First Look: Two Cam’s Alums Turn Their Former Workplace Into Bar Familiar

For 17 years, Cam’s Kiosk was a fixture at Abbotsford Convent. When it suddenly closed in June, long-time colleagues Alessia Augello and Stephanie Lane found themselves at a crossroads. The pair had spent about five years working across Cam’s and sibling venue Julie.

“We’ve talked in the past about doing something together and dreaming about what it would look like if we opened our own space,” Augello says.

When the opportunity presented itself, they moved quickly.

Rather than wait to see what would replace Cam’s, they put together a business proposal and approached Abbotsford Convent themselves. Just over a month after they knocked down the first wall, Bar Familiar is open. While there’s something fitting about the name – regulars will recognise some of the faces returning to work there, as well as the ease of spending a few hours in the convent setting – Augello and Lane are clear this isn’t Cam’s 2.0. Bar Familiar is their first venue as owners and a chance to establish an identity of their own.

The pair describe it as European-leaning, but not necessarily the same way we’re used to seeing it done around Melbourne. For Augello, who’s Italian and has family in Italy, it’s less about replicating a particular cuisine and more about the culture of hospitality she grew up around: long lunches, spontaneous drinks, warm service and the feeling there’s nowhere else you particularly need to be. “It’s social. There’s an unpretentious energy about it,” she says.

That feeling extends to the fit-out. Completed in just over a month with the help of Lane’s dad and his team, it embraces much of what was already there, adding bold colour, textured fabrics, natural timber and touches of red velvet. A 1970s Italian upholstered sideboard greets guests at the reworked bar entrance, while two custom sculptural lights are still to come.

In the kitchen, former Cam’s head chef Alisha Grant returns to lead a similarly unfussy food offering. Grant started her career at Crafers Hotel in the Adelaide Hills before moving to Melbourne, working at Natural History Bar & Grill and eventually becoming head chef at Stomping Ground. She spent the past three years at Cam’s.

The full all-day menu features crab toast with lemon, lovage and crème fraîche; Wagyu tartare with bone-marrow aioli, chilli oil and crisps; spaghetti Napoli with Reggiano and buffalo mozzarella; and vongole and mussels with chilli and garlic. House-made focaccia sandwiches and sourdough toasties round things out, while the cabinet will be stacked with daily pastries from Austro, sweets and Baker Bleu loaves on weekends. “We’re not here to reinvent the wheel,” Augello says. “We’re here to make the things the neighbourhood already loves really, really well.”

For now, Bar Familiar is daytime only, with evening service and a broader drinks program planned for late October.

There’s something quietly inspiring about two friends reaching the end of a journey, taking stock, looking at a place they already knew intimately and deciding not to walk away, backing themselves to build something of their own. Perhaps the most familiar thing about Bar Familiar, then, is the feeling that the best hospitality often starts this way: with a place you love, someone you trust and the courage to have a go.

Bar Familiar
1 St Heliers Street, Abbotsford

Hours:
Wed to Sun 8am–3pm

barfamiliar.com.au
@bar.familiar.melbourne