Movida.

Another day, another restaurant. This one is called Movida after the Spanish revolution in 1975, according to it's website. As with a lot of Melbourne restaurants this one is located in a little laneway off the main road.

The outside is decorated and blends in with the lane's graffiti.

I started with a good Melbourne beer, the Mountain Goat Steam Ale. Very fruity with a slightly bitter finish.

Just inside the entrance to the restaurant is a tiled wall with the Movida logo. I wasn't having much luck photographing it and the waiter saw me and cheekily gave Louise the Movida business card which had the same logo ...

The card.

The menu is very simple with lots of little tapas to share and enjoy.

The bread is fantastic, a tangy sourdough and a cake like white loaf. Served with a pepper, fruity olive oil.

First to the table were these beautiful croquetas de choco en su tinta, which from the Spanish you might think were something to do with chocolate. In fact, they were delicious squid ink croquettes with cuttlefish. Yum !!

Here's the inside of them with the cuttlefish on the lower half.

Next we had fried zucchini flowers stuffed with goats curd and honey, sweet, crunchy, grassy and salty all at once.

Then we had Luenga. One simple word in Spanish that means "Char grilled veal tongue with a green pepper sofrito." Amazing how one word can mean all that, and they were delicious.

The main dishes that we ordered started arriving, first the delicious Bistec tartar de wagyu. Translated as Spicy steak tartare of raw, grass-fed wagyu beef. It was fresh and wonderfully creamy.

Next was the house made chorizo, which was a special and probably the best chorizo that I've had.

The Papada con membrillo also arrived and I thought it was very good, very creamy and satisfying but Louise thought it was a bit too rich for her. Oh, and it translates to pork jowl with quince paste, chickpea shoots and fennel pollen.

We also had the Boquerones, the white anchovy and caperberry salad, which helped to freshen and clear the palate for dessert and which I neglected to get a photo of. Dessert was a caramel cake with pear icecream. it was green pear which was tangy and spritzig.

We finished our coffee and staggered outside to find that it had been raining quite heavily and that the lane lights on the wall had turned on. They blended in very well with the graffti.