The Florian Team Opens a Takeaway Shop on Rathdowne Street

When Florian owners Dom Gattermayr and Rose Richards opened their Rathdowne Village cafe in 2021, they had a simple vision. Create a welcoming space grounded in hospitality with a pared-back, produce-driven menu. It worked – almost too well. Lines became the norm, with locals joined by people who travelled across Melbourne for gruyere omelettes and seasonal tartines. Even Wuthering Heights star Jacob Elordi dropped in for bacon and soft-boiled eggs.  

Gattermayr and Richards followed it up in 2023 with Juniper, a smaller all-day cafe in a timber-rich room on Coventry Street, South Melbourne. In April last year, their homewares store Florian Home opened next door to the Rathdowne Street original. 

And now there’s Florian To Go, a takeaway venue designed to take pressure off the original cafe. “It’s not a new shop opening,” says Richards. “It’s just an extension of what we were already doing, that will give Florian the space to just operate as a sit-down cafe.” 

To Go opened last week at 619 Rathdowne Street in the former Florian Home space, while the homewares store has shifted next door into a larger site at 621. The mini Florian empire now spans three sequential shopfronts, but the growth was organic and a reflection of the pair’s aim to create something community-focused. “We love being here, it feels special,” says Gattermayr. “You can work for a big business, or you can build something smaller, creative and good for the people inside it. For us, that makes it all worth it.”

At To Go, food is seasonal. Daily salads have so far included a cabbage, cucumber and dill number with a buttermilk dressing; changing sandwiches such as ham baguettes served on Iris the Bakery bread and hot sopressa (pork salami) sandwiches on Austro Bakery focaccia; and house-baked goods such as Anzac biscuits and small carrot cakes. There’s Allpress coffee, daily juices, matcha, iced tea and infused cold brew. In time, there will also be Thai takeaway, a natural extension of the cafe’s popular Thai nights. 

The shop also features a small retail section that Gattermayr says “is all about spotlighting independent producers”. This will include products from Adam James’s Rough Rice – a range of fermented tonics, chillies and salts made in Tasmania by The Agrarian Kitchen teacher.

Design-wise, the space mirrors Florian’s lived-in charm and Scandi aesthetic. The front window features a mural by local artist Georgia Harding, who also painted the mural at Butcher’s Diner. An open kitchen feeds straight into the counter. “What you see is what you get,” says Gattermayr. 

Florian To Go
619 Rathdowne Street, Carlton North
No phone

Hours:
Daily 7.30am–3pm

www.floriancarlton.com.au
@florian.eatery