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There are few people in Melbourne more influential on our bar culture than Gerald Diffey and his longtime business partner Mario Di Ienno. Their venue Gerald’s Bar on Rathdowne Street in Carlton North (with a sister venue in San Sebastian, Spain), has come to define the Melbourne approach to the casual, personal, neighbourhood wine bar, something I think we do better than almost any city in the world.
But after operating out of a tiny shopfront for nearly 20 years, Gerald’s bar has moved, finding a new home on Lygon Street about a kilometre away, in the building previously occupied by Enoteca Sileno (where, incidentally, Gerald was the manager 23 years ago). The new digs opened doors to the public for the first time last Wednesday, and I took the opportunity to pop in for a Negroni and a chat with the venue’s eponymous co-owner.
Walking through the big double stained-glass entrance and then the automatic sliding doors beyond, first impressions can best be summed up by the phrase, “shit, this is big.” No longer are you greeted by Gerald leaning casually on the front door, or perhaps having a smoke at a table out front, but by a host station and a wide expanse of bar, with booth seating to the left and a full dining room around to the right. There’s also a big courtyard out the back canopied in grapevines, an upstairs function bar with an adjoining balcony, and several private dining areas. Yeah, like, big.
“We were just squashing people together at the old joint,” says Gerald. “If you try to come in with six people, you’re out of luck. Now we can be generous with the space,” he says. Standing on the upstairs balcony, he points out the impressive view, “When it’s all open like this, it’s just gorgeous,” Gerald says. “You can see the city, you can see the Dandenongs, you can see Fitzroy Town Hall. This building is pretty special, and it was completely under-utilised.”