The lowdown
A smart restaurant, cutting-edge wine bar, creative cocktail lounge, and all in a stunning heritage building with super-chilled service and vibe? Count us in.
The regular’s tip
You canât not order the curried fries.
The nuts & bolts
Opened 2021
Only a few short months since opening in July 2021, Nieuw Ruin has established itself as one of the best places to drink wine in Freemantle â if not the greater Perth region.
Owner Dimitri Rtshiladze, who also owns CBD basement bar Foxtrot Unicorn, says Nieuw Ruin is just a vessel for people having a great time. âItâs about substance over any kind of faux ethos.â No matter what youâre drinking, there are always stools at the bar, a bartender to chat to, and a bowl of curried hot chips to snack on.
The eclectic venue occupies a 150-year-old heritage cottage on Norfolk Street. The property is surrounded by an outside veranda decked out with jarrah high tops, and four-legged friends are more than welcome â theyâre encouraged, in fact. Inside, itâs a cavern of wine-lined rooms with marble fireplaces and communal tables. Sit anywhere you like.
There is no printed bottle list, instead the venueâs 300+ bottle options are displayed around the room with hand-written prices on ceiling-high shelving. Itâs an incredibly diverse collection. âWe havenât pigeonholed ourselves into one style,â says Nieuw Ruin manager Maria Marter
Youâll find bottles from as close as the Swan Valley â just half an hour away â and as far as Mt Etna in Italy. âHonestly it doesnât matter where is comes from⊠if itâs tasty, weâre going to order a case,â Marter says. The glass list is currently all Australian, except for one Italian sparkling. West Australian wines get a good look in, but there are bottles from Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia, too.
The food menu is available from open until close, with head chef and resident DJ Blaze Young turning out Euro-style bistro dishes plated with some serious 1970s vibes. Garfish fillets are pickled and rolled onto skewers (strongly recommend next to a gibson martini or a crisp glass of vermentino), â and a salted monkfish, egg, carrot and beetroot salad is not only circular, but five tiers high.
âBeing able to work with fresh mushrooms that were harvested a few hours before they arrive in your kitchen, or a pristine pink snapper that came off the boat that morning. That’s what gets me excited,â Young says.
Beyond the kitchen, the staff pride themselves on an eclectic and expansive beverage offering, but they donât take themselves too seriously. âIf you want to nerd out with someone, then weâre here to chew your ear off on soil types,â Marter says. âBut we also strongly encourage smashing back a pĂ©t-nat on the veranda and using terms like âjuicy banger’.â
