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Vinesmith City Cellar Door Restaurant awarded a hat by 'The Age Good Food Guide'

Vinesmith City Cellar Door in Melbourne is making waves with its acclaimed cuisine, curated wines, and expansion ambitions.

Vinesmith City Cellar Door, at 1 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, has just been awarded a hat by The Age Good Food Guide, a fantastic recognition of excellence in restaurants.

Vinesmith, which opened late last year, at the top of Flinders Lane, is a project of businessman Roger Richmond-Smith, who also owns Glenlofty Estate and Blue Pyrenees in Central Victoria’s Pyrenees region. The two-storey venue, formerly home to Kappo and Hihou, houses a cellar door at street level for winery-style tastings and a bistro upstairs with floor-to-ceiling views of Treasury Gardens. 

The Age Good Food Guide's review includes: 

(...) Vinesmith has a few secret weapons. Its service staff, helmed by venue manager Yuhan Jiang, is mostly young, French and extremely well trained. And its kitchen, led by chef Richard Hayes, is turning out excellent food that straddles the line between classic and modern French cooking with clever assuredness. Hayes is Australian, but he has trained in Paris and London, and his technical skill and talent for old-school knifework are evident.

Downstairs, there’s a flexible a la carte menu that provides snacks or a full meal; in the upstairs bistro, the dinner menu costs $95, with a choice of entree, main and dessert. (...)

There’s an elegance to this cooking that’s rare, a combination of inventiveness and classicism that strikes a perfect balance. You can tell no shortcuts have been taken, from the textbook pork and duck country terrine, to the hefty house-baked sourdough, to the intense fruit flavour packed into the blueberry sorbet on the Basque cheesecake dessert.

The wine list, as you might imagine, is dominated by Glenlofty and Blue Pyrenees, especially when it comes to glass pours. But the broader list is about 40 per cent non-house wines, which are mostly French and include some bottles of exceptional value. (...)

But what excites me most are the things that pertain to its identity as – gasp – a restaurant. The broader wine curation is fantastic, and there’s great food to be had on both levels. I’m not sure how easily replicated those elements will be in other cities, but for now we’re lucky to have this version in Melbourne.

With a hat already under its belt and Melbourne as its proving ground, Richmond-Smith is eyeing bigger horizons, with ambitions to take the Vinesmith cellar door concept to Sydney, Brisbane and even Shanghai.

Source: Vinesmith & The Age Good Food Guide