Snack Bar: $2.50 Beers, Piccolina and Tedesca Osteria’s Gelato Collab and More Local Food News

What’s happening around town

• Melbourne’s most Tiktok-famous wine bar, Gracie’s, is changing things up after its first 12 months in biz. Chef Ronan Laird and culinary consultant Alexandra Weymouth have collaborated on a new “grown-up” menu that includes lobster rolls and tuna tostadas. The team has also released a new house orange wine, made solely from viognier grapes with the good folk at Konpira Maru. It’s $60 to drink in or $48 to take home.

• Bourke Street’s Ombra, once owned by the Grossi family, is now in the hands of Rebecca Yazbek’s Edition Group (Reine, Nomad). And it’s just introduced Free-Flowing Weekends, a $68 per person shared lunch menu of cicchetti, pasta and pizza, plus 90 minutes of bottomless beer, wine and spritzes. To start, there’s focaccia, giardiniera, mortadella with green olive and pistachio, and stracciatella with currant agro dolce. Mains include rigatoni alla vodka, plus a pizza of choice to share between two. Dessert is a Venetian carrot cake with limoncello and mascarpone, and extra dishes can be added from the à la carte menu on request. Available midday to 3pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Bookings are essential.

•  Black Pearl, one of Melbourne’s oldest and most influential cocktail bars, has built a reputation over the years for its rowdy pop-ups with top overseas bars like Please Don’t Tell and Employees Only. It’s back with another one-night extravaganza with New York bar Sip & Guzzle, currently ranked 39th on the World’s 50 Best Bar List. Expect lots of bourbon, tequila and good times. 8pm–11pm, April 19. 

• Grungy live music venue Old Bar is turning 25 and celebrating all week long with $2.50 pots of Moon Dog Roadie Draught and mystery gigs announced at 9am each day. Entry is $25 each night, with no pre-sales available. Tonight’s line-up is a goodie: Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Wicked City, The Antics, Chick and Good Music DJs. The bandroom doors open at 6pm. The bar is otherwise open 3pm–3am Thursday and Friday, and midday–3am Saturday and Sunday.

• Piccolina gelateria has dropped a banger collab for Mother’s Day, with two flavours designed by none other than Brigitte Hafner of Tedesca Osteria. Both are inspired by classic German cakes Hafner’s mother Madeleine made for her growing up. Bee-Sting is a vanilla bean gelato layered with Bienenstich (bee sting cake), featuring honey-soaked sponge, caramelised almonds and hazelnuts for “a perfect blend of soft, crunchy and creamy textures”. The second flavour sees mascarpone gelato layered with Himmelstorte (“heaven cake”), or vanilla sponge with almonds, raspberry compote and crisp meringue. The 870-millilitre tubs are $39 and can be ordered via the Piccolina website or picked up in-store from April 14 to May 10, or until sold out.

What we covered this week

• One of Melbourne’s most exciting Sri Lankan restaurants just opened inside a gin distillery.

• At CBD shop Towa, a former Yugen Tea Bar pastry chef brews, candies and bakes with tea.

• Melbourne’s never seen Korean food like that served at South Yarra newcomer Mudo.

• We got the intel on Sofia Levin’s favourite restaurants and bars, plus the banh mi she says is “one of the best-value meals in Melbourne”.

• You kept asking for dips at Tulum. The Balaclava restaurant has answered with a new meze bar.

• Burrata garlic naan and polished North Indian dishes are go at the second location of Thaali, in Fairfield. 

• After several months of delays, Jess “Lemon” Liemantara’s new bakery is almost here – for real this time.

• We took five minutes getting to know Luke Fraser, the executive chef steering French Saloon, Kirk’s and Le Pub.