Melbourne Food & Wine Winter Edition

The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival has announced its Winter Edition. The program will run for 10 days, from August 20-29. It will feature 150 events, ranging from a family-friendly pasta feast and an epic showcase of the power of hot chips to a rock ’n’ roll celebration of plant-based eating. There will also be a series to showcase our top culinary talent.

As part of its push to be more accessible, the Winter Edition has a new home at Queen Victoria Market. The market will host a range of events, workshops and demonstrations, both ticketed and free. Among the free events are The Remixed Grill – a day of fire-fuelled eating and drinking with 10 leading chefs, cool-climate wines and campfire stories – as well as The Big Spaghetti, a family-friendly celebration of Italy’s favourite food, and The Convenient Store, a retail pop-up like no other.

200,000 hot chips

The Signature Chef Series is a festival highlight, bringing together some of Australia’s most talented chefs. Local culinary stars such as Paul Carmichael, Brent Savage and mother and daughter team Farida and Durkhanai Ayubi of Adelaide’s celebrated Afghan eatery Parwana will collaborate with and cook at some of Melbourne’s favourite eateries.

“We’re thrilled to be bringing our core Melbourne Food & Wine Festival programming to winter, and our festival home to Queen Victoria Market,” says Anthea Loucas Bosha, CEO of Food + Drink Victoria, the parent company behind the festival. “Across Melbourne, we’ll be serving more than 1500 martinis, 8000 bowls of pasta and 200,000 hot chips.”

A world of flavours

Festival Creative Director Pat Nourse says the Winter Edition is about exploring how much fun you can have at the table. It will also highlight the power of hospitality to transport you.

“Take a trip to Barbados with Paul Carmichael’s fried fish sandwiches and rum punch, boil up some prawns New Orleans-style at Le Bon Ton, ski the Italian Alps with Marameo, join a Georgian polyphonic choir at Gray & Gray, or get your taste of Sicily, Tokyo, Oaxaca, Corsica, Bangkok, Kabul or Athens at restaurants and cafes, parties and workshops right across Melbourne,” he says. “We’ve got incredible talent leading the conversation.”

Featured chefs include Christine Manfield, Ben Devlin, Jonathan Barthelmess, Arabella Douglas, Shannon Martinez, Andrew McConnell, Martin Benn and Scott Pickett.

UPDATE: The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival has announced that, due to the uncertainty surrounding COVID, it’s unable to run its 2021 Winter Edition. The festival will return in 2022 to celebrate its 30th anniversary. In the meantime, it will continue to support the industry across its channels. For updates, head to the festival website and Instagram page.