A BRAND NIEUW FUNK
Free-spirited, rebellious and deeply nostalgic, this Fremantle wine bar is in tune with its boho neighbourhood,
Wine people talk about terroir a lot. Not just Terroir, the game-changing, New York wine bar, but terroir as in the French concept of how location, climate, soil and temperature shape the taste of a wine. Nieuw Ruin, a smart-casual newcomer that’s surfaced in boho Fremantle, makes a compelling argument that bricks and mortar can be as expressive of terroir as grapes.
The setting – a 150-year-old, heritage-listed cottage complete with a handsome verandah – is pure, uncut Freo, ditto the room’s Antiques
Roadshow styling: framed real estate posters, throwback tableware and all. Chummy waitstaff in op-shop duds and rockabilly threads greet guests like old friends. If Nieuw Ruin was any more Freo, it’d be sharehousing with three other wine bars.
Fridges and shelves harbour some 300 bottles of “weird wine”: management’s way of saying they don’t serve classic dry whites or jammy, high-alcohol shiraz. Instead, the vino selection favours skincontact whites, spritzy pet-nats, juicy reds and other things the cool kids like posting on Instagram.
While the clipboard wine list might be a sprawling, far-reaching document, the menu goes the other way and presents guests with a concise edit of dishes that chef Blaze Young reckons goes good with plonk. In her mind, that means share plates that, like the space itself, sport a heavy retro bent. Eastern Europe, seafood and ’60s cocktail parties are rich seams of inspiration.
Quick-pickled garfish fillets become elegant rollmops that have none of the stank or slime of their jarred brethren. Styled on the Russian herring dish shuba, salted monkfish “under a fur coat” is a low-rise of baccalà-style fish, mayo, grated beetroot, potato and carrot. It’s splendid eating, even if it feels more salad than seafood.
There’s also thick tarama, crowned with trout roe and served alongside house potato crisps. You’ll run out of crisps before you finish the tarama, but considering how well dishes on the menu play with one another, you’ll have no problem finding things to swipe through the cod roe dip. (Or at least you won’t if your spread includes flatbread, fragrant curried fries, and the sprats: a value-packed platter starring tinned fish, soft-boiled eggs and cakey house rye bread.)
Heavily roasted sunchokes, sweetened with honey and lightened with goat’s milk ricotta, suggest Young is as adept playing with turf as she is surf. Her efforts at flavours closer to home go alright, too. Here’s a comforting filo-pastry rabbit and pork pie floater. There’s a glass coupe of chocolate custard, cleverly crunched up with toasted buckwheat. It’s off-kilter. It’s fun. It’s Nieuw Ruin in microcosm and proof of the good that happens when the right people look at the past with rosé-tinted wine glasses.
Despite trading for less than three months, Nieuw Ruin already feels like it’s been here forever. It’s a place that wine people – and food people, and vintage-design people, and heck-I-just-want-to-have-a-goodtime people – are going to be talking about. A lot.