For a laid-back venue, Bar Liberty has some serious fine-dining chops, both in the kitchen and on the floor. You can eat extremely well here, but it’s just as welcoming for the casual visitor elbows-down on the bar or soaking up the sun in the courtyard, beer in hand.
The suits, ties and some of the decorum have long been left on the hanger, with the tone of Bar Liberty very much more casual, focusing on warm hospitality and an offering, both food and wine, that reflects the personal preferences of the owners.
The constantly evolving wine list of about 200 or so bins is more or less evenly split between domestic and imported and can be broadly categorised as favouring minimal-intervention wines, with the focus on sustainable farming practices. Feature pages delve deeper into particular subjects, whether they be explorations of the wines of the Jura, Basket Range or Beaujolais. About 15 wines are on the pour at any one time. And the liquid offer goes well beyond wine, with thoughtful digressions into all that ferments and can be distilled – there are three sakés by the glass, too.
Wall hails from North Carolina, and prior to opening Rockwell and Sons – a Southern barbecue and fried chicken experience seen through a more sophisticated lens – was cooking at Cutler & Co. Wall now focuses his energy across the group, with Falco, their sourdough bakery that replaced Rockwell and Sons in 2019, as well as Capitano, their Italian-American pizza and pasta restaurant, also in the stable.
Head chef Zackary Furst has now taken charge of the pans, having notably worked for two years under Ben Shewry at Attica, as well as with fellow Attica alumn Peter Gunn at Ides. Furst’s food knits into the wine-friendly fare that Wall had established, with pickling and fermenting getting ample airtime. Wholemeal sourdough flatbread with butter curd, pickled green tomatoes and a dish of kraut and chicken jus have become mainstays.
Some years back, Christian McCabe left behind successful restaurant Matterhorn, in Wellington, to try his luck across the Tasman. That first venture was the celebrated, though now closed, Town Mouse in Drummond Street, Carlton. Along with Town Mouse chef and co-owner Dave Verheul (a Matterhorn alumnus), McCabe branched out further, and more boldly, in 2015,…
Just as Con Christopoulos was almost single-handedly responsible for reclaiming the Paris end of Melbourne’s city from what looked like terminal decline some decades ago, he too is redrawing the borders west of Elizabeth Street. In territory mired in restaurant touts, with menus pitched mainly to a tourist audience, and otherwise populated by city workers…
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