The romantic Carlton North wine bar that’s often imitated, but never beaten

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Let’s hear it for a restaurant that’s open every night – what an absolute comfort, to have no reason to check Google, no anxiety that you’ll arrive to a “closed” sign. For the place that doesn’t take bookings, that takes you as you are, that’s ready to sling you a drink or two and then offer you a full meal if you want it, at your own pace, without constraints on timing or formality. Let’s hear it for rock’n’roll, for high and low art, for wines chosen based on passion and taste rather than fashion. Let’s hear it for Gerald’s Bar.

Gerald’s is one of those places that sits so comfortably in the pantheon of Melbourne dining that it barely seems necessary to reiterate its worth. For those of us who love it, the bar and restaurant owned by Gerald Diffey and Mario Di Ienno seems inevitable, timeless, integral to this city and its dining culture. Essential. Eighteen years after it opened in Rathdowne Village, what is there to say that hasn’t been said before? And why now?

Part of it is that in this most romantic of weeks, I wanted to pay homage to one of the city’s best date spots, where the vibes are perfect and the champagne is always high quality.

I went there for my most recent wedding anniversary, ran into my brother, who crashed the party then paid for the meal, was teased mercilessly by Di Ienno (he presented me with a large white plate containing one olive cut in half, and expounded on the artistry required to create such a culinary masterpiece), and left tipsy and full of heart and of belly. It was a perfect night.

But also, with the closing of the original La Porchetta next door, it’s worth looking at the legacy of Gerald’s, the ways in which it has changed the neighbourhood and the city. If this was once a corner of Carlton North that catered to large family groups looking for red sauce pasta and pizzas, it is now a bastion of wine bars, high-end cafes, and other forms of casual but excellent eateries.

I can’t imagine Melbourne without Gerald’s, and I hope I never have to.

In some ways, the reach of Gerald’s is simply influence – fellow Carlton North venues Bar Bellamy and Brico (and Little Andorra before it) certainly owe a debt to the place that set the tone for the charming and not-too-modern Melbourne wine/cocktail bar.

And in some cases, the place has literally spawned new favourites, as with Commis, which opened in Collingwood last year with longtime Gerald’s manager Daniel Docherty and a handful of other alums at its helm, and which has a huge amount of Gerald’s DNA baked into its offering (Diffey is a regular there, which helps).

Whether it’s Docherty’s departure or just a natural evolution, some things have changed at Gerald’s recently. Diffey now oversees the wine list, and it’s as good as it’s ever been.

The menu, which has thus far been scrawled on butcher paper and hung behind the bar, now comes on a printed sheet delivered to your table. It also lists wines by the glass – in the past, whatever was open was what you got, which necessitated a negotiation with the staff that could be extremely fun or somewhat demoralising, depending on your proclivities and the mood of the server.

What hasn’t changed is the extremely flexible nature of the menu, which is made up mostly of snackable small plates, with a couple of bigger portions thrown in. You can still get an egg with mayonnaise ($9), which is precisely what it sounds like, or a plate of Sicilian white anchovies ($16), or various charcuterie ($15-$40). Bread is complementary, unending, sour, stretchy and delicious. Meat comes in various forms, including a pile of juicy pastrami that’s made in-house ($28), and layered with sauerkraut and thousand island dressing.

Right now, there are fried zucchini blossoms with honey ($24), and a caprese salad made with juicy tomatoes that have been lightly smoked ($29). A decidedly Sichuan eggplant dish ($24) seems slightly out-of-left-field on this Eurocentric menu, but it’s done so well, all sticky and spicy and sweet and soft, that it earns its place.

And there’s true elegance to be found here, too, especially when it comes to fish. King salmon is cooked confit-style, then placed over thinly sliced golden beetroot and surrounded by a crema swirled with dill ($30). The fish is uniformly tender and rich, and its simplicity belies the skill it takes to master the old-school cooking treatment. Swordfish is served with a beautiful heirloom cucumber salad ($42), and is cooked to a perfect medium – one of the best summer dishes I’ve had this season.

Service, as always, is assertively casual but with an underlying professionalism that can’t be faked.

How to score such a place with numbers and hats? It’s practically impossible. I’ll assign the points and let them mean what they say, but for the record, I think institutions like this are priceless, unrankable, above the fray. I can’t imagine Melbourne without Gerald’s, and I hope I never have to.