Bar Bellamy Carlton review 2023: Kara Monssen visits neighbourhood bar

If this new inner-city bar and bistro flexing uber-cool drinks, late night snacks and Euro-inspired plates isn’t already on your radar — it should be.

Bar Bellamy is a choose your own adventure in suburban Carlton.

It’s the bar you’d want in your neighbourhood.

Within sensible stumbling distance of home.

Where the drinks are cold (bar one), snacks skew European and the menu changes every other week so you don’t get bored.

The type of place to go “for just one” but equally somewhere to find yourself wolfing late-night pork jowl or potato bocadillos (Spanish subs) over a negroni.

It’s the bar mentioned at enough barbecues and kids parties to warrant intentional trips from the suburbs and sticks.

Chicken liver parfait and cannoli

Plus makes the perfect solo dinner spot or location of your next push the boat out lunch with the gang.

Welcome to Bar Bellamy. A choose your own adventure dining and drinking experience that’s oh-so Melbourne.

On paper, it may not be different to any other inner-city suburban boozer, but this place has spunk, charisma and warms from within.

It’s run by seasoned hospo folk Oska Whitehart (Gimlet, The Everleigh) and partner Dani, (Loafer, Sibling), who have worked in some of the city’s best venues — so trust they know how to make a mean martini.

Maybe you’ll get one straight off the bat (The Gibson!) or perhaps the Rickey is more your style.

The ripper take on a margarita is brimming with enough lively kiwi and lime to go with that elevated chip and dip; a vibrant green swirl of spinach, soft French neufchâtel cheese, lemon juice and pine nuts ($10).

If it’s a crack a bottle kind of night, channel the Italian or French wine gods, or a tinnie of craft beer. There’s also two on tap. Or the cocktail special of the night, chalked on the blackboard behind the bar.

Cime di rapa.

Chef Barney Cohen (Anada) can also rustle specials kitchenside: flash fried school prawns, or a crumbed pork chop with fennel and raisin for freshness.

Though, arguably every week there’s something new on Bar Bellamy’s list.

One thing that’ll stick around is the bread.

Sourced from Akimbo Bakery, two warm slices ($8) are served with a toffee like brown butter — it’s a dream, and as Dani says, “is just happening”.

Crisp cannoli cigars ($13 for two), piped with a velvety chicken parfait and stamped either end with pistachio, enter elite snack territory. What a dangerous time to be a cold glass of pinot.

Duck neck sausage and stew of braised cannellini beans.

Slips of translucent kingfish ($22), cured with the pastrami spices, result in a grungier and grittier take on he otherwise delicate fish dish. Finished with a picked purple cabbage and Russian sauce, it’s wildly delicious and calls for a bagel.

Plenty other eats deserve a mention: a whole baked wheel of Camembert with crudités and bread, oysters pooling with hot sauce and worcestershire, devilled eggs with anchovies and flame tossed cime di rapa (similar to Chinese broccoli) with toum — but I’ve got my sights on the main event.

A cassoulet of duck neck sausage and stew of braised cannellini beans ($38); the best antidote for those punishingly cold Melbourne nights. Chef Cohen makes the sausage from scratch, though it’s more terrine in texture and flavour. Add a hearty pour of Grenache and you’re set.

However you choose to do Bar Bellamy, believe the hype.

Carlton is smug with postcode pride and I’m wildly jealous.