Food and Community at Church St Enoteca

Church St Enoteca
527 Church St, Richmond VIC
(03) 9428 7898

As I've claimed before, the Twitterverse runs on a gift economy, and so last week Stuart and I found ourselves the grateful and delighted guests of the charming Ron O'Bryan (@ronobryan) at Church St Enoteca, along with @myfoodtrail, @jetsettingjoyce, @mutemonkey and @cookingwithgoths. It was Ron's last regional dinner of the year, the Tour of the Obscure, designed around six obscure Italian wines which were complimented by food from the region of the grapes.

I don't carry a particularly good camera, and these days I rely on the iPhone almost entirely (which has a terrible camera), so if you want to see great photos, check out My Food Trail or MEL: Hot or Not. These lovely bloggers also gave a detailed description of our meal, which was delicious start to finish, so I won't give such detail here. Highlights for me were definitely the Prosecco di Valdobbiadene upon arrival, the divine salad of prosciutto with shavings of raw artichoke and fennel, and broad beans, almond and lemon, and the rabbit, fennel and cotechino brodo with rabbit cappelletti. These two dishes were totally heavenly combinations, and fed my current obsessions with rabbit, filled pastas, and cotechino very nicely.

But now it's time for me to digress, or rather return to what are really my central interests in our dinner at Church Street Enoteca...

First of all, a quick word about social media, food and community. I've never been a regular reader of any particular blogs, though I usually enjoy reading casually when I have the time. Predictably, most of the blogs I look at are food blogs, though I do love a dose of a good feminist or political blog. Since Twitter, however, I now follow many dozens (dare I say hundreds?) of food bloggers, food enthusiasts, chefs, and food scholars (yes, we're a real category), as well as people representative of my other interests in social media, politics, and feminism. On Twitter I have very rapidly expanded my 'communities of interest', and have had opportunities to meet many of the people I follow, such as at Enoteca last week. I've followed Ron for awhile, and have really enjoyed his tweets about sourcing sustainable and ethical ingredients. We've even had a couple of exchanges over the questions of what people are looking for and will pay for when eating out, where I shared some of the findings from my own interviews. And so what a pleasure to then be invited to join the other bloggers to taste his delectable food, followed by a great discussion with him about his upcoming new venture in St Kilda, where he will be showcasing local, seasonal and where possible, organic and biodynamic foods.

Ron is clearly passionate about his cooking and the quality of his ingredients. This passion extends to the ways that food supports community, and his educational dinners that focus on regional cuisine see all sorts of people sitting side by side learning, tasting and conversing. Our dinner was served a la famiglia, with big share plates down the middle of the tables. As Ron said when he was introducing the meal, he served us family style in order to bring people together, and he even suggested that people would probably eat something they hadn't tried before, which would give us more to talk about. Of course he was right, and our table was abuzz with conversation about what ingredients we were seeing and tasting, and comparing notes on flavour and texture. In fact, it was nearly midnight before we all left, a late hour we had chattered our way to without noticing.

So in terms of creating a congenial environment, Ron's really nailed it at Church Street Enoteca, where quality ingredients are transformed into truly delicious regional Italian dishes, and interesting individuals connect to form rich and diverse communities.

Thanks, Ron! We look forward to checking out the new venture soon!