Daphne is not a pub or a wine bar or a restaurant. It’s all of the above and more.
Daphne, the sophomore opening for Hannah Green – owner of hatted Brunswick East diner Etta – has been created as a chameleon. It’s not a pub or a wine bar or a restaurant. It’s all of the above and more, intended to be a neighbourhood institution that Green calls her “public house” – just a few doors down from Etta on Lygon Street in the former Bar Romantica space.
New street-side seating flows into a casual front bar where you order at the counter. Beyond: a full-service bistro with clothed tables and a curtained-off private dining room. Presiding over the food is Diana Desensi (ex-Montalto, Saint George). The same menu runs across the front bar and bistro, featuring dishes like a fermented potato flatbread with mussels escabeche and whipped cod roe, and unusually exciting salads like a colourful cobb and an heirloom tomato medley with all the flavours of a Bloody Mary.
Go for $15 martinis on Mondays (and get an olive stamp on your loyalty card so your 10th is free), $30 steak with fries on Tuesdays, and $25 handmade pasta on Wednesdays. There’s also a kids’ menu, and a supper menu on Fridays and Saturdays. With last orders at midnight, it appropriately stars a midnight spaghetti jam-packed with anchovies and capers. After dinner, the old Bar Romantica sound system cranks up for late-night DJ sets.
Must-order: Half chicken, brined, dunked in herb butter, then roasted to golden perfection in the wood-fire oven before being served with blistered grapes and a salty-sweet agrodolce-like sauce.
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