Ever since we brought the news of the forthcoming Sydney bar Kittyhawk, the new bar from the team behind Sydney rum haven The Lobo Plantation, late last year, the anticipation for this new bar has steadily grown. Well, now Kittyhawk is open — we popped in to take a look around and get acquainted with the drinks.
We haven’t covered the food below, but we can tell you this — it’s some of the more flavoursome bar food going around, with big French flavours encouraging you to order another drink.
Take a look at the bar below and check out four drinks you’ll want to get stuck into.
1. Rum & Rye Old Fashioned
Often the idea behind a bar will inspire the drinks you serve, but for Kittyhawk, much of the venue was inspired by this drink, their Rum & Rye Old Fashioned.
“That’s how we came up with the venue,” explained Walters. “We kind of reverse-engineered it from a drink we had at Lobo. It stemmed from the Arrack & Rye from PDT, but I couldn’t find an arrack cost effective enough in Australia to do it. So I was like, I’ll do a Rum & Rye, and we liked it.”
It’s a perfect balance of rum sweetness and rye spice, and is served in custom made glassware. “Because we had a lot of time on this opening, we got to design a lot of the glassware ourselves,” Walters said. (It probably helps that he is an owner of the barware supply company, BarGeek).
They’ve custom made the shot glasses (which have as a base a kind of artillery shell case and branded with Kittyhawk), the double old fashioned and collins glasses, and a wooden mug they’re serving up Rye & Ginger in.
2. Nose Art
Made with gin, lemon, Suze, and a cold infusion of orange, sugar and pine, this is a drink that tastes earthy and botanical — which suits a drink served in a pot plant, no?
Walters said that the idea for this drink centres on orange and pine — and he went to some lengths to get the correct pine tree to play around with.
“I went to a whole lot of nurseries around Sydney and tried to work out what the smell of it was, what they taste like. So I was down in the nursery and I was smelling these plants, and I’m eating the plants; this dude who works at the nursery comes over and says, “can I help you?” I’m like, “I’m trying to find out which one tastes the best.” He’s like: what the fuck for?”
3. Rye Tai
Walters’ first experiments with whiskey in rum recipe began with using smoky Scotch whisky, before he moved onto rye. And while the Rye Tai isn’t a Kittyhawk invention, their tale on the drink is one of the finer examples — and it might be down to the use of their own spiced rye in it.
“Essentially it’s half rum and half rye,” said Walters. “A lot of things that you do with rum you can do with rye. Instead of getting that tiki sweetness, sort of tropical feel to it, you get cleaner flavours.” They’re making a rye grain infused orgeat, a touch of falernum, and then pouring in their spiced rye and rum.
4. Rye N Ginger
This drink is pure refreshment. Rye whiskey and a pineapple ginger beer. It’s tasty as, is served in a custom made wooden mug and is a great way to start your night at Kittyhawk.
Take a look at the rest of the venue in the images below.
