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MELBOURNE | After standing vacant for years, the boards have finally come off the old Resurrection space and Old Palm Liquor is the result. The highly anticipated venue is from Simon Denman and chef Almay Jordaan, the duo behind Fitzroy North’s Neighbourhood Wine.
It’s a casual space, with lots of browns and timber, a long blackwood bar, and curved wooden ceiling fans. Past the open kitchen and out the back, the vibe is similarly relaxed, with a sort of indoor plantation meets the 1970s atmosphere. It works.
Denman and Jordaan have described Old Palm liquor as more of a casual pub than a restaurant, and while you can certainly pop in for a drink, the seating and table arrangements in both rooms and the quality and breadth of the food menu mean that does lean more towards the restaurant side of things. Drinks wise, the focus is on wine. There’s over 300 low-intervention and biodynamic wines on offer from Australia and further abroad, covering the familiar style to the more quirky. For beer fans there’s 12 beers of mostly local crafty drops on tap, along with a few aperitifs and cocktails.
Moving on to food, and the menu is centred around a large wood-fired grill. The food draws upon Jordaan’s South Africa heritage and is very good. For snacks, the beef tartare with biltong spices and Nardin anchovy atop a buckwheat cracker is already a contender for one of Melbourne’s best bar snacks, as is the fried shallot with cashew sour cream, and pickled jalapeño. The dolma pepper with a Turkish cheese and macadamia is rather brilliant too.
From the small plates section, the South Australian kingfish crudo with pickled elderflower, bronze fennel flower, and horseradish is a light and refreshing delight. Also worth trying is the sugar snap peas with crushed corn, pecorino, and smoked chilli.
For larger plates, try the wonderfully delicious free-range Victorian pork chop with peppers and apricot za’atar, and the tender Southern Ranges scotch fillet with mustard shallots and mustard leaf. For sides, the fried potatoes with gravy are a must.
When we visited, service was friendly but somewhat disjointed and prices for the food are on the higher end of the scale compared to similar places around town, but there’s no doubting that, as a complete package, Old Palm Liquor lives up to expectations.
Old Palm Liquor
133B Lygon Street
Brunswick East
Victoria 3057
Australia
Telephone: (03) 9380 2132
E-mail: [email protected]
Website
Open
Tue – Sun: 12:00pm to 12:00am