Victoria Street Lunar New Year Festival 2009

There's a new year coming - Chinese/Lunar New Year! Celebrations have started around Melbourne to ring in the Year of the Ox, which officially starts on 26 January (which also happens to be Australia Day this year). There were festivities in Footscray the other weekend that I missed, but which Towser from Spot4Nosh has blogged about. And yesterday, there was a festival in Victoria Street, Richmond.

Victoria Street was closed to traffic between Hoodle and Church Streets, and along its length were food stalls, rides, random knick knack sellers, performances, and information stands. Food wise, it was Vietnamese, and there was lots of deep fried stuff, grilled food, and skewered items, with most stalls offering similar things.




Top left: Beef in betel leaves being grilled.
Top right: Corn on the cob!
Bottom left: Rice cakes (?) being cooked.
Bottom right: Bananas in sticky rice. I haven't tried these yet, and got too full for one! It'll have to go on my "to eat" list next time.




Top left: Chive cakes.
Top right: Skewers, skewers, skewers!
Bottom left: More skewers!
Bottom right: Sugar cane. Bro and I shared a cup of sugar cane juice, but we wanted straight sugar cane juice like we'd had in Hong Kong. The juice was mixed with something citrusy (cumquats?) and just wasn't the same.




Top left: Dried squid for sale.
Top right: Random pork sausage on a stick.
Bottom left: Deep fried Mung bean cake thing topped with a prawn.
Bottom right: Inside you could see the mung beans. It was soft and fairly flavourless.




Top left: Deep fried prawns on a stick.
Top right: Beef in betel leaves. My favourite item of the day. I could've eaten many of these sticks! Fortunately I restricted myself to one.
Bottom right: Pork jerky in different flavours. I didn't buy any (I'm not sure my teeth could handle it yet) but I do like this jerky far more than is healthy.
Bottom right: Egg rice cake with a sweetish, fish saucey, vinegary sauce that I poured over. The rice cakes themselves didn't have much flavour, although Bro said that they had a fragrance that put him off (he thought almond, I thought perhaps coconut). And BOY, you should've seen how much oil some the vendors were using to cook these.

Yesterday turned out warmer than I was expecting, and the sun and heat meant we soon wilted. Plus the oiliness and deep fried factor of most foods, also meant that it wasn't long before we couldn't face eating yet another unhealthy item (unusual for Bro and I, but there you have it). At least we have another year to recover!

Disclosure: I didn't take as many photos as I wanted to. However, we went to the Vic Street Lunar New Year Festival a couple of years ago (before I started blogging) so I have supplemented this post with some of those photos. Sneaky!

Montezuma's

A couple of weeks ago, through the power of the internets, a high school friend of Alastair's got in contact. Alastair hadn't seen or spoken to this person for over ten years, but when we found out he was visiting Melbourne, we caught up with him over dinner.

He picked Montezumas on Bridge Road so we headed there for some probably not very authentic Mexican food.

After looking at the menu, I opted for something I'd never eaten before - the Mole Pablano ($18.95). The menu said that it was a centuries old chicken dish which was invented by nuns of Puebla for the Bishop's visit. It was served with a spicy-ish sauce that contained 32 herbs and spices, rice, and coconut covered banana and pineapple.

When it arrived the fruit had me stumped. I wasn't sure about how to eat it – was I supposed to eat the banana and pineapple with the chicken? Should I keep the fruit separate and eat it after finishing the savoury stuff? Was it wrong for me to be confused? Was it obvious? Do I have enough questions in this paragraph? I don't think so? Back to the food - I tried some of the chicken with the banana and pineapple, but ended up leaving the fruit behind and eating it afterwards. I have no idea what a good mole pablano should taste like, but I enjoyed it. The meat was tender, and the sauce was rich and smooth, with a hint of heat.



Alastair had the Gringo ($19.95) a platter with a beef enchilada, beef burrito and rice. It's a bit hard to tell from this photo, but it was a massive serve.



Bro had one of the combination platters ($17.95), which came with chilli con carne, chicken taco, chicken and sour cream enchilada and rice.

Montezuma's was fairly cheap and cheerful. It was an unassuming place, with large serves, and a casual atmosphere - good for a low key catch up. It was just a shame it was a school night, it would've been fun to kick back with beer or margaritas!


Montezuma's
464 Bridge Road, Richmond
Tel: 03 9429 7133