Join co-authors Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood for an exclusive dining experience that celebrates ‘the bounty of Mother Earth’.
Melbourne Writers Festival has officially launched its full 2024 program with a bevy of local and international literary talent bound for Melbourne this May.
Returning to venues across the CBD and surrounds from 6–12 May, this year’s blockbuster bill is brimming with Pulitzer and Booker Prize highlights, New York Times bestselling authors, first-time guests and MWF exclusives from around the globe.
The Moat is thrilled to partner with the Festival once again, offering up a space for pre and post event conversation paired with fine food and wine. Stay tuned for more information, including our exclusive Festival cocktail!
The full program of more than 50 events featuring almost 100 of the world's most exciting writers is on sale now.
Flowers bring beauty, joy and sustenance. The cultivation of flowers is a creative gateway, allowing us to discover profound and surprising truths about ourselves. Everyone needs flowers in their life.
This February, join plant lover and author Jac Semmler as she uproots what we know about gardening, and digs into the perennial importance of flowers in our homes, communities and cities.
Over a three-course flower-inspired menu curated by The Moat, Semmler will discuss the relationship between beauty and practicality in gardening, investigate cultivating gardens in the face of climate change, and share her thoughts on the role of plants in our lives.
With a focus on abundant flora, Semmler’s book Super Bloom and its companion, The Super Bloom Handbook, offer a how-to guide for gardening that emphasises the critical role flowers play in our lives.
All tickets include a three-course plant-based meal and a glass of wine on arrival. Gluten free options available.
Photos by Sarah Pannell
"Be drunk with love!"
Join us for a love affair this Valentine’s Day.
Book now to delight your partner with a beautiful Italian dinner in the sublime surrounds of The Moat. You’ll enjoy sparkling on arrival, followed by a romantic three course meal.
Inspired equally by real life and the possibilities of the future, Sharlene Allsopp’s debut novel The Great Undoing investigates truth, identity and historical reckoning.
In the near future, all identity information is encoded in digital language. Nations know where everyone is, all the time. Scarlet Friday’s job is to correct historical record. When she is stranded on the other side of the world amidst a global digital collapse and discovers an old history book with fading text, she decides to embed a new history into its pages.
An exciting new voice in Australia’s literary landscape, Allsopp is an alumnus of The Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter program. Join the author as she launches her new work with host Sophie Black and special guests.
Rethink what it means to witness performers at their most naked, literally and figuratively.
For this Spring Fling instalment of the Next Big Thing series, we’re spotlighting new and adventurous writers whose work goes above and beyond literary boundaries.
Discover new works and celebrate fresh writing talent in a special Emerging Writers’ Festival edition of the Wheeler Centre’s much-loved Next Big Thing readings series.
Over a drink at the Moat, hear readings from some of the brightest emerging literary stars including Pip Finkemeyer (Sad Girl Novel), Dan Hogan (Secret Third Thing), Elfy Scott (The One Thing We’ve Never Spoken About), Aisling Smith (After the Rain), Grace Yee (Chinese Fish) and Tara Grace, author of ‘Perrenial Bodies’ published in Grain, the summer edition of Voiceworks.
Get on down to The Moat for the launch of the Faber Writing Anthology, featuring Melbourne’s Writing a Novel students, and hosted by novelists and tutors Miles Allinson and Emily Bitto. The Anthology features a wide range of excerpts from novels-in-progress, each of which creates an intriguing and often magical world for readers to explore.
The Moat is thrilled to support this year’s Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF), Australia’s premier festival for new and emerging writers.
To celebrate the Festival’s 20th anniversary, we’ve created two exclusive drinks:
The First Word: a heady concoction of gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur and fresh lime juice;
Sweet Nothing: a non-alcoholic blend of Lyre’s Italian Orange, apple juice, elderflower and basil.
Visit us during the Festival, from 14 to 24 June, to try one or both of these delicious drops.
Join us at the Moat for a captivating conversation and poetry reading with Anthony Joseph – poet, novelist, academic, musician and winner of this year’s TS Eliot Prize for Poetry.
The Moat is delighted to partner with the Melbourne Writers Festival once again.
For 2023, the Festival has chosen the theme I’ve Been Away For A While.
As always, we invite you to join us at The Moat before and after your Festival events to drink, dine and debrief.
Radio host and writer Jacinta Parsons discusses female ageing and ageism for the final instalment of M/OTHER's free Soapbox Series.
Writer, performance artist, sex worker and parent Frankie van Kan explores queering the parenting narrative as part of M/OTHER's free Soapbox Series.
Writer and podcaster Madison Griffiths discusses agency, choice and abortion as part of M/OTHER's free Soapbox Series.
What can we learn from fungi? In her latest book, Underground Lovers, ecologist Alison Pouliot delves into the dazzling lives of fungi to unearth the mysteries and potential of this often-unseen world.
This February, join Alison Pouliot for a surprising and informative evening exploring the science and wonder of fungi.
Over a mushroom-themed menu at the Moat, Pouliot will create an interactive fungus display, investigating the role of fungi in our ecosystems, their curious forms and ways, and how they are deeply entwined in our lives.
Join us on Thursday 16 February for an intimate wine dinner with The Wine Depository and winemaker Greg Clack from XO Wine Company.
XO Wine Company is a boutique winery hand-making small batch (sometimes just one barrel) wines from the Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale. Kate and Greg use their experience in commercial wineries to combine practical with minimal intervention and artistic flair. The result are pure wines, with a bit of funk, that taste of the variety and site.
Tickets are limited; gather your wine drinking friends and book your seats now.
"Be drunk with love!"
Join us for a love affair at the Moat.
Book now to delight your partner with a beautiful & romantic Italian dinner in the sublime surrounds of The Moat.
Valentine’s dinner includes bubbles and oysters on arrival followed by a three course set menu for $100 per person.
Please notify us of any dietaries 24 hours prior to arrival and we can sort an alternate.
Celebrate the end of the year at The Moat before we close for the holidays!
Join us on Friday 23 December for a very special Christmas Menu Finale.
You’ll enjoy three courses starting with our stracciatella, followed by your choice of our handmade pasta and finishing with our tiramisu, for $40 per person.
We're thrilled to be a part of The Wheeler Centre’s Spring Fling!
Stop by to try our special Spring Fling cocktail featuring Furneaux’s Untamed Gin, or join us for our Spring Fling Express Meal: a plate of our tagliatelle puttanesca and a glass of wine for $30.
We’re thrilled to be a partner of the Melbourne Writers Festival once again! The theme for this year’s festival, featuring celebrated writers from Australia and around the globe: Ambition.
Join us at The Moat before and after your Festival events to drink, dine and debrief! We’ll be open from midday until 10pm every day of the Festival.
World Gin Day is this Saturday 11 June. To celebrate, we’re offering Happy Hour prices all day on some of our favourite gin-based cocktails!
Wednesday 25 May is International Wine Day! To celebrate, we’ll be serving a flight of our three favourite natural wines all week long. Enjoy three wines plus our salted mixed nuts for just $25 per flight.
Heading to Art After Dark this Friday or Saturday? Make a stop at The Moat a part of your night out!
To celebrate we’ll be offering Happy Hour wine prices all Friday and Saturday, with extended opening hours. Join us for drinks from 4pm until midnight or for dinner until 10pm!
Make this Valentine’s Day one to remember in one of Melbourne’s most intimate and romantic spots.
Join us for a night of love on Monday 14 February.
Enjoy our love cocktail on arrival, designed to get the romance flowing!
Then, you and your special someone will dine on a three course menu, created by our chef especially for Valentine’s Day!
Our Valentine’s Day experience is just $100 per person - book your table for two today!
Every Wednesday from 6pm, join us for Pasta al Forno - your choice of two pastas, a salad and a glass of wine for $30.
Introducing our Aperitivo Festival, a celebration of sparkling spritzes, spuntino and socialising - book now!
Experience an Italian afternoon tea of antipasto, sweet treats and prosecco at The Moat, set to the sounds of live opera and musical theatre classics!
On 20 February, buy dinner for someone in a fire-affected community by dining at The Moat. We’ll donate half of our dinner proceedings to World Central Kitchen's Feel Good Food program currently operating in Mallacoota.
Host and dispenser of sexy advice Jess McGuire will bring together two wise and attractive panellists to solve your love conundrums. Those who wish to participate may anonymously submit their queries online. Those who don't may drink and be quietly judgmental.
Submit your romantic conundrums here.
Supported by the Wheeler Centre
Purchase tickets here: https://mwf.com.au/program/take-it-from-me-bella-green-and-ronnie-scott-5755/
