MoVida Bakery
3 Tivoli Road
South Yarra, Vic 3141
Ph: (03) 9041-4345
This week I visited the new-ish MoVida Bakery - twice! The first visit was with some friends for a weekend brunch - they live close by, and recommended their baked goods pretty highly - and the second was with my parents during the week. These were actually my first visits to any venue in the MoVida family, (I know, food blogger fail!), and needless to say, I really enjoyed them! The bakery is located on a quiet residential street, just off leafy Toorak road.
Let's start with some pics from the first visit.
Array of goodies |
The sweets on offer included danishes, brownies, cookies, cocoa meringues (which reminded me of the Ottolenghi-inspired ones I made for my ice-cream party a few months ago - yum!), and, of course, loads of their famous donuts. When I ordered, there were only two salted caramel ones left, one slightly bigger than the other, and as I was about to order one, someone else got the larger one. Nooooo!
Savoury options include pies, sausage rolls, sandwiches and soups - I got a beef pie, whilst Sandra got a sausage roll.
Sausage roll, Beef pie |
Both the beef pie and sausage roll were excellent, with flaky pastry encasing a rich, meaty filling. The sausage roll had a nice flavour from spices (caraway, I believe), and was appealingly substantial. The pie contained good-sized pieces of meltingly tender beef and carrot chunks - fabulous! Now, here's a gratuitous filling shot:
Mmm... beef |
Hot chocolate |
In addition to the salted caramel donut I mentioned above, I couldn't resist an Eccles Cake. I've seen them in lots of my British cookbooks, but never in real life, and really wanted to try one.
Salted caramel donut; Eccles Cake |
More gratuitous filling shots!
Salted caramel donut innards |
I was actually more excited about the Eccles cake, hehe. An Eccles cake contains dried fruit, surrounded by puff-pastry. The pastry here was super light and flaky - I loved it! Heston Blumenthal has an easy-looking recipe (yes, really!) for Eccles Cake with Potted Stilton in his latest book; I'd love to give it a go at home!
Eccles Cake innards |
As I mentioned above, that was my first visit to any MoVida venue, and I must admit that given the group's prominence, I had thought that the bakery might be a bit attitudey or hipster, but I'm glad to say that this assumption proved false! The service, whilst not particularly knowledgeable, was still warm and friendly. (For example, the person who served me didn't know the names of the different products, and my question of: "Which of the lamb or beef pie would you recommend?" was answered with a very relaxed: "Yeah... I don't know, they're both good."). This wasn't a dealbreaker, though, and I was more than happy to come back again.
My second visit was on Friday for lunch with my parents, and despite being a weekday, it was still crazy busy! We happened to be lucky with timing - there wasn't much of a queue when we arrived, but shortly after the queue was out the door!
Latte - $3.50 |
Like the first time, we had a beef pie and a sausage roll. (On this visit I learned it was a beef-cheek pie - the lady who served us on this occasion happened to be super knowledgeable across the product range, so perhaps it was just a newer staff member we met on the first visit). The new items we tried were an excellent poached chicken sandwich...
... and an empanada. This vegetarian item contained two layers of pastry (shortcrust, I believe), containing a sweet-sour mixture of roasted capsicum, pine nuts, sultanas and other goodies. (I heard "sultanas and pine nuts" and said YES!)
Again - whoops - I forgot to take notice of individual prices, but it was only $26.00 for the empanada, the chicken sandwich, the sausage roll and the beef-cheek pie. Not bad! (Coffees are $3.50 each).
Being a bakery, they stock an impressive range of breads baked in-house, but given that I live in a two-person household with a tiny (and very full) freezer, I'm going to have to wait until my current bread supplies are lower before trying them. (And I'm sure you're all terribly fascinated by the state of my freezer...!) My mum really liked the grainy bread on her chicken sandwich - has anyone else tried out their breads? Which ones would you recommend? (And please don't say: "I don't know, they're all good"). Hehehehe...
4 comments
Whereas I would hear "sultanas and pine nuts" and screech "Not the squidgy-icky! Not the worst nut in all the world!" :P
ReplyDeleteSalted caramel donuts and a soy latter for me, please. In lovely dreamland...
Oh! It has been too long between visits to Melbourne. All of those food porn shots are too hard to cope with. I'm clawing at the screen! :P
ReplyDeleteI think the rhubarb doughnuts are the tastiest out of the three. And the brioche loaf is pretty good too. :)
ReplyDeleteOooo must try! For some stupid reason I thought this was in the city. South Yarra much easier to get to :D
ReplyDelete