Standard-bearing bar-restaurant Bar Bellamy introduces its younger sibling, Melitta Next Door, a spirited tearaway making a racket on Melbourne’s hottest dining strip.
Mediterranean$$
If you’re reading this in present-day Melbourne you’ll understand what we’re about to define here. But if you’ve found this review in, say, 2045, a “wine bar” was a popular category of dining establishment at the time of writing, a “bar or small restaurant where wine is the main drink available”.
Melbourne bulged with them in 2025. Some were very good. Some stretched the definition with a broader drinks programme, such as Dani and Oska Whitehart’s Bar Bellamy. It was more of a cocktail bar with great food than anything strictly wine-focused, but people would go there for a wine bar-ish time – that is, for an unstructured hang supplemented with quality eating and drinking.
Bellamy became the blueprint for smart-casual revelry. Emotionally resonant service. A museum backbar and the staff to shake it anew. A menu that swung from precision saucework to devilled egg with an easy grace.
Then, at the height of its popularity, it annexed the worn-out cafe next door and flipped it into something similarly genre-bending. But Bellamy 2.0 it was not. “Melitta is the answer to a question,” said Dani Whitehart ahead of its opening. “What does the neighbourhood need and want?”
Over the past couple of years, the swatch of prime real estate connecting old Carlton with Rathdowne Village has become one of Melbourne’s hottest new dining strips. It has a neo-pasta bar in Super Norma. It has boutique bistronomy in Cordelia. It has a shark-jumping vision of the luxury seafood restaurant (Muli) and it has an egg-jumping cafe moonlighting as a nightclub (Fenton).
Carlton is young again, and to answer Whitehart’s two-parter, what the neighbourhood wants is fun, and what it needs is value.
Melitta and chef Lorena Corso are here to furnish you with precisely that: a fluorescent corner haunt serving avant-garde RTDs (ready-to-drink) and Sicilian lamb skewers at three bucks a stick. A place where flatbreads are lathered in whipped spring onion butter like Macca’s hotcakes gone salty. Where a cherried-up spin on the espresso martini is topped with kirsch cream and poured as a float. The joie de vivre is strong with this one.
Melitta’s signature drink is a spin on the Milano Torino they’re calling the Meli-to: a Campari-based aperitif. You can top it with beer for an Americano Perfecto, with prosecco for a spagliato, with gin for a negroni. The ingredients will follow the seasons, but right now it features tangerine vodka and mandarin liqueur; juicy hues that colour the entire Melitta proposition – from food to fitout.
You’ll see those hues beamed out of a custom lighting fixture above the bar, suffused through the dining room and pushed out onto the street. They’re in the chilli oil that undergirds a clever plate of sardines, sugar melon and ricotta. They’re in the blood orange granita heaped over almond panna cotta. It’s a palette that signals playful, youthful exuberance.
There’s a strict no-shaking-of-drinks policy at Melitta – a pre-batched state of mind that reduces wait times and staffing costs. Wines are largely by the bottle, so if you’re afraid of commitment, order something from the freezer – perhaps a “very dirty martini” that goes filthy and then some – or something from the Esky: a trove of cheffy RTDs. We ordered a Ranch Water.
“Do you want to nerd out?” asks Oska Whitehart. Ah, a tableside soliloquy with a side of consent – precisely the EQ that won this team a nomination for The Age Good Food Guide Service Excellence award. Reply “yes” and enter a world where mezcal is fat-washed, lime husks are used for Korean-style cheong syrup, and terms such as “pepper tincture” and “acid phosphate” are thrown around like they’re nothing. Reply “no” and simply enjoy one of the most thoughtfully assembled, well-balanced bottled cocktails going. Delicious either way.
There’s a lot to love in Corso’s kitchen. Summer nights are made for her mochi-like flatbread and lamb arrosticini skewers. Seasoned gently and accompanied by a sharp salsa verde, the skewers are simple, satisfying snacking, and a steal at $18 for six.
But there are bumps. The rockling skewer is less successful, dressed in a flat red pepper and caper salsa that cools the fish and mutes its flavour. At $16 a skewer, it’s the first crease on a menu that, for all its gung-ho energy, will benefit from a close look heading into summer.
Case in point, the charcoal chicken: a rustic-looking half-bird that stretches the definition of charred to something less agreeable, its flesh lacking in juice and salt. Opt instead for the cumin-shrouded Meredith Dairy goat ribs: perfectly tender, judiciously scorched and served in three generous slats.
Excellent times are being had at Melitta, but know this: it is not the most comfortable venue you will dine in this year. It’s loud in both spirit and decibels; there is very little in the way of effective sound treatment.
The floorplan is uncomfortably tight, and that makes it even louder. And for somewhere this jumping, sitting down feels strangely restrictive. There is a small standing area by the bar, but the configuration of the room can make perching there feel like you’re spectating a room of diners while they eat.
But to those who are here for a high-octane yap over a fistful of cheap lamb sticks and a cold one from the Esky, these points might not matter. What does the neighbourhood need? As much Dani and Oska Whitehart as it can get.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Loud, wild but in control, fun, inclusive – like the best house parties
Go-to dishes: Flatbread with whipped onion butter ($10); arrosticini skewers with salsa verde (six for $18); Meredith Dairy goat ribs ($38); almond panna cotta with black tahini crumble and blood orange granita ($16)
Drinks: A couple of fun wines by the carafe, more by the bottle, bespoke RTDs and Melbourne longnecks in the Esky, martinis in the freezer
Cost: About $110 for two, excluding drinks (but you definitely want to try some drinks)
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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Frank Sweet is editor of The Age Good Food Guide 2026 and a former food and drink editor at Time Out Beijing.
