Smith & Daughters to combine restaurant and deli in glam new Collingwood home

After eight years of pioneering plant-based eating in Fitzroy, Shannon Martinez is shifting her Fitzroy restaurant Smith & Daughters and takeaway outfit Smith & Deli to a 500-square-metre space in Collingwood's back streets this November.

For the first time, the two businesses will combine on a site that Martinez hopes will become the largest vegan food hub in the world. It will house a deli offering dine-in and ready-to-heat take-home meals, a fresh-food grocer and a glass-fronted kitchen designed to dispel any myths about heavily processed vegan food.

"I like that idea of it being so big that you couldn't miss it," she says.

Martinez is transforming the look of each business. Daughters will bring "all my Vivienne Westwood fantasies to life", with tweed, tartan, lace and other textures, while the Deli will ditch its New York trappings and assume a Spanish identity that reflects Martinez's heritage.

"She used to be a little bit gothy and grungy and now she's got a little class, she's a bit older and it's time for her to shine," she says of the business.

The menu for Daughters will continue its broad Mediterranean focus, enhanced by an open grill, while the Deli will expand to include a canteen-style eatery for the neighbourhood's apartment-dwellers. Martinez is keeping fan favourites such as the sandwiches, vegan charcuterie and pastries and adding a vegan carvery, cold dishes, salad bar and desserts to form a daily "deli plate". Taps will offer wine, beer and StrangeLove soda and seating will include antique church pews. Martinez hopes to commission local tattoo artists Tamara Scoulidis and Clare Clarity for large-scale artworks.

Martinez is also launching a homewares line, a collaboration with local jewellery designer Heart of Bone, for retail and use in the venues.

Daughters and Deli will share a kitchen but have separate entrances in the site, which was most recently occupied by Bar Rosella, an Italian restaurant and providore with a sister venue in Beechworth.

107 Cambridge Street, Collingwood, smithanddaughters.com