A pizza bar and lunch deli around the corner – the Pep’s crew unveil two new Mosman Park venues

When we innocently sent an email to the crew at Pep’s… Little did we know we’d be uncovering such exciting, expansive plans in the works.

Of course, we knew that the team had opened Stuart St. Cellars back in December of 2023, just down the road from the Peppy Grove wine bar. But we’d heard whispers here and there – something about a pizza spot called Aggie’s – and we wanted to get to the bottom of it.

“We would love to let you in on all the goss!” came the reply.

All the goss? This sounds intriguing…

It’s with an optimistic, curious sense of intrigue that was wander our way into the cellars on a sunny autumn afternoon – sitting down with owners Charlie and Natarsha Galbally and Operations Manager Kitty Usher.

So… Aggie’s?

“It’s about 100 metres that way, just before Glyde Street,” Charlie explains, pointing down Stirling Highway. “There used to be a bar called O Brother, and prior to that it was a place called Suburban Table, a dine-in restaurant, BYO, the food was incredible. So it’s always been a hospitality type space.”

Between the closure of O Brother and the arrival of Aggie’s, the space has been the aptly-named in—between, utilised for community events and private functions.

“But the idea behind it was always that it would be a pizza bar, which is Aggie’s,” says Kitty. “It’s currently under renovations, we’ve started doing bits and pieces. The premise behind it is: family friendly, casual, super approachable. Really just a delicious offering but low key.”

At the kitchen’s helm will be Sunny de Ocampo. The chef with a disposition as sunny as his name has been taking up residency at Pep’s three nights a week since February, and will be the executive chef across all of the group’s venues.

“We’re in the process of designing the menu which already looks pretty delicious,” Kitty continues. “Initially the vibe will be takeaway pizzas, but people can also sit and have a glass of wine. Eventually we’ll have a few little things to nibble on while they wait for their pizza.”

“Well, takeaway service,” Charlie clarifies. “So you can sit and eat a pizza, but it’ll be out of a pizza box!”

“There’ll be six pizzas on the menu, nothing crazy. Short, sharp, fast paced, cheap and cheerful, approachable. A wine list of five whites, five reds, one rose, one sparkling – all under 60 bucks so that it’s that approachable, community, accessible place. Bring the kids down, have a pizza, have a glass of wine.”

“And then, Sliding Doors moment: you come in with a group of mates, your kids are at home with the babysitter. And you can sit down to have a night out and not spend $200 a head, which is bloody hard to do at the moment.”

(They’ve also got plans to combine Stuart St. Cellars and Aggie’s online ordering in the future – which means pizza and wine delivered straight to your door.)

Charlie attributes some of this approachability and community focus to reliability. Cue the Cheers theme…

“I think realistically we’ll be open five days to start with probably shutter on Monday, Tuesday, but the intention is to be seven days. Pep’s is seven days, this [Stuart St.] is seven days, Gill St. will be seven days. I don’t think you can be a community based business if you’re shutting one or two days a week, you have to be there for the people every day.”

Hang on… Gill Street? Yep, you heard right – that’s the other Mossie Park news they’ve been keeping under wraps: that they’ll also be taking over the long-standing neighbourhood café on the corner of Gill and Solomon Streets.

Fittingly, the addition of Gill St. to the Community Wine Group banner came about through neighbourhood chit-chat while popping in for a coffee. Some more locals got involved, there was a bit of arm-twisting, and the next thing you know… Their new spin on Gill St. Deli will be re-opening next month.

“It’ll be a corner store-type delicatessen. Open breakfast, lunch, and takeaway dinner meals, 7AM to 7PM.”

“We want to have a really formidable, clean, fresh, delicious breakfast offering – grab and go as well as dine-in, so you can get poached eggs, you can get a smoothie bowl, you can get a granola pot, you can get Bircher muesli.”

“And then incredible coffee, we’ll use Five Senses coffee there again, which we love. And then go into a daytime menu: three pastas, two salads. So you can sit down and have a really nice, lovely lunch – not in a licensed environment, not in some way that you feel need to dress up for. Just somewhere that you can casually duck in and get a cheerful bowl of pasta.”

(“We’ve just locked in a really cool chef for that place who I won’t mention just yet,” he teases.)

“And walking into a space that’s just alive with product – a really good pantry offering. We want to cure our own meats, we want to have our own cheese supply offerings, we want to be able to be that place in the afternoon, if you’re going to somebody’s house, come down here [Stuart St.] grab your wine, go down to Gill St. and grab an amazing offering of delicatessen items.”

“We’re trying to, I mean, not disrupt the big boys in supermarkets… But you look at the bottle shop offering around in our immediate catchment, it’s all Coles and Woolies. BWS, Liquorland, Vintage Cellars. Boatshed do an amazing job of an independent style of offering, Old Bridge are absolutely outstanding.”

“But there’s a huge opportunity for us to be servicing the community differently, with different offerings, so tacking in the pizza delivery tacking in delicatessen items that we’re producing at Gill St., that can also be in the Stuart St. business, just connects everything back together.”

“I mean, everyone gets into business to make money,” Charlie muses. “But I think our businesses don’t exist without our community. I think all of our businesses are within a kilometre of each other… It’s pretty rare to have that opportunity to start your day with somebody and finish your day with that same customer, and fill in the gaps in between.”

“There’s a guy that lives up here in Peppy Grove, he said ‘Far out, you’ve really stitched me up: I have to come get my coffee from you, I have to get my bread from you, my pizza from you, I have to come to your shop to get wine. And then you can sell me glasses of wine at nighttime!'”

“It’s a pretty cool little lineup of businesses that will harmonise and talk to each other and bookend each other, and all are relevant to each other.”

(This ethos extends to the surrounding businesses and those further afield – during our chat, praise is heaped upon neighbouring Rodney’s, Il Falco, Oops Pizza, Open Book… Even the nearby Domino’s: “Competition is great,” Charlie insists. “The more businesses we get out here, the better we’re going to become as an as a precinct.”)

“We’ve started calling ourselves Community Wine Group,” adds Kitty.

“Because the main aim is to service the community. It’s about bringing people together, like, for example, the open bottle nights that we do at Stuart St. on Thursdays, the main or long term goal for that is to have people just coming in from business and neighbours coming in having a chat with each other, gaining some knowledge about wine, and, and enjoying the space. A comfortable space for them to come, shop, browse, chat, meet.”

“We have lots of people coming in on their way home from work, and they just come and sit down and some of them just want to debrief and chat about their day. And we love that, because we’re getting to know people’s faces and people’s stories, and being able to cater the service to those people. And that’s really important.”

“And the thing that I think is so special about these businesses is that we’re all so close that we really can draw on that community and create a bit more of a community hub.”

Gill St. Deli is scheduled to open in June, with Aggie’s scheduled to open later this winter.
Aggie’s will be located at 622 Stirling Highway, Mosman Park.

All images (unless stated): Sally Hall / Perth is OK!