Windsor Wine Room
Year
2024
Client
Mama's Dining Group
Service
Culinary Creative Director
A wine bar that needed food to be more than an afterthought, without letting the food outshout the wine.
© Windsor Wine Room
Context
Windsor Wine Room is the quietest of the three venues, and the one that required the most restraint. A room built around wine, where food plays a supporting but essential role. Getting the balance right means the menu recedes when it should and steps forward when it matters.
What I built
Scope
Concept development · Kitchen design & build (stripped and renovated venue) · Equipment sourcing · Supplier setup · Team recruitment · Culinary direction · Menu development · Wine-pairing logic · Recipe books · SOPs · Training protocols · Documentation · Health & safety · Council approval · Launch · Ongoing management
A menu structured around the wine list logic. Dishes that work with texture, fat, acid, and weight rather than against them. Classical European reference points with produce-led execution. The duck dish as the centrepiece: lacquered, precise, rich enough to anchor a bottle but not so heavy it stops the evening. Noodle and greens as the intelligent carb. Unpretentious, technically clean.
The kitchen systems ran alongside the menu: supplier relationships, COGS discipline, recipe documentation. The back-end work that makes the front-end hold.
Outcome
A wine bar that eats well. That's harder than it sounds, and most don't manage it.
For any room where food plays a supporting role, the discipline is in restraint: knowing what not to do, then building the kitchen and the systems around that. That approach is repeatable.
Press
"The menu overseen by acclaimed chef Michael Stolley showcases a curated selection of smaller and larger Euro-centric dishes, all plated with meticulous precision." Urban List Melbourne
"Chef Michael Stolley … is running the kitchen, plating up a mix of small and large sharing plates that are loosely inspired by a range of European cuisines." Concrete Playground, Jul 2024
"Michael Stolley … will run the kitchen pass here." Concrete Playground, May 2024
Suzie Q
made by stolley.