MoVida Aqui

URL: http://www.movida.com.au/aqui.html
Physical: 500 Bourke Street (enter on Little Bourke), Melbourne CBD

The MoVida team have done it again. Another (well, another one and a half, if you consider Terraza as being distinct from Aqui) wonderful MoVida restaurant. Better, I'd argue, than the original and the first child. MoVida Aqui is more spacious than the other restaurants. This space has been taken advantage of: they now cook a lot of dishes, including the Spanish classic paella, over coals. The menu is larger. The daily specials, even, is a long list. The focus is less on tapas, more on grilled stuff. The lighting is fairly bright--more akin to Next Door than the mothership. The bar seating area, too, is further away from the regular dining area than it was MoVida or MoVida Next Door.

I liked the two dishes I had. A grilled piece of pork loin was large, juicy, attractive and tasty. The accompanying tomato and coriander sauces were light and, when the pork was gone, worked equally well with the beautiful house-made bread--good bread, of course, has always been one of MoVida's strengths.

The crispy school prawns were lovely, too. Small prawns--head on, still in the shell and everything--crumbed lightly in semolina and served with a very rich aioli, intended to be eaten whole. A messy but lovely dish.


Must go back sooner rather than later.