“We wanted to create a party, basically,” chef Shannon Martinez, the brains behind Welcome to the Jungle, says. “There’s still a misconception with vegan food that it’s a bit dull, a bit boring, maybe even a bit hippie. We want to show it in more of a modern sense and bring some life to it.”

There’s little chance anyone will walk away from Martinez’s Melbourne Food & Wine Festival bash with words like “dull” in mind.

On Friday April 1, Welcome to the Jungle is taking over E Shed at the Queen Victoria Market to show off the wild side of plant-based cooking. There’ll be a range of hand-held dishes from Martinez’s vegan institution Smith & Daughters, including a reworking of the restaurant’s best-selling charcoal chicken. The (vegan) chicken is reimagined as iskender kebap, a Turkish dish cooked on a spit over charcoal and served on crisp pita bread. “Imagine an HSP but instead of chips it’s crispy bread,” Martinez says. “There’ll be heaps of harissa, loads of garlic sauce, cooling tahini, nice and fresh. It’s everyone’s late night fantasy, really.”

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The other guest chefs might catch a few people by surprise, and that’s by design. “I wanted to put together a few of my favourite places around Melbourne that also might not be necessarily known for their vegan food,” Martinez says. There’ll be smoked pineapple ceviche from Rice Paper Scissors, fried tofu in Bali’s aromatic “big sauce” from Warung Agus, as well as charred corn ribs from barbeque legends Fancy Hank’s. “Their focus is definitely on barbequing and is very meat-heavy, but they do have great vegan options also,” says Martinez. “It’s introducing vegans to some restaurants that they might just walk by.”

Though food is always going to be the star of the show, Welcome to the Jungle isn’t skimping on its party promise, with the E Shed transforming into, in Martinez’s words, “a big party jungle”. There’ll be live music from the Tarantinos, whose raucous show combines classical rock theatrics with a set list entirely composed of tunes from Quentin Tarantino film soundtracks. “You go to a Tarantinos gig and you’ll have kids dancing, you’ll have those adorable 70 or 80-year-old couples that are proper dancing with each other,” says Martinez. “It’s such a broad crowd and I love that. Lots of drinking, lots of dancing. The sort of party that you wish you had in your house.”

No stranger to the decks herself, Martinez will be jumping in for a DJ set too. “I used to DJ at goth clubs, but I think that might be a bit much because we’re probably going to get some families,'' Martinez says. “Maybe I’ll go more the Cramps vibes, nice and upbeat. I don’t want it to be clubby, I just want it to be fun.”

With the event having been cancelled twice, Martinez and the team are looking forward to getting back out among the crowds. “We love it. It’s good for the team as well,” says Martinez. “We were always doing collabs and travelling around and doing events interstate, and they’re the sorts of things that keep the team excited, keep me excited.”

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This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.