The Reine Team will open bookings for Prive, a 24-seat cocktail bar tucked into the ground floor of the 1890 Safe Deposit Building, on Wednesday 10 June.
It is the smallest venue yet from Edition Hospitality, the group founded by Rebecca Yazbek that transformed the Cathedral Room of the Old Melbourne Stock Exchange into Reine & La Rue in 2023. That restaurant sits just around the corner from 90 Queen Street. Now the team is stitching together a tiny hospitality precinct inside two heritage stock exchange buildings.
Group bar manager Felix Woods said the project needed a connection to its sister venue while standing clearly on its own. “We want a through-line connecting Reine and La Rue to Prive,” Woods said, “so there will be a familiar tone, but at the same time it absolutely has to be its own thing.”
He described a room worlds away from the grand dining space at Reine, where the bar supports the restaurant. At Prive, the drinks lead. “Reine’s bar is there to support the food and the overall experience, and there’s a lot to compete with,” Woods said. “At Prive we’ll have the luxury of being able to tone things down a bit visually, let the drinks speak for themselves, and explore more subtle flavours that might otherwise get missed in the bustle of a grand dining room.”
The interiors were designed by Stacey King, who also shaped Reine and La Rue. Woods’s cocktail list revives classics such as the Sazerac and Kir Royale, built with small local and European producers. Group culinary director Michael Greenlaw and executive chef Andy Roche will serve bar snacks that do their own heavy lifting: duck liver and foie gras parfait, and a French dip baguette. Greenlaw described the space as “a sort of extension of Reine and La Rue” though the public bar menu stands entirely on its own.
For anyone wanting an intimate, moody cocktail bar in a heritage CBD pocket, Prive is the new reservation to chase. The two-part venue couples a private dining room for up to 32, bookable as an extension of Reine & La Rue, with the public 24-seat Bar Prive that operates independently. It is not a waiting room for a restaurant table. Woods stripped back the visual noise deliberately so guests focus on the glass, and the smaller scale means he can work with subtle flavours that would be lost in a louder room.
Bookings open on 10 June for a mid-July opening. With only 24 seats in the public bar and a private dining room linked to one of the city’s most sought-after venues, early reservations are sensible. Treat it the same way you would a major restaurant launch and set a calendar reminder.
The Queen Street location sits in the thick of the tram network, with routes along Collins Street and Queen Street just steps from the door. Flinders Street and Melbourne Central stations are both a short walk away. Driving into the CBD and hunting for parking is a costly headache, so public transport is the clear call.
While you are in the precinct, combine a drink at Prive with the team’s existing Reine & La Rue around the corner. The cluster of heritage dining rooms and basement bars between Queen and Collins streets keeps growing, and two visits in one evening now share a single postcode and a shared history.
The Safe Deposit Building, designed by William Pitt in 1890 as part of the Melbourne Stock Exchange, sat largely silent for decades. By mid-July its ground floor will do something it has not done in more than a century: pour a drink for a stranger who walked in off Queen Street.