Coming Soon: It Takes Years of Experience To Open a Venue As Restrained as Suze

Steve Harry wrapped up as head chef at Napier Quarter at the end of 2024. And last Sunday, Giulia Giorgetti worked her final shift as restaurant manager at Hot-Listed venue Marion. The pair are now fully focused on readying their own venue, Suze, a wine bar in the former One Trick Pony site in Fitzroy North.

They have two enviable resumes. Giorgetti ran two restaurants with her brother in Italy and Harry has worked as a chef de partie at Cumulus Inc, head chef at Auterra, and a sous chef at Cutler. They both also worked together at Anyday group venues in Brisbane (Harry was in the kitchen at Honto). While up north, Harry cooked at Gerard’s and Urbane as well.

With serious experience behind them, at Suze, they aren’t trying to prove anything. “It’s more about offering a place where people can enjoy the simplicity of the hospitality,” says Giorgetti. “It’s not a matter of showing off your techniques or your knowledge too much anymore for us.”

The food is Melbourne wine bar cuisine, which Harry considers “a category in its own right”. Snacky bites will include house-made focaccia, marinated peppers, and chicken liver parfait served on pain d’epices (French spiced cake). Giorgetti and Harry are perfectly happy if you want to stop there. But Suze will also be a place where you can settle in and enjoy a more substantial meal, which might include house-made ricotta, eggplant cotoletta, house-made pasta, whole flounder with bone marrow and capers, and chamomile panna cotta for dessert.

Harry is quick to emphasise his unfussy approach to food at the moment. “Chefs are very attached to their craft. We spend a lot of years trying to work at all the best places, trying to figure out how to make the perfect onion puree or the perfect canelé or whatever. But we kind of lose track of what it is that we’re actually doing, which is just hospitality in general … having friends over and casually pouring wine and the conversation you have over the well-executed food,” he says. “Five years ago, I would have been flicking through techniques in my head: can I puree it, dehydrate it and whatever – but it’s so unnecessary.”

Drinks are Giorgetti’s domain. She started off thinking the list would highlight wines from Italy, but it has ended up about a 50/50 split between European and Australian wines. “We’re not gonna categorise ourselves, we are aiming to offer what’s good to drink. Sometimes that can be natural. Sometimes that can be traditional.”

A small list of drinks that aren’t wines include Americanos, spritzes, Negronis, Martinis – “all on ice, two spirits, splash of soda, splash of prosecco, maybe,” Giorgetti says.

The couple’s quiet confidence is reflected in the understated design, too. The renovation includes adding a concrete bar and banquettes downstairs, along with footpath seating. Upstairs, the open kitchen overlooks the small, moody, grey-painted dining room. The offering will be the same across all spaces, but the downstairs room and outdoor space will be walk-in only. “It’s a place where you pop in with spontaneity. That’s the main thing we want,” says Giorgetti.

Suze is expected to open at 6 Newry Street, Fitzroy North in early March