Beloved Gerald’s Bar has been transplanted to another iconic site. Has its soul survived?

In considering the new era of Gerald’s Bar, it is almost impossible to avoid falling into the thinking of a compare-and-contrast essay. Where once there was this, now there is that: a small storefront compared with a huge blocky behemoth; creaky floorboards in contrast to an expanse of black studded rubber; clubby intimacy that’s now impossible, giving way to the harried professionalism of a large busy restaurant.

The original Gerald’s Bar on Rathdowne Street in North Carlton existed as a bastion of cool for 19 years, considered by many (including myself) to be one of the best bars in the country, an oh-so-Melbourne institution that helped to define the modern era of Australian wine bars. That iteration closed in October, making way for a new Gerald’s, in the former Enoteca Sileno space (originally the Rising Sun Hotel) a few blocks away on Lygon Street.

It feels both beside the point (because it’s so obvious) and also necessary (because it’s so obvious) to discuss, but there’s a decent dose of grief in visiting this new iteration of the venue.

It is not the old Gerald’s. The artwork and ephemera are there, including a poster advertising photographer David Bailey’s Birth of the Cool exhibition that features a young Michael Caine captured in black-and-white. Owners Gerald Diffey and Mario Di Ienno are there, the olives and anchovies and good, crusty (and still free) bread are there. Is the soul there? It’s very hard to say. Soul is as difficult to manufacture as it is to quantify. And often, it takes time to manifest.

In pushing past that grief, I will attempt to take this new version on its own terms. If it opened without the spectre of its former self looming quietly in the periphery, how would it be received? Very well, probably.

You can absolutely still come here for meats and cheeses and tinned fishies, but the rest of the offering is better than ever.

Diffey and Di Ienno have brought on Matthew Podbury in the kitchen, who joins long-time chef Pete Savage. Podbury most recently was owner-chef at Geelong’s excellent La Cachette (RIP), but before that he worked in fine dining restaurants in France and England.

That influence is palpable on the current Gerald’s menu: where the food has leaned a little Spanish in the past, the current menu has some more modern French and British elements, including a mutton dish that wouldn’t be out of place on an upscale pub menu.

You can absolutely still come here for meats and cheeses and tinned fishies, but the rest of the offering is better than ever. The quail scotch egg comes with Cumberland sauce, a British condiment made of port, dried fruits and mustard. Raw snapper sits atop cultured cream punctuated by sweet gooseberries.
Golden beetroot is sliced thin and showered with vibrant orange mimolette cheese, its zappy sharpness sitting in charming contrast to the sweet, earthy vegetable.

Bonito is served with sauce vierge, a lemon and olive number that was a staple of French nouvelle cuisine. Here it has an almost herbaceous floral quality, a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts otherworldliness.

I felt similarly about a hand extruded spaghetti, dotted with shelled mussels and bathed in a cider-based sauce. Punctuated with slivers of fresh chilli, it packed far more flavour and personality than its simple ingredients might imply.

There are honey madeleines for dessert, warm and pliant and served with fluffy hazelnut cream.

The wine offering is not much changed (not much, at least, from the more recent list-focused program, rather than the freewheeling you’ll-drink-what’s-open approach of the first 15 or so years of the place). There’s a lot of great value if you know how to look, and lots of people who will tell you where to look if you need help. Service is greener, more harried, but still friendly and smart.

There are things that this venue is doing that would have been impossible in the old space. You can now make a booking, or hold a function here, and as this review was going to press, the venue announced an adjacent experience that they’re calling The Parlour, which comprises a more formal dining room and a $145 per person set menu. (It launches this weekend, February 14.)

There’s a large outdoor patio, canopied with grapevines, which will grow into itself despite the corporate pub vibes of the black plastic chairs. Like I said, soul takes time.

And honestly? Despite our romantic notions, it’s almost impossible to make money in a space as small as the original Gerald’s. Scale is everything; private events pay the bills. We all want that small, romantic, perfect open-all-the-time bar/restaurant in our lives, but the economics of such an endeavour are maddening.

I’ve taken up room at the original Gerald’s bar while drinking affordable wine and eating olives and free bread enough times to understand how that model might not make sense for these operators any longer.

The grief over the loss of that experience is real. But there’s plenty to love about the new Gerald’s, not least of which is the potential that these good folks might actually make some money.

In time, it may even come to feel as lived in, as warm, and as integral to the city as its predecessor. The rebirth of cool, indeed.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.