Fitzroy wine bar Enoteca Zingara now open

There is a place, a magical place, where you can buy affordable wine to drink at the bar, chat over some cheese and crostini, take your half-drunk bottle home for dinner, or keep grazing until you realize it's the dessert time It's called enoteca, Italy's ultra-relaxed version of a Melbourne wine bar, and a newly minted one, Enoteca Zingara, has just landed on Brunswick Street.

It's the casual sibling of Alta Trattoria, just a short walk away, which opened last year and immediately received a Good Food hat. Zingara, which opens on April 26, has the same standards (and the same chef, McKay Wilday), but is much more accessible.

Wines by the glass top out at $20, most seats are at the marble-topped bar where bartenders will serve the food, and appetizers are around $12. Larger plates cost between $28 and $30.

“I think we all need that in Melbourne right now,” says Alta co-founder James Tait. “Something driven by value, where people feel comfortable and don't need to spend a million dollars.”

A big benchmark was Milan's Osteria Alla Concorrenza, where customers crowd the wine racks for simple appetizers, like salumi sliced ​​to order, or humble dishes like braised venison.

“When we signed the lease here and came up with the concept, an Italian friend told me, 'This place already exists, James! It's in Milan”, laughs Tait.

At Zingara, Chef Wilday is embracing his love of bread, ciabatta baking, pizza and regional breads.

“Having this expands my wings and creativity to show how beautiful and diverse Italy is, especially through bread. There are thousands of breads in Italy,” he says.

One is crescentina modenese, small rounds like English muffins that are baked on a special griddle in Zingara that prints an emblem on the top, resulting in warm bread spread with beaten lardo (a type of cured pork) .

These are joined by a Ligurian style of pizza known as sardenaira that has no cheese but is loaded with tomato and salty things like capers and olives. Then there's the crostini menu, a ciabatta-driven regional tour of Italy. Side dishes include battered cod (Venice), chicken livers and pickled onions (Tuscany), and raw beef sausage seasoned with nutmeg and cloves (Piedmont).

“We just take McKay's bread and put it into the best snacks we can make from Italy,” says Tait.

The bread even steals the show from Zingara's meatballs, helping to create the light texture that his partner's grandmother taught Wilday.

A humble thread runs through the menu, whether it's a riff on vitello tonnato that uses rabbit instead of beef, or chickpea pancakes topped with chunks of terrine made from a pig's head.

On the wine list, you'll find “Italian workhorse varietals,” says Tait, such as perricone, a native Sicilian grape. Plus, every bottle on the shelf has a retail price, with an added $25 cap.

The name is Italian for gypsy and honors the former tenant, Gypsy Bar, part of an earlier wave of quality, casual bars in Melbourne that let you come as you are.

Open from Friday 26 April Monday and Thursday to Friday 4pm to late, Saturday and Sunday 12pm to 1am.