20 years ago this iconic restaurant made eating at the counter cool. It’s still setting the bar high

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Twenty years ago this month, MoVida opened on Hosier Lane. Eager to try the city’s new Spanish restaurant, people picked their way along the cobblestoned and graffiti-daubed laneway, pushed open a heavy door and entered the brick-floored, garlic-wafting world of this tapas bar and comedor (dining room).

There were problems in the early days. Diners had likely heard of tapas, but the larger raciones (portions) took some explaining and many people were wary of sharing a main course. Sherry was considered a grandma drink, not a sophisticated Spanish sip.

The biggest issue was the bar, though. Chef and co-owner Frank Camorra would often look over the kitchen pass in puzzled lament. The dining room was full – there may even have been a queue outside – but the bar was empty. Melbourne diners didn’t think sitting at a counter-top was a proper night out. Imagine taking a date to eat at a bar: impossible!

It took months of cajoling and enticing and then, one night, a shift occurred. Camorra looked up from his sizzling pan and saw every bar stool occupied, a convivial throng of hungry, happy humanity.

MoVida hasn’t looked back. In two decades, Melbourne has become so familiar with tapas that we’ve moved on to pintxos (snacks on sticks from the Basque country) and back again. We know it’s acceptable – delightful, even – for a bar to serve sardines in the tin. Sherry? Do you mean elegant Amontillado or sticky Pedro Ximenez? We’re all about it.

A lot of that is thanks to Barcelona-born Camorra, his business partner Andy McMahon and various collaborators and financiers over the years.

The MoVida family of restaurants expanded to Sydney, Bali and Lorne, all since closed. A Sydney airport pitstop is in hibernation; an Auckland branch opened last year.

There are two other Melbourne MoVidas: MoVida Next Door (yes, it’s adjacent to the original and is my favourite spot for snacky catch-ups) and the recently renovated MoVida Aqui in the legal district. MoVida had a bakery for a while, and there’s an import business supplying such delights as jamon and anchovies. It’s a spirited little empire with the benign aim of sharing Spanish dining culture.

This ethos is evident in all its iterations, but the seat of the convivial conquistador is here: MoVida Original.

This is where you come for classic dishes and creative forays from head chef Kane Vokoun in a dining den that has barely changed over the years. The staff know their stuff and the experience is smooth.

Excellent sourdough is made by Toan Long, MoVida’s longest-serving employee and the restaurant’s in-house baker for the past 10 years. Long also bakes the tin loaf that’s turned into crackers for MoVida’s most famous dish: the anchovy on toast with capers, parsley and smoked tomato sorbet ($6.50).

This alluring amalgam of crunchy, oily, salty, cold, fresh and smoky started as a mistake: Camorra had too many smoked tomatoes, spun them into a sorbet so they weren’t lying around and there they sat until the chef had a tapas brainwave.

Jamon Iberico – cured pork from acorn-eating Spanish pigs – is aged for three years. It’s melting, sweet, decadent (expensive, too, at $55 for 60 grams) and served with pan Catalan (grilled bread rubbed with garlic and tomato).

No matter how hot the weather, people come for lip-stickingly succulent beef cheek braised in Pedro Ximenez sherry ($38).

Flan – like creme caramel – is a classic, both of the restaurant and the country it’s channelling. There’s nothing innovative about this just-set custard ($17), but it’s wobbly perfection.

There’s one dish I never need to see again. Cecina – air-dried beef – dolloped with truffled potato foam and poached egg ($35) can stay in 2007, when it was The Age Good Food Guide’s Dish of the Year. I’m an outlier, though: there will be complaints if this squidgy symphony is ever prised from the menu.

Give me the robust pleasure of the pincho ($12) – a skewer of textured wagyu skirt steak with sherry and onion sauce – or the paella ($60), which spins a Valencia classic with rabbit and snails into a dressy Melbourne rice party with rabbit and periwinkles. Eat it in Spain and you’d likely get rabbity chunks arranged in the pan.

The MoVida rendition is more composed: rabbit leg is poached in oil and the loin is wrapped in lardo and gently cooked, so it’s juicy and tender, overlaying fine-dining finesse on a Spanish classic. It’s emblematic of MoVida: storied, thoughtful and terrifically tasty.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine