Before Nina’s took residence at the base of Brunswick’s Nightingale Studios, it was a lively Bangladeshi restaurant and prior to that, a café that changed hands a few times. It’s the first time a wine bar serving food has popped up in the space and judging by residents’ warm reception, it’s being appreciated as much as its forebears.
Simultaneously cosy and industrial, Nina’s has retained the exposed pipes of yesteryear venues but where it stylistically departs the most is in its almost Hellenic light blue colour scheme, from the leather seats to the bright planter boxes bordering the outdoor space. The big windows bordering the bike track that runs in parallel to the Upfield line lends the space plenty of natural light, a sense of space and constant movement.
Service is both personable and personal, with a menu that speaks of the intimate network co-owners Shae and Hayley have built within their surrounding community – from the honey, a gift from a Nightingale resident, that features in a dessert to the curry leaves that garnish the king prawns, bounty from Hayley’s mum’s garden. Exemplifying this community spirit is their $35 Monday pasta nights – a godsend when most hospitality outfits are taking a much-needed day off – and their happy hour specials from 4 to 6pm four days a week.
The menu leans heavily on seasonal produce and mostly comprises vegetables and seafood – a treat for pescatarians. Excitingly, there’s a compact specials menu below the regular menu, ranging from crisp potato skins to lamb ribs. The ethos of the menu is perhaps best encapsulated by Samin Nosrat’s four pillars of cooking: salt, fat, acid and heat. Nearly every dish on Nina’s menu perfectly encompasses all four, with a special emphasis on acid and heat.
It’d be remiss to start without sampling the chargrilled shishito peppers. Typically a Russian roulette with a spicy zinger often punctuating the proceedings, Nina’s peppers are overall milder but pleasantly charred on their exteriors, with an understated aioli that accentuates the peppers rather than overpowering them (a tall order for any aioli, but one that Nina’s iteration seems to nail).
The sensational heirloom tomatoes are the greatest demonstration of why restaurants that prioritise seasonality will always be ahead of the game. Fresh and luscious, the quartered tomatoes arrive on a bed of almost jammy pesto, interspersed with the crunch of toasted pangrattato and topped with dollops of goat’s curd and pickled tendrils of onion.
Lightly acidic and pleasantly oily, the Spring Bay mussels escabeche are a treat to mop up with the accompanying chargrilled bread. We avail ourselves of the crisp potato skins off the specials menu, light and moreish despite (or due to) their deep-fried nature.
Swimming in a light chilli oil with nary a hint of heat come the Skull Island king prawns, halved and cooked so expertly you can even eat the shell. The heap of spring onion and curry leaves atop add some texture and vegetation. An unmissable vegetable adjunct are the barbecued snake beans, slivered so thin they’ve perfectly absorbed the char of the grill. Enlivening them is a silky romesco, almost sambal-like in its consistency.
The only slightly incongruous dish in a medley of otherwise faultless ones is the fried tofu main. The tofu itself is beautifully cooked – battered on the outside, spongy and bouncy within. But the combination of chargrilled rounds of carrots and the accompanying carrot puree does nothing to complement the tofu, culminating in a dish that’s not greater than the sum of its parts.
Wines are available by the glass, carafe and bottle. Even if your preferred wine isn’t available by the glass, Hayley – who handles front-of-house while Shae is the chef – is an expert at guiding you on the next best choice. Wine is even dispensed in half-glass serves for those who are driving or may otherwise be inclined to drink a lesser amount, so flexible is the offering at Nina’s. The ‘Cool Hand Cuke’ is our pick of the cocktails with its winning combination of gin, agwa and cucumber – tasting and smelling of a lime Calippo in the best way possible.
Not that we had space for it, but the desserts on offer when we visited ranged from a Dutch apple cake to a dark chocolate mousse.
Nestled amid the high-density apartments that cluster together in this particular part of Brunswick, Nina’s is carving out a space for itself with a beautifully thought-out menu, service that’s as laidback as it is efficient, and a space that’s as inviting in the warmer months of the year as it’ll be in the chillier nights of winter – no one will be able to resist pasta night then.
Time Out Melbourne never writes starred reviews from hosted experiences – Time Out covers restaurant and bar bills for reviews so that readers can trust our critique.