The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival held its first 'Out of the Frying Pan' talkfest last year and has repeated the event in 2008. It's goal is to bring together industry and media to talk about issues (which can be interpreted in many ways). This sort of thing can be a mixed bag when there are so many not-quite-overlapping points of interest and last year's was an odd mix of industry discussion and wannabe cookbook writers. This year there seemed to be more media representatives but less industry (chefs, producers, PR people) and though the focus was better, perhaps, the format rather undid it.

Melbourne is alive with the annual Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. A special event as part of the two-week festival is 'A Taste of Slow', held this weekend. I attended two sessions and came away disappointed, with the feeling that Slow Food is still failing to get its message across or perhaps even to know what its message is. I didn't expect to hear clichés about obesity or endure junk science but that was part of what I heard.