Vermont General Store

Melbourne’s milk bar resurgence has seen a wave of operators revitalise former businesses and glow-up their classic facades. For Vermont General Store, Only Hospitality Group (Bentwood, Inglewood Coffee Roasters) took on a 50-year-old suburban mixed business and freshened up the frontage with a sage-green and white paint job, and a pinstripe awning in place of the old Pura Milk and Herald Sun advertisements.

You can certainly still get milk inside, in the form of Inglewood coffee and classic malted milkshakes. But the community feel is where the milk bar nostalgia hits hardest; it’s the kind of place where locals can meet, or duck in for an emergency baguette when the bread at home runs out.

Otherwise, it’s a serious brunch operation serving acai bowls, hotcakes, a prawn-and-kimchi omelette, and an upmarket take on a benny with pulled beef and chipotle hollandaise on cornbread waffles. For lunch, you might order a burger with barbeque-glazed bacon or a vibrant falafel salad.

As you enter, cabinets filled with viennoiseries, doughnuts, ready-made sandwiches and egg muffins back up the aforementioned bread situation. Banquette seating lines one side of the dining room, punctuated by smart bentwood chairs. The shopfront isn’t the only part of the building that’s new: there’s a sunny courtyard out back, bordered fittingly by a white picket fence and shaded by canvas umbrellas.