Eating Melbourne

City Wine Shop, 159 Spring St, Melbourne. (03) 9654 6657; www.citywineshop.net.au. M-F 7am-late, Sat/Sun 9am-late. 

City Wine Shop has been open for a few years now, and is the sort of place that’s so quietly good, somehow it ends up being the answer to many of these sorts of dining/drinking dilemmas:

“Where can I meet such-and-such for a decent coffee?”

“Where can we go for a nice casual lunch with a good glass of wine?”

“Where can we go for drinks after work, and maybe a few snacks?”

“Where in the city can I pick up a nice bottle of wine to take to that dinner party tonight?”

Part of the reason why I end up there so often is because it’s so diverse in its offerings. Not in a trying-to-be-too-many-things sort of way, mind you. It’s like they said, “Hey, let’s open a boutique wine store in the city. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a spot for punters to sit and have a glass of the wine? And perhaps they might get hungry, so let’s offer some nice bar snacks. But also some more substantial food, in case they want lunch. Oh, and they’ll probably want a coffee before they leave, so we’ll do coffee as well.”   It all just flows and fits together.

First, the wine shop part. Inside there’s a lovely wine wall (left), where you can browse the range of Australian and international wines. The staff are very helpful if you need some advice on what to pick; prices aren’t Dan Murphys but are reasonable.

Once you’ve picked out your wine, you can either take it home, or let them open it for you ($15 corkage) and drink it sitting inside at the bar, or outside at the little tables.

They also have a by-the-glass wine list that changes daily, from around $10-$16 a glass. There’s generally some pretty interesting stuff on there; not like most places, where they might have some good stuff by the bottle but the list by the glass is boring as bat-shit.  There’s also a list of bar snacks – olives, sliced meats, etc – if you want just a little something to munch.

One fine sunny Sunday, Dan, Noush, J and I found ourselves, yet again, with “City Wine Shop” coming up as the answer to “where shall we go for lunch”. We sat outside with a bottle of Chablis and ordered some food. Dan and I both had the chicken schnitzel with Italian coleslaw ($24):

Such a simple dish, but they use excellent produce and execute it perfectly. The chicken is a whole bone-in breast, with a crunchy herb crumb on the outside (no packet breadcrumbs here) and juicy, juicy meat on the inside.

The coleslaw is zingy and light, with a bit of parmesan and basil mixed through; I think maybe some fennel too? Anyway, delicious.

Noush and J both ordered the seared tuna nicoise ($25):

which arrived looking less like a salad and more like a deconstructed cascade of chargrilled tuna, roasted baby potatoes, olives, beans, a poached egg and some white anchovies. I stole a few of J’s beans and they had a zippy, creamy aioli type dressing.

As meals with Dan often do, a “light lunch” somehow morphed into “sure, let’s have cheese AND dessert”; so we ordered some Delice de Bourgogne, plus a blue cheese that I’ve forgotten what it was:

The cheeses come with a selection of sliced fresh bread, lavosh and water crackers. The Delice arrives with some quince paste, fresh green apple slices and walnuts. Oh, I do like cheese with proper accompaniments. The blue cheese, meanwhile, arrived with a rather intriguing ball-shaped pastry tart:

which turns out to be a rather marvellous little currant pie, encased in flaky shortcrust. The dark fruity curranty filling was amazing with the blue cheese.

And finally, chocolate fondant with icecream (sorry, didn’t write down the price of this, but their desserts are generally $12-$14):

This was baked to order and arrived scalding-hot on the table; I took a mouthful too soon and burnt the roof of my mouth. Yeow!! (Note to self: patience is a virtue.)  I think this was the
only dish I didn’t love on the day, although possibly that opinion could have been skewed by aforementioned mouth-burning incident, and also the fact that I don’t really go much on chocolate desserts in general.

Staff are pretty good here, they know their stuff when it comes to the wines and are generally very efficient, although a bit more smiley-ness wouldn’t go astray. 

The only other thing that I could possibly pick out as a negative is that the round outdoor tables are VERY tiny (it was a real squish to get four main course plates on), and the stools don’t have backs on them so they can get a bit uncomfortable to sit on after a while. But that’s about it. In every other way I adore this place, and will no doubt return next time I need a nice bottle of wine. Or a glass of wine. Or a coffee, or a bit of lunch…