Why reading?

So working in publishing and being an ex-bookstore employee - it is no surprise that I am an avid reader. But I often wonder why I chose this profession (or it chose me?), and where this inclination to bury my head in literary la la land comes from. I think there are two main reasons - the first being that language is a tool which we can use to chip away at the meaning of all that is around us. It is a vast and deep sea of options (I mean, do you realise how many species down there we have come up with names for?) that can be playfully and bluntly and artfully and sinuously...(see?) spun into an all but endless array of expressions. Language's craftsman are a bunch of metaphor magicians who conjure up sentences and whip them into stories that take us on a journey to god knows where and depending on the individual's skill will take us on a bumpy journey, a spiritual one or (as Tom Robbins is quite fond of) all the way to Timbuktu.

Which brings me to the second main reason that I love to read - I spend all damn day and night in my own world and I interpret what I see in my own way, so it is refreshing to skip Kate-town for an hour or so a day to take a mental dive into someone else's swimming pool. I love that I can let Isabelle Allende introduce me to people who have drunk so much Amazon juice that their hearts beat to the rhythm of the Incas, or Hunter S. Thompson take me on a rum-fuelled row-boat ride to Cuba to escape a dead pigs head in a toilet (to make me realise that life is not so ordinary for everybody), or Henry David Thoreau take me into the woods for a couple of years. There is an earth full of people out there having adventures and experiences so very unlike my own and I want a ticket on their written express. And I especially want to go wherever the hell Kilgor Trout or Pan and Alobar wish to take me.

A Matador's Kitchen...

MoVida is a simmering treat from the moment you meander into Hosier Lane (Melbourne) and see the bold girl graffiti the colour of bubblegum and the sea, sprawled across the walls opposite. Although the alleyway is packed full of trendy caricatures vying for your attention, the star of the hall, matador of the arena is certainly the bar de tapas - MoVida.

The restaurant as a whole is nowhere near as showy as the overhanging lamps are large, and as we wait for those to arrive (or not arrive….ahem) we easily relax into the casual surrounds. Our petite waitress explains the way things work – there are tapas and raciones. Tapas serve one and raciones are larger plates that can be shared amongst three so you each get a taste. She then proceeds to calmly explain the specials which leave us slyly wiping the creases of our chin.

The tapas arrive in a flurry – fried silky croquette flavoured with mushrooms, half shell scallop oven baked with jamon and potato foam, or roasted lamb cutlet encased in a Catalan pork & paprika pate to name a few. The moans are getting embarrassing already and the eyes are sparking in delight. And this is only the beginning. On comes the raciones - octopus cooked in the Galician menner, with kiphler potatoes and paprika, air cured wagyu beef thinly sliced with a truffle foam and poached egg, oven roasted portabello mushrooms finished with sherry vinegar and you get the picture.

For my friends I was dining with and for myself, this was a whole new species of restaurant where truffle foam was king. And don’t get me started on dessert, OK, some parts that come to mind are goats cheese ice cream, crème brule, pear and brandy ice-cream and of course what Spanish experience would be completa without churros and it’s doghnutty goodness?

MoVida is definitely worth the month long wait to get in and my hat is off to head chef Frank Camorra, and all the Spanish cooking Gods that obviously influenced him.