Smart, compact, hospitable, interesting and, importantly, serving the tasty goods, this is the poster child for the modern neighbourhood wine bar and bottle shop mash-up.
Melbourne has witnessed a slow-rolling wine-bar boom for more than a decade and its city and suburbs are now liberally seeded with small, owner-operated joints that have a particular point of view. Fitzroy North’s Public Wine Shop is evidence that this evolution has been a force for good. Run by husband-and-wife team Charlotte Ryan and Campbell Burton, Public is a compact, good-looking space that packs people onto a central communal table, sells them standout wine to drink in or take away and feeds them some of the most delicious wine-friendly food in town.
Burton is a well-known wine guy about town both from his stints in places such as The Builders Arms in Fitzroy and his wine-importing business, which champions small-scale producers and organic and additive-free labels. Natural, if you must. He’s also one of Melbourne’s early adopters of this kind of wine-making and has been highly influential in opening locals’ minds to giving it a go, mostly because he knows his stuff and can talk to you about it without boring you to death.
There’s a definite European influence to this small shopfront wine bar – having food prepared and takeaway wine sold in the same room where you’re eating and drinking helps – but there’s also a focused, friendly and informative approach here that’s all Melbourne.
Those not comfortable sitting at close quarters with their fellow humans might find the communal nature of the seating here confronting, as will those who prefer chairs to stools. Otherwise this small shopfront with its cork ceiling, rows of bottles on floating shelves against whitewashed brick walls, original front window with lead-light detailing and the bespoke timber table at its centre will have most people feeling pretty good about themselves.
Obviously, the wine plays its role. The 10 or so choices by the glass always offer an exciting variety from across the globe such as “orange” pinot gris from the Adelaide Hills or Spanish sparkling wine made with exotic grape varieties like xarel-lo and parellada. But in the excitement stakes, you’d have to give the food equal billing. Chef Ali Currey-Voumard, who made a splash in her first head chef role at the acclaimed Agrarian Kitchen in Tasmania, does incredible things with simple combinations of great ingredients, seen in the likes of fresh asparagus with an amazingly good gribiche sauce of boiled egg, caper and mustard, marinated artichokes on olive crostini, and delicate goat’s cheese tarts topped with broad beans and rocket. Add top-notch cured meats and cheese and you have one of those menus with enough going on to easily take it from snacks to dinner. It can get noisy in the tight space when all the seats at the table are taken and punters are enthusiastically enjoying their wine, but the service is so good – friendly, funny and laid-back – and the atmosphere so companionable that it all becomes part of the fun.
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