David Stewart always wanted to open a bistro, but started with a café in 2014 when obtaining a liquor licence proved challenging. He finally got it late 2019, was ready to go early 2020 and we all know what happened next.

“We used to be Ascot Food Store, but I never wanted to be known as a café that does dinner. I wanted to be judged on our own merit. The week we decided to open was lockdown,” he says.

Melbourne went through multiple lockdowns, so Stewart kept the café going and launched Ascot Food + Wine after what he thought would be the last lockdown. He was optimistic and it didn’t open properly until late 2021.

“Lockdown definitely made it easier to pivot because rather than try to do takeaway we closed and used that as an opportunity to renovate the space and get it to where we needed it to be,” Stewart says. 

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“The good thing about COVID-19 is we could take our time and think about what we needed to do because it took the pressure off turnover.”

He’s still refining his business model as he goes, responding to local trade. “We do lunch and dinner during the week and breakfast on weekends because people’s eating habits have changed a lot,” he says.

“A lot of people are still working from home, and we get people coming in for business meetings at lunchtime. The beauty of working-from-home is that we also capture that real local dinner crowd. We see a lot of regular faces and that’s what we wanted to create. We wanted to be a local spot that was easy, with a good variety of pasta and mains.”

Dishes include Spencer Gulf prawns with ricotta tortellini and fermented chilli butter, a pork tomahawk with pepper sauce and King George whiting with burnt nori butter, potatoes and sauce gribiche.

Stewart says the focus is on modern Australian and European food, with an emphasis on classic cooking.

“We don’t try to be super fancy, we do the classic things really well,” he says.

Ascot Food + Wine
Wed-Fri 10am–10:30pm, Sat 9am-10:30pm, Sun 9am-4pm
320 Ascot Vale Road, Moonee Ponds, Melbourne
ascotfoodandwine.com

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