The quintessential drink-and-dine-in wine shop, the City Wine Shop was integral to shaping Melbourne’s wine-loving reputation, and it continues to be just as relevant today. You can eat and drink very well here, or pick at some simple plates and have a glass or two, or simply have a beer at the outdoor tables in this most European corner of Melbourne.
If you’re taking a bottle home, just next door is the sibling Spring Street Grocer, where you can pick up stunning cheese and premium grocery items, along with gelato to go.
Oddly, with a few notable exceptions, it took a surprisingly long time for this successful model to catch on more broadly, but catch on it did. The City Wine Shop, though, remains the reference point, the platonic ideal of Melbourne’s casual wine revolution. Indeed, it’s hard to overestimate the importance of the City Wine Shop, with alumni fanning out into making, selling, importing, writing about and judging wine in a variety of interesting and influential ways.
The wine offer runs to some 1,200 lines, with many on display on the wine wall and in the fridges, though some with heftier price tags slumber in the sliver of cellar that runs adjacent to the vast, sunken communal table that runs the length of the back room. The by-the-glass selection tops out at about 25, with featured bottles set into one of the recessed shelves in the olive-green tiled back bar. Changes are made to both lists in a ever-evolving way, typically daily.
Today, the City Wine Shop would be entirely familiar to anyone who walked through the doors 17 years ago and not since. Everything remains in its place, friendly black-clad staff, hand-chalked specials, and even classic menu items like the schnitzel and tuna niçoise remain unchanged, but not out of habit, simply because they have endured well, just like the timeless interior.
While 2004 is hardly that long ago, it is in the veritable mists of time in respect to how much the wine-dispensing game has changed in Melbourne. Back then, James Broadway, an importer of Italian wine and Slow Food evangelist, and chef Brigitte Hafner, who had worked with Neil Perry, Kylie Kwong, Guy Grossi, Greg…
Words like ‘institution’ and ‘iconic’ get tossed around a lot, and not always with deep justification. But France-Soir, near the top of the Toorak Road hill in Melbourne’s South Yarra, has earned both of those monikers, and some time ago. It is indeed an iconic institution, and an establishment with a loyal following that few…
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,…
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