Echoes of the old watering hole at the reinvented Beaumaris Hotel
The first retail space has opened on the 1880s landmark Beaumaris Hotel site since its redevelopment into apartments by the Edge Group.
The Beau Kitchen and Cellar served its first customers on Thursday (November 17) and is already generating significant local interest. It is adjoined by the boutique wine shop Rack and Ruin.
The owner of the business, Alf France, has worked in hospitality for 35 years, including as regional manager of Grill’d Victoria and operations director of Geronimo Inns, in the UK. He has teamed up with general manager Steed Sherriff (Rose Diner and Bar, Port Melbourne) and executive chef Jeffrey Green (former head chef of Greens Restaurant, in London) to create the new wine venue with a wood-fired oven.
He expects to create 20 to 30 jobs.
The Rack and Ruin wine shop, next to the Beau Kitchen and Cellar. Photo: Supplied
Beau Kitchen and Cellar has a modern concrete look with timber and marble highlights. Blockwork walls, concrete floors, and well-spaced bentwood chairs and café tables are anchored by a marble central bar, with more seating on the terrace and footpath out front.
Edge Group did the initial retail fit out, while the pared-back timber cabinetry is by Swiss craftsman Urs Theirstein of Arta Furniture.
Extending the crafted theme, the venue’s business cards are printed on recycled beer boxes, the benches out front are from timbers recycled from the old pub and the marble bar is made of leftovers from the residential development, Mr France said.
The wine-centric venue also serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Inspired by chef Jeffrey Green’s European travels over 15 years, the seasonally driven menu draws on produce from Milawa chicken, John Dee beef and Gamekeepers saltbush lamb with heirloom vegetables, leaves and herbs from Glemora Heritage in Victoria.
At the heart of the kitchen is ‘Bertha’ a large orange wood-fired oven shipped from London, and is the first of its kind in Australia, Mr France said. It will be used to burn charcoal and wood for grilling steaks, spitchcock, chicken and fish. “She is very handsome.”
Wines by the glass will change daily as the wine bar draws on 250-plus retail wines on offer at wine shop Rack and Ruin next door. When it is open, wine bar patrons can wander in and buy a bottle for their table.
Offering something different for locals, the wine shop offers self-serving taps for bottles of white and red wine, and Stomping Ground’s Pale Ale ready to pour into a ‘Squealer’ for a take home-craft beer.
The opening of a new kitchen bar and wine shop on the site of the pub – “the Beauie” as it was known to locals – makes a nod to the site’s past as a community watering hole. Three of the remaining retail spaces are yet to be tenanted.
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