After a 12-month renovation, the iconic Sorrento stalwart is back baby!
The beautiful, heritage listed general store built in 1896 was purchased a year ago by hospo heavyweights, The Darling Group (Top Paddock, Higher Ground, Kettle Black, Darling Café, Dundas & Faussett) with aspirations of creating a breath-taking all-day restaurant and bar with provedore.
Previously trading as a daytime-only general store, The Darling Group have reimagined the space into a bright, breezy venue, paying homage to the building’s more-than-century-long heritage. Whilst the classic limestone facade remains, the interior has been entirely reconceptualised with custom furniture and modern, coastal-inspired touches. There is a light filled, north-facing courtyard which houses a huge olive tree and allows a gentle sea breeze into the venue.
Located in the breezy courtyard is an impressive pizza oven imported from Verona firing up incredible Neapolitan-style pies made with 72-hour fermented and proved dough and a gelateria for when the mercury inevitably begins to climb in the seaside town.
The coffee and equipment offering is a showstopper, a calibre across the Group's venues. On the main bar is a shiny stainless Synesso Hydra MVP (to match the adjoining oyster bar) with requisite grinder fleet. In the takeaway provedore is a custom MVP Hydra in striped coastal Stringers white and yellow with a matching grinder suite and Marco F60 for batch brew.
The blend is a Five Senses custom creation unique to the Group that is complex & distinctive and best experienced with milk to showcase notes of sweet toffee and wafer biscuit. A rotating Five Senses single origin is alternated weekly for black coffee lovers as is a Limited Release filter coffee on batch brew.
The Italian-style provedore offers an abundance of deli goods including imported cold-cuts, pastries and grocery items and a carefully considered list of wines and craft beers. The provedore of course also stocks a cornucopia of retail coffee available for purchase to be enjoyed at home.
Executive chef Ash Hicks (formerly of Circa, The Espy and Garden State Hotel) has fulfilled the prerequisite list of Darling Group brunch classics such as fluffy ricotta hotcakes, chilli scrambled eggs and eggs benedict but indulges the creative with pecorino-topped truffled mushrooms on toast or a smoked salmon omelette topped with caviar. If pizza doesn’t capture your heart for lunch, then dishes centred around locally caught seafood or a 600-gram rib eye with green-chilli butter should get your mouth watering.
Stringers is open all day, from 7am until late (during peak season) and if you’re ready for a delightful dining experience in seaside Sorrento you can find the iconic venue at the top end of Ocean Road overlooking Port Phillip Bay.