Event - La Luna Bistro

This is part of the 15th Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. An event hosted at La Luna Bistro called Suckling Pig and Beyond.

The event description was as follows:

A rare change to experience the delicious and versatile delights of Pork at a shared table feast. In celebration of the Year of the Pig, diners will start with handmade charcuterie by Adrian Richardson, La Luna's Prince of Pork - from terrine to sausages, porcetta to salamis. The evening's culinary crescendo will build to the hedonistic suckling pig and indulgent braised pork belly cassoulet. Accompanied by premium selected wines this unique evening will conclude with La Luna's divine dessert platter.

The restaurant had been arranged into 3 large tables and our one complaint would be that the seating was way too close. It was a case of dodging elbows all night.



Our first course was an antipasto of various preserved meats, all made in house. We had Prosciutto, Coppa Collo (which is so hard to find these days), Bresaola (the only non-pig item made from beef girello) and spicy and mild Salamis.

While we were still enjoying the meats, plates of pork and fennel sausages on Tabouli arrived, followed by an item we later found out to be Brawn.



The final dish in this series was Cotechino on braised lentils which you can see on the photo below right.



The Cotechino just melted in your mouth, wonderfully gelatinous and you certainly can understand why the lentils are such a traditional accompaniment.

After these dishes were cleared away, it was time for the main event. Four suckling pigs were paraded through the room - it actually surprised us how large they were. They consisted of 3 females and one male and were 4 weeks old.



The suckling pig was sliced in the kitchen and overflowing platters of succulent pork and wafer thin crackling dotted the tables - not so good for the squeamish were the fact that the heads were also deposited on the tables.



Roasted vegetables - potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots and garlic green beans accompanied the pork along with apple sauce.





Now if you read the blurb on this meal you might note that pork belly cassoulet was supposed to be part of the menu - no explanation was given for it's absence. That's not to say that it would have been extremely hard to fit in.

Dessert platters consisted of Creme Brulee in espresso cup, rich chocolate brownie, Meringue on macerated berries, watermelon sorbet, Passionfruit bavarois and a choc-hazelnut ice cream with biscotti.



Somehow, we managed to destroy the platter.



The evening wrapped up fairly quickly and we were out of there just after 10pm.




The details:

La Luna Bistro
320 Rathdowne Street, Carlton
Phone: 03 9349 4888

Open:
Lunch
Tuesday-Friday: Noon - 3pm
Dinner
Tuesday-Sunday: 6pm-10pm
Brunch
Saturday-Sunday: 10am-3pm

web
http://www.lalunabistro.com.au/