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Town Mouse crew to open venue in Melbourne's CBD

Simone Egger

Town Mouse restaurant chef Dave Verheul (left) and front of house Christian McCabe are to open a new bar in the CBD.
Town Mouse restaurant chef Dave Verheul (left) and front of house Christian McCabe are to open a new bar in the CBD.Jesse Marlow

The Town Mouse's frontman, Christian McCabe, and chef Dave Verheul have partnered with London-based wine merchant and restaurateur Eric Narioo, and will open a second venue in Russell Street around July.

"We're not trying to recreate the Town Mouse," says McCabe. "It will be more casual, with good grazing food and a wine list that wine nerds will be excited about, and non-nerds will hopefully enjoy drinking."

New partner Narioo owns Les Caves de Pyrene, which distributes wines mainly from small growers around Europe, and champions indigenous grape varieties and styles.

"They're 'natural', for want of a better word," McCabe says. "They're wines that speak of where they're from rather than what someone's done to them."

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Of the partnership with Narioo, McCabe says: "Eric has so much experience and insight. It's nice to go back to the start, to take his expression of hospitality and work it in with my own."

The as yet unnamed two-level place (at 122 Russell Street, alongside Melbourne Place) will serve lunch through dinner and supper downstairs. The menu will likely be shorter and simpler than at the Town Mouse, which was awarded a hat by The Age Good Food Guide in August last year.

Upstairs? "We're not sure," McCabe says. "It might be more restaurant-like. It seems odd sinking hundreds of thousands of dollars into something, without knowing what's going to go there," he says. "Building a business is reflexive. The first step is to get rid of decades of renovations, then not put so much back."

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