Just Open: Shelter Shed Bar & Eatery, Queenscliff

Four hospitality veterans with close ties to Mietta's Queenscliff Hotel have opened Shelter Shed Bar & Eatery in the hotel's former gift shop.

With its corrugated iron facade, gabled interior, and dark green and sand colour scheme, the eatery takes its design cues from the 1886 shelter shed on Queenscliff Pier. Artworks that once hung in the hotel now decorate the walls and the champagne flutes bear the Mietta's name.

One partner, Jill Alderton, used to arrange the flowers for the boom-era Queenscliff Hotel, which the late Mietta O'Donnell, her partner Tony Knox and O'Donnell's sisters Patricia and Robin bought and restored in 1978.

Breakfast includes muesli made to the Mietta recipe, Asian-style wok-fried eggs, piadinas, sweet pastries and prawn and watercress rolls with dill mayo.

At lunch, look for local fish of the day, mussels steamed in white wine or Murray Valley grilled pork cutlets, perhaps with a quinoa and lentil salad studded with toasted almonds, pinenuts and pomegranate arils.

Wines from the local region dominate the concise drinks list and coffee is from Veneziano.

The eatery seats 40 inside and another 70 in the walled courtyard garden.

Open daily 8am-4pm in summer, restricted hours in winter. Dinners on the first and third Fridays of the month are in the pipeline.

25 Hesse Street, Queenscliff, 03 5258 3604, sheltershedqueenscliff.com.au