MoVida Next Door

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What’s the recipe for an awesome weekend?

Take one BFF, a Costco visit, mini Reese’s peanut butter cups (1.5kg thank you very much), glorious sunshine, 30°C temperatures, and top it all off with lunch at MoVida Next Door.

But first, a confession: before the weekend, I hadn’t eaten at ANY of the MoVidas before. Not the original (who can even manage to get a booking for it, anyway?), not Next Door, not Aqui, not Terraza. What kind of Melbournian does that make me? A Failbournian?

So the visit from my BFF was the perfect excuse to finally check one of them out and complete her Melbourne experience.

After a couple hours of dragging her around in the heat and the sun (mostly running errands for me rather than showing her the sights!), we finally stopped at MoVida Next Door. MoVida Next Door is a more casual, smaller place than the main MoVida, and doesn’t take bookings. Fortunately, when we rocked up there were plenty of seats, and we took two by a window looking out on to Flinders Street and the Fed Square atrium.

There are three sections to the menu – conservas or preserved food; tapas, which are mostly individually priced items; and raciones which are slightly larger plates for sharing. There were also specials on a chalkboard above the bar, which we found very hard to see because of where we were sitting.

We received a couple of bread rolls – we thought they were deep fried as they were pretty oily when we ripped them apart. They tasted really good though! I heartily approve of deep fried dough.

When this was originally brought out, I thought it was a dessert. But it’s actually the Ajo Blanco, a (savoury) chilled almond soup with grape granita ($4ea). Even when we figured out that it was the almond soup, when I drank some, I was momentarily disconcerted because I was expecting it to be sweet! Despite the initial disconnect, the cold soup was fantastic – smooth and subtle with a hint of vinegar and garlic, and a touch of icy sweetness from the grape granita.

This is the Bomba ($4.50ea) – a chorizo filled potato bomb with spicy sauce. I should have overruled BFF and ordered two of these because it was totally fantastic – a crisp potato shell that gave way to an unbelievably fluffy interior, sitting in a slightly spicy sauce.

Here’s the inside of the Bomba. So, so fluffy.

Next up was the codorniz ($8.50ea) – quail with toasted corn and jamon. The quail was cooked well and juicy, but the toasted corn was my favourite part. It was like really tiny intense corn chips!

This was something off the specials board – boquerones ($8) – marinated white anchovy fillets draped over cherry tomatoes and on top of what I think was a cheese cracker. They were gorgeous. I popped a whole one into my mouth and enjoyed the tomato bursting with its vinegary flavours and mixing with the anchovy.

And then something off the conservas part of the menu – chipirones ($18)- baby calamari in ink.


This was quite nice and very tender, though it did make me think of sardines, except less fishy. But perhaps that was the tin playing with my mind! I mopped up a lot of the oil with the bread.

And we finished with cheese – cured sheep’s cheese ($7.50). It was nice cheese, though neither of us found it spectacular. To be fair, we were rather full by this stage.


I loved the food at MoVida Next Door, and the company made it even better! 🙂 With a distinct lack of vegetables, and a generous amount of oil, it definitely wasn’t the healthiest lunch, but everything was tasty and well put together. It’s definitely made me keen to finally check out the other MoVidas.

For more posts on Movida Next Door, check out these blogs:

  • Pepper salt sugar spice
  • Foodies N Places
  • Melb Hot or Not
  • Jenius
  • Ooh, Look
  • GreenTeaSpoon
  • Obesebaby
  • Melbourne Dining Experiences
  • Eating Melbourne
  • The Food Blog
  • Foodsailor
  • I ate it all
  • Food Fable
  • Doublecooked
  • Eating with Jack
  • I just ate it
  • My Food Odyssey
  • Did I miss your post? Let me know!



    • [googleMap name=”MoVida Next Door” width=”600″ height=”300″ directions_to=”false”]1 Hosier Lane, Melbourne, VIC, Australia[/googleMap]

    MoVida Next Door
    1 Hosier Lane
    Melbourne
    Phone: (03) 9663 3038
    Web: www.movida.com.au/next_door.html

    MoVida Next Door on Urbanspoon