It would be easy to write off Gracie's Wine Room as a social media phenomenon.
Founder Kelsie Gaffey documented every brick laid and wine tasted on TikTok before the Toorak Road venue opened in 2025, building a devoted audience without pouring a single glass. But over 12 months later, Gracie’s has evolved from buzzy newcomer into something with real staying power — and a visit to try the revamped menu only confirmed it.
The expanded food offering is a collaboration between chef Ronan Laird and culinary consultant Alexandra Weymouth. It’s built around shareable small-to-medium plates with a brief that was reportedly straightforward: make it Gracie’s, but better.
Gracie’s Wine Room
- 27 Toorak Road, South Yarra
- Open from 4pm to 10pm, and from 1pm or 12pm on weekends
- gracieswineroom.com
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
View this post on Instagram
The freshly baked focaccia ($12) is a lift-off point for any order here. It arrives warm with a generous pot of whipped hot honey butter that straddles the line between sweet and savoury in a way that makes you want to eat it with a spoon. If you’re sharing, get two — you won’t want to relinquish a single piece.
But the salt-content demands the addition of heirloom tomatoes with buffalo mozzarella, fried shallots and salsa verde ($21) – a textbook example of fresh ingredients. Ripe, seasonal tomatoes doing most of the heavy lifting, with the shallots adding a crunchy counterpoint to the soft cheese. The baked sourdough with roasted zucchini, ricotta, pangrattato and citrus ($16) is another quiet achiever — the breadcrumb crunch against the creamy ricotta keeps things interesting, and a hit of citrus throughout most of these dishes stop them from veering too much into comfort-food.
The tuna tostadas ($27) are the dish Gaffey herself reportedly reaches for on date night. Cucumber, orange, avocado and spring onion pile onto a crisp base with chilli mayo tying the whole thing together. They’re light, punchy and moreish in a way that sits perfectly alongside a glass of something cold. The warm lobster roll ($22) rounds things out at the heartier end — garlic butter, shallots and a soft roll that lets the shellfish do the talking.
On the drinks front, Gracie’s wine list leans heavily into approachable Australian drops, and the staff clearly know their way around it. A beaujolais hit the right note of bright, crushable red for a warm-ish evening, while a glass of shiraz carried more weight without tipping into anything too serious.
The star of the drinks menu, though, might be Gracie’s Favourite cocktail. Like a grapefruit riff on a pornstar martini, it’s tropical, tart and dangerously easy to put away.
“I’ve been wanting to create the perfect wine for this moment”
View this post on Instagram
Beyond the current menu, Gracie’s has also launched its own limited-release orange wine in collaboration with Konpira Maru, the Victorian natural winemakers who’ve been producing small-batch, low-intervention drops since 2014. Gracie’s Orange is a viognier fermented on verdelho skins, and the press release promises notes of apricot skin, candied citrus peel, ginger spice and salt. It’s available at $60 a bottle in-venue or $48 to take home, while stocks last.
“I’ve been wanting to create the perfect wine for this moment since we opened Gracie’s, and I’m so glad that it’s finally here,” Gaffey says.
What makes Gracie’s work — beyond the food and the wine list — is that it doesn’t feel like it’s performing for anyone. The Edwardian building on Toorak Road has a warmth to it that comes across as earned rather than designed, from the timber bar to the leafy courtyard out back.
For a venue that built its reputation on TikTok before it even had a liquor licence, Gracie’s Wine Room has done something harder than going viral: it’s stuck around and gotten better.
For more information, head here.
