Every year the Port Phillip Mussel & Jazz Festival brings a lively street party celebrating music and molluscs in all forms to South Melbourne Market!
Take the family to feast on seafood and drinks, all to the sounds of Melbourne’s hottest jazz.
Both sides of Cecil Street are closed to the public between Coventry and York Streets so there’s more space to roam. However, it is a very popular event so you might find pushing a pram through the crowd hard going.
Also, shade is hard to come by so make sure you wear a hat and sunscreen and take a reusable water bottle to keep hydrated.
As for food, think sangria and piping hot mussel paella, wok cooked drunken mussels and craft beer, buttermilk-battered mussels served with crispy cos lettuce and chimichuri.
All of the food is by South Melbourne Market restaurants such as Bambu, Claypots Evening Star, Köy and Simply Spanish as well as other pop up providers.
Fun for the kids includes free face painting, stilt walkers Bouncing Beach Patrol and of course just listening to great music!
The seafood festival is also unique because it is teaming up The Nature Conservancy to support their Shuck Don’t Chuck project.
The impressive initiative means that the more than 200,000 mussel shells discarded during the two-day festival (as well as the shells discarded during South Melbourne Market’s day-to-day trading) are recycled to help restore Port Phillip Bay’s shellfish reefs.
Restoring the reefs means protecting and regenerating delicate ecosystems which have been destroyed by over-harvesting, water pollution, introduced species and disease.
The project not only diverts waste from landfill; it creates a cleaner and healthier bay. Already the project has restored 2.5 hectares of shellfish reefs in Port Phillip Bay – the equivalent size of the MCG.
