You may recognise Ellis’ Harley that has been sitting out the front of MoVida for the past five years – it’s in most of the photos. Aside from motorbikes, Ellis is also very passionate about hospitality and looks after the MoVida wine list. He is a long-standing staff member and a familiar face for many regulars.

What were you doing before MoVida?
I was working at the European for about five years. Before that I was overseas working in London for Majestic Wine Warehouse. I also spent about four years studying photography.

Last holiday?
I recently got married so my wife and I went to Europe for our honeymoon. We spent most of our time drinking and eating our way through Italy, France and Spain. Tickets in Barcelona was definitely a highlight and the old town of San Sebastian was fantastic!

Eating out in Melbourne?
The Abyssinian African restaurant on Race Course Rd in Flemington, Tiba’s Lebanese on Sydney Road, and Los Hermanos is a little tacqueria bar that is pretty local.

Drink of choice?
Pinot with absolutely anything.

Eat anywhere in the world?
The French Laundry – Thomas Keller.

What’s kept you at MoVida?
It’s a good fun place to work. It’s not as stuffy as some work environments, you get a bit of freedom to be your own person and to represent your own personality. I think that’s really important.

Work History?
Taxi, Yellowbird Cafe, and the Vineyard in St kilda.

Favourite hopso moment?
All the years at the Vineyard.

Drink of Choice?
G & T’s, Aperol spritzers in Summer and in Winter a good Aussie shiraz.

What’s your local?
The Fox Hotel in Collingwood.

Regular haunts around town?
The new Taxi Kitchen, The European it’s always great, The Fox Hotel for pub grub and Ciccolina’s – the crab souffle is the best ever.

Why hospitality?
It’s what I’ve been doing for over fifteen years now and what I know best.

How do you spend your days off?
Hanging with my dog and my girlfriend, eating and drinking.

Drink of choice?
Whiskey or the Donhoff Kabinett Riesling.

Favourite work moment?
Serving William Shatner – that guy is a legend!

Food and wine match?
Manzanilla Sherry and oysters.

Melbourne restaurants?
Francois, The European, and Preston for Vietnamese food.

Eat anywhere in the world?
Etxebarri in Spain and St John in the UK.

Everywhere I went in Basque Country chefs were telling me of the incredible beef grown there. That it was rare, expensive and came from animals that were up to 12 years old and had been fed on grass all their lives. In a grill house on a hill I had the most wonderful chargrilled sirloin, but the chef there said the animal was no more than four years old. Somewhere in the Basque country someone once ate a steak from an old ox, but I can’t say I have ever tried it. This recipe makes a lovely slow-cooked dark beef-cheek braise. Don’t be afraid of cooking the bejesus out of the vegetables.

This is from our cookbook MoVida Rustica.
Serves 6

• 1.5 kg (3 lb 5 oz) beef cheeks
• 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) olive oil
• 3 carrots, roughly chopped
• 1 garlic bulb, halved
• 1 brown onion, sliced
• 500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) Pedro Ximenez sherry
• 500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) red wine
• 3 bay leaves
• 3 tablespoons thyme leaves
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 head of cauliflower, broken into florets
• 185 ml (6 fl oz/¾ cup) cream
• 40g (1 ½ oz) butter

1. Trim the beef cheeks to neaten them up and remove any sinew and silver skin. Season well.

2. Heat half the olive oil in a large heavy-based saucepan over high heat. Brown the beef cheeks for 2 minutes on each side, or until golden, then remove from the pan.

3. Add the remaining olive oil, then add the carrot, garlic and onion and sauté over high heat for 12-15 minutes, or until well browned. Stir in the sherry, wine, bay leaves, thyme, sea salt and 500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) water.

4. Reduce the heat as low as possible, add the beef cheeks, then cover and cook for 3-4 hours, or until the cheeks are beginning to fall apart.

5. Meanwhile, put the cauliflower, cream and butter in a saucepan, season to taste with salt, then cover and cook over low heat for 35 minutes, or until very tender. Place the cauliflower mixture in a blender and process until smooth. Keep the puree warm.

6. The sauce from the beef cheeks should by now be reduced and glaze-like. If it needs further reducing, remove the cheeks from the pan, cover with foil to keep them warm and simmer the sauce over high heat until nicely reduced. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve and return to the pan; gently reheat the cheeks in the sauce if necessary.

Serve the cheeks and their sauce on warm plates with the cauliflower puree on the side.

What happens when you put burly chefs in a small plane? Some start shaking with fear like Shaggy and Scooby Doo. But I over came my unnatural fear of small planes and headed east with Steve Rogers from MoVida, Matt Wilksinson from Pope Joan and Matt Germanchis from Pei Modern along with the very amusing Cam Smith from 3RRR. We were guests of the East Gippsland Food Cluster and we had two days and one night to check out the produce from the clean, green east of the state.

We saw some of the biggest market gardens in the country just behind Bairnsdale at Lindenow. There we were introduced to Bellaverde – a new variety of super tasty broccoli. So impressed we were with it that a week later chef Ewan Crawford at MoVida Aqui was roasting it in the Josper and serving it with Marcona almonds.

Just over the Mitchell River is Wuk Wuk home of Grassvale Beef. From grazier Paul Treasure we bought an eight year old Murray Grey cow, which is 8 times older than most of the beef sold in Australia. We dry aged the carcass and the result was just sensational – deep red, rich flavoured and amazing tender beef where even the lesser cuts were incredibly juicy and tasty. Paul is going to supply us with old cows – something the Basques swear by – as he feels they are ready.

What really blew us away was the quality of the seafood at the wonderfully ‘60s retro Lakes Entrance Fisherman’s Co-op. The fish they are catching there are truly stunning from the firm and sweet wild prawns, fat bug, sand crabs, skate, red mullet, sand whiting and the salty yet sweet fleshed yellow eyed mullet that is caught in the lakes system. We are getting regular deliveries from Lakes Entrance with the bugs and the prawns cooked on the grill with salt – simple and fast and the best way to reflect their freshness.

Look out for more tasty products from East Gippsland in the coming months including seaweed from Snowy River Station at the Seaweed Salon we’re running in conjunction with the Fringe Food Festival on May 3 at Movida Aqui.

Movida chef Dave ‘Robbo’ Roberts has nailed the classic Cordobese dish alboronia by giving it a little modern love. It is a classic autumn stew of eggplants, pumpkin and quinces. You can see its Moorish origin in its name. Generally any word in Spanish that starts with ‘al’ is going to be an Arabic word. Alcachofa (artichoke), albondiga (meatball) and alcohol (grog) – all Arabic. Alboronia was originally al-baraniyya. You’ll find vegetable stews with a similar name across the Arab world today. When the Spaniards went to the Americas and came back with tomatoes and capsicum these were added to the dish as well and it became an autumn staple of the mozarabe world of converted Jews and Muslims in southern Spain.

It is a really tasty dish that speaks volumes about the best of autumn ripeness with the sweetness of pumpkin, the flesh texture of eggplant and the sharpness and aroma of quince. These are traditionally cooked together in a slow cooked braise. The only problem is that the classic dish can look like a murky stew. Although incredibly delicious it can pose an aesthetic challenge in the restaurant business.

Robbo made a dish that tastes like the original but also looks great. He roasts off the pumpkin and eggplant separately with just a little seasoning to bring out their natural flavour. He poaches the quince in a light sugar syrup with a little cinnamon and star anise to heighten the flavour and colour. During service he brings these together in the pan with a little samfaina – a slow cooked mix of green capsicum and garlic. This rests on a little bed of pumpkin salmorejo, a puree of cooked pumpkin, breadcrumb and a touch of sherry vinegar. The result combines savoury with just a hint of sweet that is offset by the sharpness of the accompaniments. It is a delicious way of preparing this dish and upholds the traditional foundations of this classic autumn dish. You can find the recipe to this dish in my cook book MoVida Rustica.

Robbo’s Rabo de Toro at MoVida

If you have ever been up close and personal with a steer you know they are not small animals. They can weigh 700kg. From that you get a 400kg carcass. Of that just 280kg is flesh. Of that there are only two eye fillets weighing around 10kg, 30kg of scotch and porterhouse leaving a lot of lesser loved cuts. And here is the best part. As much as I love primal cuts of steak, for me the real flavour is closer to the bone. Literally. The bits steak houses reject. Skirt, oxtail, brisket.

So when we recently teamed up with Nick and Vicki Sher from Sher Wagyu at Ballan near Ballarat we were all happy. They had these cuts that are not graded for the intramuscular fat that wagyu is renowned for. We have traditional recipes, such as rabo de torro, that the Spanish are famous for. It was a perfect match. Chef Dave ‘Robbo’ Roberts puts it so beautifully when he says, “The Spanish are always picking around the edge,” he says. “They take the cuts most of us don’t look twice at and turn them into classic dishes.”

The rabo de toro Robbo is making is truly delicious. The oxtails are seasoned with salt and pepper before they are dropped into a really hot pan with some olive oil. He browns them on all sides to get some really nice colour on them before he removes these and starts cooking the onion, carrot then the red and green peppers. The tails are added back with the same stock and wine and set on their long slow journey on the stove top where heat breaks down all the connective tissue releasing loads of lip smacking sticky gelatin.

Then there are the intercostals, literally the flesh between the ribs. This is incredibly tasty but just needs a little love. Robbo braises them using the complimentary Japanese ingredients bonito and soy, which really deepens the flavour, and then braises the ribs for nine hours really breaking down the muscles. To finish he gives them a quick dance over the red hot breath of the charcoal grill and sends them out to the dining room. They are truly good.

The skirt, which sits around the belly toward the back of the beast, is made of long strong fibres that holds the beast’s stomach in place. Robbo is taking the skirt and giving a long, slow braise in onion and cider, then pressing it to give it a nice dense texture and again finishing it off for extra flavour and smoky tang in the chargrill. The cooking juices, with all that soft onion and tangy cider is
reduced and served as a sauce.

Some of the brisket is heading to Paco’s Tacos where they are being smoked, shredded and served in tortillas. At MoVida Next Door chef Sunny Gilbert is brining his brisket before slowly cooking it sous vide, then pressing it and chargrilling it before serving on a bed of garlic puree and grating over a little fresh horseradish.

Sunny’s Brisket at MoVida Next Door

It’s a really good situation to be in. We are getting quality product at a reasonable price. This means we can serve quite generous portions of flavoursome meat at a good price for the customer. The fact that we are using a really good quality product to start off with is the foundation for truly delicious dishes.

02 JUL 2014

Chef Robbo (David Roberts) at MoVida Hosier Lane asked if we could take an image of an articulated lamb and then over the course of winter introduce the various dishes he is preparing with the lamb he is sourcing from a farmer in Cowra.

At Movida we are proud proponents of whole carcass butchery. This means we buy whole bodies of pig, lamb and even steers and use every part. In Spain when an animal is slaughtered they use the word ‘sacrificed’. They acknowledge the debt they owe to the animal for its life and appreciate every part of its body. It makes perfect sense to us. We can buy whole bodies for a better price and have the skills to turn each cut into a delicious dish giving great value to people who dine with us.

Robbo wanted to start with the shanks. This, the lower part of the leg, is a part of the beast does so much work. The muscles are tight, compact and strong. They do most of the heavy lifting and between the muscles run the tendons and connective tissue.

If they are not slowly cooked shanks are tough and toothsome. But when gently cooked shanks give up their flavour to infuse the sauce in which they are prepared with a rich flavour and lip smacking sticky gelatine. Robbo is cooking the shanks in a chilindron sauce made with tomatoes, red peppers, onions, bay leaves and white wine. Our sommelier there, the very knowledgeable Ellis Nuttall suggests you try it with a glass of a 2010 Pesquera Tinto Crianza. Delicious.

09 JUL 2014

It hit the tables at Movida Hosier Lane this week. A new tapa from Chef Robbo (David Roberts). It’s a simple plate of just a few bites that packs an amazing punch of flavour. Basically it’s a plate of almonds and shaved fish topped with fish eggs. It appears simple but is deceptively ingenious.

This is the type of small plate you’d find in one of the great bars in San Sebastian where Michelin star quality food is landed in front of you while perched on a bar stool for under 5 euros. To start with are the almonds. They are the broad flat Marcona variety grown in Catalonia. Rich and smooth they are given a little colour and extra flavour with a few minutes in a moderate oven. Over these is grated some mojama. Mojama is the tuna version of jamon. It’s salted and cured during which time the flavour intensifies and amino acids develop to create the ‘stock cube of the sea’ as one food writer once put it. Now over this goes some shaved tuna, fresh tuna that has been frozen first. It adds a lightness and freshness to the dish.

Finally it’s topped with some Golden Caviar from Yarra Valley Caviar. These are tiny salty pearls that burst in the mouth with the touch of the tongue. They are hand harvested from brook trout grown in the ponds fed by the Rubicon River in Thornton up in the ranges north of Healesvile. Try a plate with a little glass of chilled manzanilla.

16 JUL 2014

A few weeks back Chef Robbo (David Roberts) at Movida Hosier Lane asked if we could take an image of an articulated lamb and then over the course of winter introduce the various dishes he is preparing with the lamb he is sourcing from a farmer in Cowra.

Now the lambs are not big animals. They land at our restaurant at just over 12 kilograms. Your normal spring lamb is around the 20-22kg mark. So these are much smaller beasts than your supermarket lamb.

At Movida we love to work with cuts of meat that express the true flavour of the animal. We reject the concept of meat from an animal as just being ‘protein’, as some chefs refer to, onto which they paint their effete sauces. That is sheer tossery.  At Movida we reckon the ‘closer to the bone the sweeter the meat’.

The shoulder is such a great piece to roast whole. It has done a bit of work and has some rather thick little pieces of connective tissue that cook down to lip smacking gelatin when slowly roasted. Robbo marinates the entire shoulder in white wine, carrots, onions and herbs. This marinade becomes the base on which he roasts the shoulder. The liquids steams the shoulder from underneath adding more flavour while the vegetables cook down to form a rich little side dish cum sauce.

The result is a shoulder to share (four is the perfect number) with a crisp as a cracker skin that break down at the touch of a knife to reveal the silky sweet flesh encased inside. Robbo is running rpast shoulders of lamb as a special in Movida Hosier Lane. If you have your heart set on one book ahead as lambs only have two shoulders.

15 AUG 2014
We love our cheese. We love our Spanish cheeses. Spanish cheeses are robust and honest, tasting of the herds that provided the milk they were made from and reflecting the land in which they were made. One of the charismatic Spanish cheeses is Valdeon. This is a piquant blue cheese made from cow’s and goat’s milk, sometimes ewe’s milk. It is made with blue Penicillium mould and formed into wheels from 500g to 3kg. It is buttery and a little caramelized with a sharp tang, perfect to finish a meal with a little quince paste, membrillo.

Valdeon is made in a valley high in the Picos de Europa in the province of Castilla y Leon in the north east of Spain. Here the herds of animals graze in the mountain valley pastures and the cheese made from their milk aged in the natural caves in the mountains above. The region is not far from the coast and subsequent high rainfall sees a humid climate that encourages the development of the microbial flora that helps develop the cheeses as they age.

The cheeses are wrapped in sycamore leaves or chestnut leaves after they have matured. Although the Spanish cheesemakers make both raw and pasteurised milk cheeses our heavy handed health authorities in Australia don’t think we are capable of enjoying raw milk cheeses. That said, the pasteurised Valdeon cheeses that are imported into Australia are of an excellent quality. As they are more of a specialty product than other blue cheeses they tend to be sold by passionate cheese specialists who really know how to look after them. Use Valdeon cheese as one would Roquefort or Stilton but perhaps enjoy with a handful of walnuts and a glass of oloroso sherry.

28 AUG 2014

This winter we have presented lamb dishes from Chef Dave ‘Robbo’ Roberts at MoVida Hosier Lane. At the beginning of winter we laid out a Cowra Lamb, reassembling all the cuts for the camera. Over the course of winter we have been showing you where the cut comes from on the animal and how Robbo cooks it. We are proud of our approach to whole carcass butchery and this week we’re highlighting the delicious cut of mid loin.

Anglo families will know this as part of the lamb for the mid loin chop, the one with a little tail like a fatty comma. Chef Robbo trims the mid loin differently while still keeping that beautiful layer of delicious fat. He gives the lamb a good marinade in spices and sherry. It’s actually a recipe from my dad, Juan Camorra. It’s the traditional Cordoba recipe for pinchos that would be served at the feria with lots of cumin in it but dad adds a little kick of cayenne for a nice little bite at the end.

What happens next is a good indication of where Robbo has taken MoVida. He really is embracing the traditional techniques of Spanish cooking. In the past he may have been tempted to give the little nugget of lamb a low, slow bath in the sous vide, which would have meant, that it would have been perfectly tender and just needing a little el scorchio on the grill. Now he is perfectly happy to nurture the lamb as he cooks it on top of the char grill. This requires constant attention to get the meat cooked through without the lovely layer of lamb fat scorching on the outside.

The result is generous serve of tender and slightly spicy lamb on the bone with a heat kissed crust. Delicious with Tempranillo. When you come in please feel free to take your time and when you’ve got as much as you can off the bone with your knife and fork please feel free to pick it up with your fingers and have a good gnaw.

09 SEP 2014

These small golden nuggets of deep fried goodness are one of the most iconic tapas in Spanish bars. You can tell a good bar by their croquetas. They are based on the French croquette itself named after the French word for crunch croquer. So when looking for a good croqueta the first thing you look for is the crunch of the deep fried breadcrumb crust. A barman who serves up soggy croquettes has probably pushed a few buttons on a microwave and, in my mind, given up culinary standards and professional aspirations.

The second most important part of a croqueta is the béchamel. Bechamel is made with flour cooked in butter to which milk infused with perhaps onion and or bay is added. The thick sauce needs to be cooked properly otherwise there can be the unfortunate taste of uncooked flour.

In bars and restaurants in Spain croquetas are a convenient and delicious chance to give second life to left over pieces of salt cod or the odd remaining portion of stew. While researching the new book MoVida Solera (released Sep24. Penguin Lantern $59.99) we came across perhaps the richest croqueta I have ever tasted. It was made with two parts béchamel to one part puchero. This is a rich stew made with chickpeas, pork neck, pork belly, ribs, jowl, jamon, chorizo, morcilla and potatoes. It is slow cooked and is very rich and very sticky. Mashed down and mixed through the bay infused béchamel, rolled in breadcrumbs and deep fried it was perhaps one of the most delicious little treats I have had. Spanish chef Luismi Lopez of Restaurante Arrerios in Linares de Aracena, thankfully, gave me the recipe.

The croquetas we make at MoVida reflect what’s in season. Pictured is a steaming-hot Jerusalem artichoke croqueta made at MoVida Hosier Lane during winter. The fillings are constantly changing. In autumn we use mushrooms to fill the croquetas, sometimes it will be leek and manchego cheese, jamon and at other times salt cod. Crisp, delicious and moreish croquetas always hit the spot.

11 SEP 2014
Last year Frank headed back to Spain with photographer Alan Benson, food writer Richard Cornish where they were joined by Spanish food writer Cesc Castro. Together they traveled over 10 000 kilometers collecting recipes and stories from cooks, chefs, housewives, fishermen, farmers and even nuns. MoVida Solera is a celebration of the food and people of Andalusia, complete with travel guide.

25 SEP 2014

They are small, green and one in ten has a kick like a mule. They are pimientos de Padrón, little peppers that taste like a sweet green capsicum. Served grilled or fried they are a staple in bars across Spain where they go brilliantly with a cold beer, as roughly ten per cent are really quite hot.

They are a variety of chilli that was cultivated in monasteries in Galicia near the towns of Padrón and Herbón after the Spanish conquest of Meso-America. In the mild wet climate of the Spanish east coast these chillies developed a stronger flavour but less pungent tang.

During the Franco years Galicia was hard hit economically and the Galician diaspora saw people from the towns and villages of the Galician provinces emigrate around the world and across Spain. Go to any major city in Spain today and you’ll find a Galician bar serving empanadas and pulpo a la Gallega- Galician style octopus with potato. Also on the menu will be pimientos de Padrón. It’s always fun watching groups of young people order the peppers and play the game where they see who gets the hot one.

One of the pioneers of pimientos de Padrón in Australia is a Queensland grower called Richard Mohan and he sells them across Australia from his website www.midyimeco.com.au. Other great growers are Andrew Wood and Jill McCalman from Glenora Heritage Produce in Central Victoria who grow some really full flavoured pimientos. Under the searing dry heat where they are we find that near the end of the season in very late summer the percentage of hot peppers increases.

We love pimientos de Padrón at MoVida and the season proper is about to get under way. We’ve stuffed them with morcilla and other bits and pieces but my favourite way of serving them is simply giving them a bit of heat – deep frying or grilling and then serving them with some crunchy sea salt flakes. And then quietly watch people at the bar from the kitchen – then see who gets the hot one and how quickly they reach for their beer.

Even if your Spanish is not so crash hot there are some really good pictures of Spanish pimientos de Padrón production here: http://revista.consumer.es/web/es/20110901/actualidad/informe1/76081.php

01 OCT 2014

Albóndigas. Spanish meatballs. Delicious balls of meaty goodness that are cooked in a sauce and served with crusty bread. They can be as simple as cheap minced beef mixed with bread and a few herbs, rolled into balls, fried off then cooked in tomato and red pepper. It’s the addition of breadcrumbs to the raw meat mixture that gives the balls their lightness. In poorer families traditionally there was more sauce than balls but loads of bread to sop it up to feed a hungry family. Or they could be something a little more finessed, like these beautiful pork and rabbit albóndigas served with clams at MoVida Aqui.

Like so many of the good things from Spain they were a cultural import from the Arabs who invaded in the 700s. Generally any Spanish word starting with ‘al’ is going to originally be an Arabic word. According the Royal Spanish Academy the word albóndigas comes from the Arabic al búnduqa literally means ‘the ball’.

There are some versions found in the south of Spain that are culinary relics of Cordoba’s Sephardic Jews. One is a simple beef ball made with cumin and pine nuts and cooked in a tomato sauce spiced with cinnamon and sweetened with honey. Other Jewish versions are made with beef and leek and lamb. One particular recipe that strikes me as being the Spanish version of matzo balls are albondigas de pescado, minced fish and breadcrumbs cooked in a lemon and saffron sauce.

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