Hot in the City: Sipping in the suburbs at the Greenway Wine Bar

Two Before Ten, the busy café on the lake in Tuggeranong, does double duty three nights a week as the Greenway Wine Bar.

The two-storey sunlit space was planned specifically to be a comfortable café at the bottom of the large new apartment blocks. With booth seating throughout with thick comfortable cushions and power points for charging, it was designed for people to sit and enjoy the surroundings for an extended period, says Two Before Ten owner Chris Dennis.

The Greenway site is the fifth Two Before Ten location for the community builder and successful entrepreneur who could not resist setting up shop in the beautiful surroundings.

“We’d been planning to do something in Tuggeranong for quite a while. I grew up in Tuggers and love the area. I love how close you feel to the mountains and the proliferation of native fauna and flora. And Pine Island! It’s so nice on a summer’s day!”

“We found out about the Greenway site through a friend who worked as an architect in the area. It was a no-brainer. Six-metre ceilings, copious amounts of glass, north-east facing, on the water, you don’t get opportunities like that very often.”

The café opened to a roaring trade in October 2019, trading seven days a week, and then the Wine Bar launched with big plans in March 2020, just before the COVID-19 restrictions hit the hospitality industry.

While the café remained open, offering locals their daily dose of coffee during the challenging times, the Wine Bar ceased operations and only resumed service just before the end of last year.

Open three nights a week from Thursday to Saturday with a showcase of live music on Fridays, Greenway Wine Bar translates their laid-back produce-driven local daytime offering to a night-time crowd.

“Greenway Wine Bar is best defined as a regional produce restaurant and wine bar. It aims to support local growers and wineries as much as we can. The wine list is all Canberra Region, and the spirits are all Australian, and a good portion of the menu comes from our Urban Farm at Aranda,” Chris says.

“Because of the size of the venue, there are a few different spaces – the upstairs bar, downstairs cafe space, and outside tables to watch the sun go down over the lake. As with all our venues, it is very relaxed and very accommodating – it is about the customers, not about us.”

My first visit to the location is on a sunny Saturday night. With summer still in the air, and the lake views beckoning, we sit outside on the long wooden bench seats. It is a pit stop for us before we catch a movie, so we settle on pairing our drinks with snacks.

The short menu offers flexibility, whether you are settling in for dinner or just stopping by for a drink. Ranging from shareable options of garlic bread and the Urban Farm Antipasto platter to plated single meals of burgers, steak, pasta and pan-roasted fish of the day.

The atmosphere is mellow with cheerful, relaxed table service, and the casual atmosphere of visiting the café in the daytime has been retained. It is refreshing to have an unpretentious local night-time lake venue to enjoy sipping a glass of wine, whether you are stopping by after walking the dogs in activewear or all dressed up for the night in heels.

Greenway Wine Bar is located on Cynthia Teague Crescent, overlooking Lake Tuggeranong. It’s open Thursday to Saturday from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm.

Original Article published by Sophia Brady on The RiotACT.