Bijou Bottle Store — Restaurant in Melbourne

I've walked by this place so many times the last few years, and it's always been full to the brim - leaving me to wander off elsewhere to consider. Yesterday was finally opportune time to stop in for a drink and some snacks, as it was still early in the afternoon before everyone left work. I popped in for a few drinks and some snacks.

As this is a bottle shop, everything is available for takeaway, and customers are constantly popping in to grab a bottle for home. There is no printed drinks menu, which affords the staff a lot of flexibility in what to have open, keep the rotation fresh and interesting. I asked for a glass of champagne and was poured a glass of Vilmart & Co for $25 - a steal in Melbourne's highly competitive wine bar scene, and the pour was generous. After, I ordered a glass of Domaine de Montbourgeou l'etoile, a fresh bottle and as zippy as ever. Classic Jura!

Snacks are on a chalkboard on the wall. I ordered the Nduja with Burrata, and liver parfait. I was informed that as burrata was a bit difficult to get at the moment, it had been replaced with mozzarella, and was asked if that was okay (thanks for asking!). Food is handled somewhere out of the store as the attendant had to leave and come back both to place the order and to retrieve it. When they arrived, the portions are HUGE especially considering the cost ($17 and $15 respectively)! I honestly haven't seen a serving of Nduja that big since I was in New York over ten years ago, and I certainly wasn't complaining - it's one of my favourites, especially when served so simply. Parfait was good and standard, when I ran out, I still wanted more as it was very tasty. I found myself really portioning both as they both came with a considerable amount of bread, what better to soak up the wine with.

Now I can see why this place is bustling with positive energy, what a positive place to be! It's definitely going to be a future earmark for my visits to the city. So good to find a good afternoon snack and drink spot in the CBD....

Ver poor service. My partner and I stopped by the bar in the afternoon on Saturday 4 December to grab a drink. The waiter told us there is no seats available and asked us to to go a bar next door and come back in 15mins without taking our contact number. The send off seemed more like they don’t want us to come back for a table, usually bars and restaurants would always take our number so they can call us when there is a table becomes available. Since the bar next door didn’t look very interesting we decided to go back to our hotel bar, as we were walking pass the bar again I saw 2 x customers left the bar so we went back straight way thinking it is great timing. The bar waiter asked us to wait outside, so we stepped out. We saw the table was available but the bar waiter didn’t acknowledge us and didn’t try to get us seated for at least 10mins. The poor service attitude made me feel that there were some kind of micro aggressions going on as we are from Asian background. I never encountered a service experience like this which made me feel not welcomed and uncomfortable. I don’t usually complain but the subtle attitude the waiter gave us (pretending friendly but actually didn’t want to get us seated) made us feel very uncomfortable, so I decided that my feedback has to be heard. Regardless if the waiter is racist or not he made customers like me to feel that I’ve been treated unfairly (we were the only Asian there at the time and we weren’t welcomed to seat for a long time), in the end we decided to leave after 10mins of waiting. Very...

What a cool concept! Basically you get to pick a bottle of many that they have. It’s like a really cool and intimate wine store you can drink at.

We had originally planned to go to Handpicked Wines cellar door a few blocks away for some Australian wine tasting but it was randomly closed. We had eyed this place on our walk to Handpicked so we came here instead.

We tried 3 different glasses of wine that were offered by glass that night. It sounded like aside from many bottle options, they typically have 3-4 options for red, white, and rose/sparkling. They have many bottles to choose from (almost too many!!) but we like to drink our wine chilled and we also wanted to sample a variety of wines so went with the glass offerings. They also have beer and other cocktail / liquor options.

It is a very laid back place, the kind of a place you would come by for a glass to unwind. Also it is also very intimate so works well for dates.

I’d definitely come back if I am ever back...