Eat Street 2012 - Charity With A Delicious Side

Last year, I was fortunate enough to attend Eat Street 2011. It was my first time attending this wonderful event and I had such a great time. I was once again lucky enough to get an invitation to attend this charity function. This year's function was supported by UXC and proceeds were donated to Redkite. Redkite is an entirely community funded charity that supports young people affected by cancer. They provide financial and emotional support to the young people and their families and help them through this tough period in their lives.

To help make the event as successful as possible, top restaurants all over Melbourne, as well as food and drink suppliers donate their time and money to put on a wonderful foodgasmic event. Once again, this year's event was held at the Sofitel Hotel Melbourne and spread across the ballroom, main lounge area and an upstairs area. I went along to the event with social butterfly I-Hua.

We met in the foyer area and discussed our strategic plan to eat everything delicious. We would start early in the main ballroom before moving upstairs and then the lounge area. We executed the plan perfectly as we managed to sample so many wonderful things. We were some of the fortunate ones to try the Hellenic Republic pork belly souvlakis, which were amazingly good. The soft pork meat contrasted with the wasabi mayo, crisp chips and pork crackling. Heaven. As I-Hua doesn't eat beef (or veal or ox as some restaurants don't seem to know they too are also of the bovine variety), she was worried she couldn't eat a lot of dishes. However, this year seemed to be the year of the pork belly. There was pork belly overload such that we had to stop eating it. I couldn't believe that I was defeated by the number of pork belly dishes. Two outstanding ones were from Ezard and Taxi Dining Room, both tender, served with a sticky sweet sauce and a crisp tangy salad of some form. Perfection.

While I-Hua can't eat beef, I most certainly can and indulged in The Point's beautiful Wagyu Shabu Shabu. Executive chef Justin Wise personally served me (and everyone else but it sounds like I'm more important if he just served me) the delicate bowl of broth with the wagyu meat immersed within. I loved the beautiful clean flavours and the tender meat. The pork cigars from The Point were also really good.

We meandered our way through so many dishes that I can't even recall all of them clearly. They were all very good and there wasn't anything that I didn't like. Of course, we also sampled lots of alcoholic beverages along the way to partner the food. Whilst I-Hua stuck to cleaner Pinot Gris' and Sauvignon Blancs, I went for Pinot Noirs and Shirazs (is it Shirazs or Shirazes or just Shiraz for multiple). My favourite wine was the Scotchman Hill Pinot Noir.

You can't finish a meal without desserts, so desserts we found. There were beautiful fresh donuts with jam, macarons from A La Folie, chocolates from Ganache Chocolate, heavenly salted caramel ice cream with peanut brittle and chocolate brownie from St Katherines and lastly a most wonderful Salted Caramel Profiterole that my bro Pierrick Boyer from Le Petit Gateau had given me.

It was an absolutely awesome night and for a wonderful cause. If you haven't been to Eat Street before, I enthusiastically encourage you to go along next year as you'll eat some amazing food while also helping with a great cause. A win win for everyone involved. Congratulations to all the people from UXC who helped organise the event and all the wonderful chefs and companies who help make the event possible.

I attended the event as a guest of AMPR