The story behind
the room.
"The apothecary left its shelves behind. We filled them with something else."Marcus Thorne, Founder
In 2019, Marcus Thorne signed the lease on a basement in Smith Street that hadn't been touched since the 1970s. Before that, it had been an apothecary — medicinal herbs, glass jars, handwritten labels. When they stripped it back, they found the shelving still intact.
Marcus had spent seven years in pharmacology research, watching compounds interact, learning patience and precision. He left to apprentice at Artesian in London, then Nightjar. He came back to Melbourne knowing exactly what he wanted to build: a room that treated flavour the way a laboratory treats a hypothesis — rigorously, obsessively, and with full acceptance that most experiments fail before one succeeds.
The shelves went back up. The jars refilled. The first menu launched in autumn 2019 with eight cocktails, all house-made, all built around a single seasonal botanical. Vessel has operated every Wednesday to Sunday since.
The Philosophy
House-Made Everything
Every bitters, syrup, shrub, and tincture on the menu is made in this room. We ferment, distil, clarify, and age. If a flavour doesn't exist yet, we build it.
Seasonal Menus
Four menus a year, each anchored to a single ingredient or botanical family. The menu that served you last visit is gone. The next one is something else entirely.
The Spirits Library
We curate for depth, not breadth. 200+ bottles weighted toward Tasmanian whisky, Oaxacan mezcal, and agricole rum. The list rewards the curious.
The Room
40 seats. Underground. No DJ booth competing with the bar. No TV. No music you can name. A room designed to disappear around you.
The Team
Head Bartender & Founder
Marcus Thorne
Marcus spent seven years in pharmacology research before a chance apprenticeship at a London bar changed everything. He trained under some of the city's most rigorous cocktail programmes — Artesian, Nightjar, Satan's Whiskers — before returning to Melbourne with an obsession for fermentation, extraction, and the chemistry of flavour. Vessel is the result of that obsession made physical.
Bar Manager
Isla Chen
Isla joined Vessel in its second year and has since built the service culture that defines the room. She believes the best hospitality is the kind that goes unnoticed — the kind that just makes everything feel effortless. She oversees the floor, the team, and the waiting list.
Spirits Curator
Declan Murphy
Declan built the spirits library. What started at 60 bottles in 2019 is now 200+ expressions, with a particular depth in Tasmanian whisky, mezcal from the Oaxacan valley, and aged Caribbean rum. He runs the guided tasting flights and has an unsettling ability to identify a distillery blind.
Resident DJ (Thu – Sat)
Yuki Saito
Yuki curates the sound at Vessel three nights a week. The brief: music that disappears into the room, that you feel more than hear, that evolves over the course of a night from slow to something else. No requests. No EDM. The volume never competes with conversation — until it does.
A Timeline
Vessel opens in a former apothecary basement in Fitzroy, 35 seats, reservation-preferred.
Named in The Age's "10 Best New Bars in Melbourne." Waiting list established within six weeks.
Private Apothecary Room opens. Seating expanded to 40. First bespoke in-house distillate produced.
Finalist, Australian Bartender Magazine Bar of the Year. Spirits library reaches 100 expressions.
Seasonal menu programme formalised — four menus per year, each focused on a single botanical family.
Library expanded to 200+ bottles, including the first Tasmanian single cask exclusive to Vessel.
"The Bitter Season" launches — our most complex menu yet. Amaro, alpine botanicals, fermented stone fruit.