The Cellar & Caffetteria is found beneath Rodd & Gunn’s new four-storey menswear store on Little Collins street.
Not since the heyday of bricks-and-mortar retail has a Melbourne shop blended fashion and hospitality quite as ambitiously as New Zealand label Rodd & Gunn’s new four-storey menswear store. It includes two distinct dining spaces, a members’ bar, a cocktail lab by a big Melbourne name and a retail shop.
After entering off Union Lane from Little Collins Street, a steep tunnel-like stairwell leads you into the basement. It opens up into the Cellar & Caffetteria, a cavernous wine bar and bottle shop with Italian food plus cocktails created by Matt Bax, founder of the acclaimed but now-closed Bar Americano. It’s name is a nod to the Coles cafeteria that operated in the building until 1987.
More than 350 bottles run the gamut from Burgundy to the Barossa Valley, with a specific section for Rodd & Gunn-branded wines that spotlight New Zealand grapes. Visitors can grab a bottle to go, or to drink in the adjacent tartan-carpeted bar and dining area. Completing the equation is a snackable, shareable menu by group executive chef Matt Lambert, whose New York restaurant The Musket Room earned a Michelin star in 2014.
Vitello tonnato entwines roasted veal loin with corned wagyu tongue, adding parsley oil and chopped cornichons for brightness. Handmade pastas range from mafaldine, a ruffle-edged long pasta, with wild-boar ragu to the Italo-American paccheri alla vodka. To share, a whole roasted Bannockburn chicken comes with panzanella, the tomato and bread salad.
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