Page 17 - foodservice Magazine July 2019

INDUSTRY
17
It’s eight months before Hobart’s annual three-week winter solstice music and art festival Dark Mofo lights up, but Tasmania’s farmers are getting ready.
Thirty minutes north-east of Hobart, Tony Shearer at Rocky Top Farm is planting rows of organic leafy greens, beetroot and four varieties of cabbage. Further inland, Will Bignell at Thorpe Farm is planting fields of black salsify, horseradish, celeriac and Jerusalem artichoke.
Dark Mofo has enlisted local farmers to help feed the more than 10,000 people who will attend the festival’s larger-than-life food hall, the Winter Feast, every night for eight nights. Hobart’s regular seasonal supply won’t be enough.
On paper, the Winter Feast is an assembly of 80 food and drink stalls in the 190-year-old Princes Wharf shed in Salamanca. But inside the mammoth 100-metre long waterfront venue is a glowing, smoking, thundering, crowded spectacle.
After making it through the application process, stallholders spend six months preparing. One designer spends three months hand-painting every menu blackboard. And the crew spends two weeks stringing velvet curtains, unfolding communal tables, and hoisting dozens of neon-red crosses before the doors open.
Now in its seventh year, “This is the biggest it’s ever been,” says Winter Feast food curator Jo Cook.
Since its inception in 2013, Dark Mofo’s subversive and unpredictable music, art and theatre events suck in tourists from the mainland in growing numbers each year.
But it’s not just art that’s flourished in the city as a result; Dark Mofo’s undercurrents can be felt throughout the entire food sector.
On the Feast’s first night, Andrew McConnell’s Melbourne butcher Meatsmith and Hobart butcher Meat Mistress are roasting six splayed goats from local Leap Farm over charcoal. Dripping strips of meat are torn from the beast and served with the farm’s goat’s cheese, beetroots, and flatbreads hand-stretched and flamed to order.
The Feast is open from 4 to 11pm. By 7:10, they’re down to their last few portions.
Sue Dyson, local food writer, natural-wine importer, and co- founder of FoodTourist.com, describes Dark Mofo as “a gift to the hospitality industry”.
Left: The entrance to Dark Mofo's centrepiece food event, the Winter Feast.