just need a pick-me-up. while in isolation.

Salt Kitchen Charcuterie Pork Farm to Plate boxes – porkfarmtoplate.com   

You might have heard me proclaim before that Salt Kitchen are my absolute favourite charcuterie producers in this country. Well, they’ve teamed up with their pork supplier Western Plains to deliver fresh pork and charcuterie to the doorstep of customers across Victoria. Porkfarmtoplate.com is an online store where you can order individual cuts of pork, charcuterie products and value packs designed for families of all shapes and sizes, and look our for their Father’s Day box!

Bellota Wine Bar –  bellota.com.au

As well as doing hot takeaway, and heat and eat meals, Bellota and chef Nicky Reimer have branched out into fabulous meal boxes. Each week, there’s a classic meal box that’ll do a three course meal for two, or dishes to share out over the weekend; and usually a themed box for a family – could be game meats, or this week’s “old school favourites”. They are not only delivering locally, but also have weekly runs to the Surf Coast, Mornington Peninsula, and Macedon Ranges.

Blakes Feast – blakesfeast.com.au

Renowned Melbourne catering firm Blake’s Feast have launched “Blakeaway” in order to feed the hoardes. You can put together your own boxes, or order hampers complete with wine. Check out their Father’s Day packages; and what look like some seriously tasty curries (lamb shank, peanut & eggplant curry, yum!)