Rowena Yip
Chefs
AUSTRALIAN GOOD FOOD GUIDE - Home of the Chef Hat Awards
Frank Camorra
October 2012
Taking Tapas to New Heights & Even To-Go
Frank laughs quietly, thinking back 30 years when he moved with his parents to Australia from Andalusia, Spain. Back then Spanish cuisine was lean in the mod Aus dining scene, remaining that way well until the mid ‘90s. When Frank Camorra’s own vision manifested with MoVida Melbourne in 2003, the delicious cuisine and fun-loving dining culture of Spain really kicked it up a notch with industry awards to follow.
Sturdy and uncompromising in his approach, Frank remained true to the dining style of his youth from the get-go. Today his MoVida (Spanish for party) enterprise includes their hatted flagship MoVida restaurant in Melbourne’s Hosier Lane, three other restaurants - including Paco’s Tacos, serving up tapas to-go at festivals in their colourful van - a bakery, and Bar Pulpo (Spanish for Octopus) that opened last winter, providing finer food for international travellers at Melbourne Airport.
With success in his Spanish Australian blood and confidence to boot, Frank Camorra is flying to new heights once again with MoVida Sydney on the horizon. Crossing the great gastronomic Melbourne/Sydney divide, his newest establishment will officially open in Surry Hills sometime in October 2012.
Having mastered Spanish cuisine, this popular chef is now applying his creative hand to nouns and verbs. The MoVida restaurant owner has three books to his name, including MoVida Cocina (Murdoch, 2011) and began writing his own weekly SMH recipe column this year.
Considering the MoVida Sydney team just hung the art on the walls - their grand opening is only weeks away - and that Frank is relocating to Sydney for six months to stand at the kitchen helm, he was surprisingly calm and generous with his time when speaking with us, exuding that relaxed Spanish way even amongst it all.
