Cocktails, an overflowing lobster and prawn roll, and a fresh view of Melbourne’s sunset are the top draw cards of a new Armadale bar called Harvie.

Check the bar’s website for the next local sunset time, then find a spot on the rooftop with snacks to soak up the golden hour. This rooftop view, which looks to the north, has a sunset unlike anything Melbourne has seen before, says Harvie Bar owner Nick Foley.

“There are no rooftop bars outside the CBD. So to have the sunset here as well is so cool, it’s better than a city skyline,” he says.

Access to such a view has been a long time coming. According to legend, the rooftop was built in the 1940s so that the original owner, Mark Coughlin – who used the building as an administration tower from which to manage two local dairies – could have a daily glass of milk with a view.

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Eighty years later and Foley, with his partners Andrew Savvas (together they co-own Camberwell wine bar Gloria’s) and a friend who Foley calls “Leonard G”, from Cremorne-based furniture store Arthur G, renovated and opened this “wine-focused bar”. Arthur G. did the fit-out, with its rounded corners and smoothed white walls, and a custom couch by well-known designer Diane Bergeron.

The building’s piece de resistance is a large spiral staircase that curves all the way to the rooftop. Setting a monochrome scene, dark grey terrazzo stairs and a pitch-black handrail wind their way up. “The staircase would have been created at great cost for the time,” says Foley. In the 1940s not everyone had a wristwatch so it was a “very handy, very luxurious addition to the building”, only viewed by people who worked within. Foley compares the staircase to a piece of art that has been hidden away for years and that can finally be seen by the public.

During the day, light floods the staircase through a circular skylight. Foley has had his eye on the building for 20 years, he says, being an Armadale local. A couple of businesses within closed during Covid and when Foley saw the sticker going up out the front, he followed up quickly with a real estate agent.

Harvie has a simple menu, with no commercial kitchen and room enough behind the bar to do mainly cold dishes. There’s pickled octopus and hummus, build-your-own cheese and charcuterie boards, and much of the menu is influenced by Foley’s – and Leonard G’s – Greek heritage. A menu hero is a lobster and prawn roll that has become a local obsession, so loved that people come in to get them takeaway as well. There are also jamon croquettes and pomme frites.

“In the planning stage it was meant to be a bar,” says Foley. “The food is traditional wine-bar fare – not the way everyone does wine bars now, where there are Michelin star kitchens behind the scenes. This is a wine-focused bar with great snacks, and we are proud of that.”

Beyond the vino, Harvie also pours out an organic negroni and espresso martini. For the ultimate sunset sipper, the Harvie spritz captures the colour of the sky with bright orange Sunny Arvo aperitivo topped with prosecco and soda.

Harvie
109 Wattletree Road, Armadale
Tue-Thu 3pm-late, Fri-Sun 1pm-late
www.harvie.bar

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