Gray & Gray Bread and Wine: Northcote's new Russian-Georgian wine bar

If you frequent Melbourne’s wonderful wine bars – think Etta, Embla, Marion, Congress and Carlton Wine Room – Gray and Gray Bread and Wine (GGBW) is a revelation. While others serve produce-driven, mod Euro-Australian cuisine, GGBW plates Georgian-Russian nosh. It’s an early call, but it’s a contender for my favourite meal of 2021.

 The name comes from the former tenant, a legal firm established in the 1930s. The original gold leaf sign remains, and the office-y vertical blinds are a nice touch. GGBW is dimly lit and romantic, but light streams from the pass where Boris Portnoy, previously a three-Michelin-star pastry chef, assembles a $60 four-course tasting menu with lockdown condiments: pickles and bread from his next-door bakery, All Are Welcome.

 The bread course arrives with three “fats” (cultured butter, cured lard and Russian sheep’s milk cheese called brinza), along with lacto-fermented, beet-stained dill cucumbers and Georgian pickled green tomatoes. Mackerel replaces herring in a pickled fish dish called selyodka. Grilled ox tongue is skewered with buzhenina (Russian roast pork) on tart blood plum sauce. Boris shares vegetables from his garden and house-made cheese (three kitchen timers are set to 45-minutes, 1.5 hours and three hours to keep on top of prep).

 The main event is coulibiac, a puff pastry salmon pie bursting with buckwheat, mushrooms, spinach and a hard-boiled egg that takes three days to make. To finish, All Are Welcome’s medovik is 10 layers of Tasmanian leatherwood honey-biscuit decadence alternating with dulce de leche Swiss buttercream. Makovy, a poppy seed-fig torte, sends you over the edge in the best way.

 Co-owner and winemaker Mitch Sokolin looks after the drinks department. Try Georgian wine and uncommon bottles from Europe, then continue your education with a bottle from the small retail section on the way out.

188 High Street, Northcote

breadandwine.com.au

What’s nearby?

Cross the road and walk 120 metres to Irish whiskey bar and bookshop, Buck Mulligan’s. It has Melbourne’s largest selection of Irish whiskey with live music and tastings (check online at buckmulligans.com.au). Sit at the bar, in a cosy nook or the courtyard as you browse Irish literature and snack on black pudding and pork pies.