Coming Soon: The Donovans Team to Open New Hawksburn Village Wine Bar

It’s been three years since Gail and Kevin Donovan passed Donovans to long-time general manager Nick Parkhouse and his business partner Andrew Renfrey. 

Now Parkhouse, a career sommelier, is proving not just a worthy custodian of the St Kilda institution, but a restaurateur capable of expanding its influence. In January he and Renfrey will open 597 Hawksburn, a wine bar and bistro in Toorak’s Hawksburn Village.

“We want to spread the warmth and joy of hospitality that we do so well at Donovans,” Parkhouse says. “When you think of Hawksburn, Bistro Thierry is one of those fantastic, awesome places, but that neck of the woods hasn’t really had many other wonderful things.”

They plan to enliven the strip with a 90-seat restaurant where bottles of wine and comfortable banquette seating line the walls. A flexible, share-friendly menu will draw mainly from France, Spain, Italy and the broader Mediterranean area. Asian flavours will appear sometimes, where it feels appropriate. “It’s going to be ‘modern Australian’,” Parkhouse says, laughing. “If you can call it that. It’s such a wonderfully nondescript term. I actually hate using it.”

He’s still working on wine but reckons the final list will end up somewhere between 200 and 250 bottles, about a third the size of his list at Donovans. 597 Hawksburn being a blank slate means he’ll have more scope to showcase young and emerging winemakers than he might at Donovans. Victorian and South Australian producers will get particular love, with prestige wines from France and Italy also on hand for Hawksburn Village’s well-heeled clientele.

597 Hawksburn will open in January 2027 at 597 Malvern Road, Toorak.