The heritage buildings at 42-44 Oxford Street, Collingwood, are part of a site established in 1888 that was originally home to the Dyason & Co Cordial Factory. The site has since been turned into the C&L development, featuring apartments, a Lyf hotel and, coming in June, two venues: Orlo and Cordial Club.

James Klapanis (St Cloud Eating House and Young’s Wine Rooms) is behind both Orlo, a Mediterranean restaurant, and Cordial Club, a basement bar. Carlo Grossi (Alta Trattoria, Grossi Florentino) also joins the team as a shot-term assistant.

The kitchens at both Orlo and Cordial Club will be overseen by executive chef Matteo Tine, who has most recently been working with Klapanis at Young’s Wine Rooms as the venue’s executive chef and creative director.

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His title is the same at Orlo, where the cooking will be “elemental style, lots of wood fire, Josper” and the food will be “an eclectic Mediterranean” sharing style menu catered to a “typical Collingwood crowd”, the chef tells Broadsheet.

The restaurant has an open kitchen – “you’re going to feel like you’re eating with chefs” – and will sit 50 inside with additional seats at an outdoor parklet. There’s a spiral staircase leading to a mezzanine-level private dining room that overlooks circular windows at the front of the building.

The heritage building will retain its 1900s feeling. “I love creating great venue spaces for all our locals and for people to come in, see the old bones of the building and be able to enjoy what was built here over 100 years ago,” says Klapanis.

A staircase at the front of the restaurant leads down to the Cordial Club basement bar. Here there’ll be drinks designed by Joe Jones of PurplePit and now-closed Romeo Lane.

The team says Jones will create six varieties of cordials especially for the venue to use in cocktails. “Not all of them are going to be sweet – cordial’s got a really bad rap,” says Tine, “but they can be sour and use whatever seasonal fruit you’ve got.”

There’ll also be a bespoke sour beer on tap downstairs that the team will mix with different cordials, as well as a small bar menu that will “echo” the food from Orlo upstairs.

Orlo and Cordial Club are expected to open in June 2024 at 44 Oxford Street.