1 day ago
8
A 200-metre-long table will land in an unlikely location next month, with a menu by top Melbourne chefs Nat Thaipun, Audrey Shaw and HyoJu Park.
The World’s Longest Lunch just got extended.
Melbourne Food and Wine Festival has announced the World’s Longest Dinner – a nighttime version of its flagship event – and shared on Wednesday the first of the menu details.
“If you like what we do at World’s Longest Lunch, you’re going to really enjoy this,” says MFWF creative director Pat Nourse. “It’s going to be more of a celebration of night and winter … but it will still have that same sense of specialness and conviviality.”
The dinner on June 17 builds on the decades-old lunch event, which has previously taken over some of Melbourne’s most recognisable settings – from the MCG and the Albert Park Formula 1 track to the banks of the Maribyrnong River.
This time, the trestle tables are heading somewhere unexpected: indoors at Chadstone as part of the shopping centre’s Light to Night festival. Beneath the shopping centre’s undulating glass gridshell roof, a 200-metre-long dining table will run from Louis Vuitton to Max Mara and seat 400 guests.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
Three of the city’s most exciting young chefs are behind the menu, including MasterChef Australia winner and Vue de Monde chef Nat Thaipun, Carnation Canteen chef/owner Audrey Shaw, and HyoJu Park, the former head pastry chef at Attica and founder of Carlton patisserie Madeleine de Proust.
“They all have a really interesting, personal view of what Melbourne food is, and I’m excited to see what they do together,” Nourse says.
The menu starts with Thaipun’s Corner Inlet whiting served with kombu oil and ginger, followed by Shaw’s rare roast beef accompanied by braised greens and bagna cauda, potatoes al forno and a pink leaf salad with honey-citrus dressing.
For the final course, Park has created a “Moon Blanc” – a reworking of the classic French dessert Mont Blanc. “I wanted to create a dessert that feels connected to the atmosphere of Light to Night, something quiet, luminous and a little dreamlike,” she says.
The dish features a moon-shaped chocolate plaque made using a 3D mould, filled with chestnut mousse, blackcurrant, vanilla mascarpone and a charcoal sable – a French butter biscuit – balancing light and dark in flavours and form.
The Light to Night festival of which the World’s Longest Dinner is part is a month-long festival of food, art and music running from June 11 to July 12 at Chadstone. The program also includes a full-scale exhibition by Australian artist Rone, plus after-dark events like Dinner with Friends, a series of intimate dinners hosted by Khanh Ong, Julia Busuttil-Nishimura, Alice Zaslavsky, and others.
World’s Longest Dinner 2026 Presented by Chadstone takes place on Wednesday June 17. Tickets are $285 and include a three-course set menu with canapes and matching beverages. Available from melbournefoodandwine.com.au
