The Latest

Cousins and business partners Tom Gunn (Capitano, Proud Mary) and Grace Dowell (Proud Mary) are behind Marama, a sleek neighbourhood wine bar with a focus on local produce and wine.

The bar pairs a share-plate menu with warm and neighbourly hospitality. The produce largely comes from Victorian farms or from businesses within the bar’s five-kilometre radius. You might start with focaccia (with maple leaf butter) from Brunswick’s Wild Life Bakery, zucchini flowers stuffed with goat’s curd, or steak tartare with potato chips, before moving onto barramundi with romesco and crisp Tuscan kale, or crumbed chicken with caper butter, fennel and kohlrabi.

The drinks list is also locally focused: the beers are all Victorian, including pilsner on tap from Banks Brewery and tinnies from Abbotsford’s Bodriggy, and the wine list favours small local producers like Mac Forbes, Latta and Little Rara. Cocktails stick to the classics, made with Aussie spirits and liqueurs including Four Pillars ’ olive leaf gin and Tasmania’s Spring Bay single-malt whisky.

The fit-out – designed by Gunn's partner and completed by Dowell's father – has an industrial feel that riffs off cocktail bars found in Manhattan. The floor is polished concrete, the walls are brushed white plaster and the furniture is detailed with a charcoal blood-orange colour palette, and a striking L-shaped velveteen banquette.