Lalla Rookh Wine Store

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or in this case: one bar’s broom cupboard is another’s city-beating enoteca. Where one management team saw storage space, another saw the potential to open a warm, personable wine bar where the staff would be as engaging as the vino they were pouring. Mission accomplished, says we.

 

Save for a rotating duo of beers, this timber-rich, classically styled room stocks nowt but wines – interesting wines, mostly. Cult Australian names like Mount Mary, Yeringberg and Vasse Felix? Tick. Seldom-seen bottles of Burgundy? You got ’em. Shining examples of minimal-intervention winemaking? Naturally, but not in a slavish, dogmatic way. Likeable sommelier Jeremy Prus and his wine-loving crew adopt a broad, never-mind-the-politics outlook on wine buying and it shows on a list that sees Elisabetta Foradori’s silken teroldego from Trentino sharing column centimetres with ten-year-old riesling from WA’s Great Southern (available by the glass, no less).

 

Keeping in line with the wine list’s Italian leanings, Joel Valvasori-Pereza digs deep into his Friulian roots for food inspiration, surfacing with high-flavour hits like braised bone marrow and meaty lamb arrosticini. It’s traditionally minded yet contemporary cooking perfectly pitched at the bar’s clientele. Then again, springing for the big-value Il Capo tasting menu (six courses for $55? Bargain) is never a bad idea, nor is dropping in at midday for lunch specials like a hefty mortadella and asiago piadina plus a glass of whatever wine Prus is feeling at the time.