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Water MasterClass: Adventure on the high seas

Learn how to make the most from the ocean with the Water MasterClass.

Sarina Lewis

The setting: Campbell Point House on the Bellarine Peninsula.
The setting: Campbell Point House on the Bellarine Peninsula.Paul Jeffers

Experiential eating is the hottest trend in hospitality right now and as chefs increasingly return to nature for inspiration, they're leaving foams and nitrogen behind.

Think Noma's Rene Redzepi and his smoked quail eggs cradled on a bed of hay, or Chilean Rodolfo Guzman, who presents smoked mussels among twigs and moss, or Spanish chef Angel Leon, who transforms plankton into an edible treat.

The Water MasterClass, an intense, outdoorsy, hands-on spin-off from the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival's signature MasterClass event, is the ultimate in experiential eating.

Rich reward: 'There is nothing like being able to taste an oyster straight out of the ocean,' says Lance Wiffen.
Rich reward: 'There is nothing like being able to taste an oyster straight out of the ocean,' says Lance Wiffen.Paul Jeffers
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The 50 participants will go on a full-circle journey celebrating that most precious of human resources, water, with the Bellarine Peninsula as their hunting ground.

"Weather permitting, it will be fresh oysters pulled from the sea and shucked on the boat," says Portarlington-based mussel and oyster farmer Lance Wiffen.

And that's just the beginning. After an excursion on one of three 12-metre boats to the Port Philip Bay mussel and oyster beds, participants will get a lesson in fly fishing and fish smoking before cooking demonstrations led by Peter Gilmore of Sydney's Quay, the UK's Nathan Outlaw (Restaurant Nathan Outlaw) and the Bellarine Peninsula's own Aaron Turner (ex-Loam), who's returning from America for the festival duration.

The dining table, styled by Bright Young Things.
The dining table, styled by Bright Young Things.Paul Jeffers

And the highlight? A four-course lunch with matching wines at one of the Bellarine Peninsula's most stunning properties, Campbell Point House at Leopold, overlooking Lake Connewarre.

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For Peter Gilmore, executive chef at Sydney's three-hat Quay restaurant, Water MasterClass is an opportunity to coalesce the food we eat and the environment from which it comes.

"A couple of months ago I did an event at the farm where we grow a lot of our vegetables, seating diners among the crops. The atmosphere you achieve by merging food and environment in that way serves as this great sense of connection," says Gilmore.

Fly fisherman Pete West.
Fly fisherman Pete West.Paul Jeffers

The event on March 15 takes a similar tack. Diners will assemble on the shores of Lake Connewarre to experience the tastes of the sea, as Gilmore demonstrates how to make a dish of scallops paired with a sauce of smoked and dried oysters, cemented anchovy water (brine leftover after anchovies are salted), cultured butter and coastal greens, among other delicacies.

But shellfish farmer Lance Wiffen says a native angasi oyster served au naturel is likely to prove a revelatory experience. "There is nothing like being able to taste an oyster straight out of the ocean. There is this really sharp, lingering flavour: when you have eaten one of those oysters, you can taste it for quite a while, not like the simple flavour of the Pacific oyster.''

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Bellarine local Peter West will share the knowledge gained from 50 years' fly-fishing experience. "It's an anti-social, bohemian business," says West of the nuanced fishing technique, promising less a chance to catch fish as an opportunity to become hooked on the pastime.

Gilmore has no doubt that will be the case. "A day like this becomes an intimate expression of the things we love to do. The excitement and interest is contagious and it inspires them [the public] just as it inspires us."

Water MasterClass, Saturday, March 15, 9am-6pm at Portarlington Pier and Campbell Point House. Cost is $825 a head, including all food, drink and return transport from a Melbourne location.

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