Good Times Pasta Bar is facing every restaurant’s dream challenge: it’s “getting too busy”, co-owner Chelsea Davis tells Broadsheet.

The late-night Italian hotspot in Fitzroy North, which dishes up affordable pastas and $9 Negronis, attracts up to 400 patrons a night. It’s rambunctious, youthful, a little hectic and a whole lot of fun.

Now, Davis and co-owner Jarrod Agatanovic are opening Times New Roman – Good Times’ “older sister”. The new venue, in a former Japanese restaurant on Lygon Street in Brunswick East, will still be vibrant and loud, but with a slightly more refined feel.

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Good Times is known as a place for everyone, hosting everybody from “18-year-olds having dates because they couldn’t [afford] to go elsewhere” to wedding parties, Davis says. The focus at Times New Roman will also be on comfort, ease and affordability. “At a lot of wine bars, the food can get complicated. You’re reading a menu and you don’t even know what half the words are. We’re trying not to do that.”

Pastas will range from $6 to $18; changing wine bar snacks such as cheeses, breads, pickles and tinned fish will be around $6; and the signature peach punch will be $6 a glass.

The fit-out – intimate booths, homey share tables and plenty of noise-insulating curtains and low lighting – has been done with largely recycled materials. Davis says the renovation has only generated two buckets of waste. The space is inspired by the restaurant’s name, embellished with decorations reminiscent of a Roman bathhouse: angel pendants hang on the walls, a water fountain features in the back garden and the walls are colour matched to a marble statue.

As for the name? The team wanted something that still referenced Good Times without using the same phrase as their OG spot. Plus, just like its “younger sister”, Times New Roman will be open for dinner on Thursdays and Fridays, and for lunch and dinner on Saturdays.

Times New Roman is expected to open on April 3, 2025, at 66 Lygon Street, Brunswick East.