Fresh from the success of their Petersham venue, West Village, operators Goodtime Hospitality have opened East Village Sydney on Palmer Street in Darlinghurst.
They’ve brought on accomplished Sydney bartenders Lee Potter Cavanagh (as general manager) and Reece Griffiths (in the bar manager role) to open the three level venue.
The ground floor level is the public bar, and as with the great Australian tradition of the public bar the atmosphere is casual and relaxed. The difference here? They’re serving some killer wine — think of a democratisation of good wine and you’ll get the idea.
“We don’t want to do wines because that’s what people expect, or because it’s a good price point, we want to do wines that we all love and there’s a reason behind why we’ve chosen them,” Griffiths says.
The key feature we;re fond of in the public bar is their cellar by the glass list. So, whilst they have some 150 bins of wine for you to choose from, they’ll also be pouring a select few wines from the cellar by the glass at aggressive margins — but once they’re gone, they’re gone, and a new bottle is selected from their cellar.
“That’s what we want to do — get these wines into people’s mouths,” says Potter Cavanagh. “Why should you have to go to a fine dining restaurant to try a Giaconda chardonnay?”
And whilst wine is the focus down here, the duo haven’t forgotten about cocktails (Potter Cavanagh, after all, was named the 2015 Bartender of the Year).
“We’re definitely not shunning cocktails. We’re doing wine cocktails and a wine pub because it’s something that we think will be fun and we can think creatively again, because it’s a whole other world that we haven’t really played with much,” he says.
Upstairs on the second floor is the East Village Athletic Club — a nod to the sporting clubs of yesteryear (the Detroit Athletic Club was home to The Last Word, so it’s not all fitness). The Athletic Club is something different altogether, Potter Cavanagh says.
“It’ll be more of that intimate service: you’ll come in in the afternoon and watch some cricket in summer and there’s the day’s newspaper — the latest Bartender magazine — and Monocle, that kind of thing. It’s British members club meets high-end American sports bar meets Aussie culture.”
Here, expect the drink offering to feature “lots of brown liquor, lots of Old Fashioned’s, lots of Boilermakers, kind of dude drinks and that sort of thing,” he says.
If you become a member of the club, they’ll take down your favourite sports and teams and notify you when there’s a game on so you can reserve your table.
Level three of the venue is the Terrace and is due to open in time for Melbourne Cup, with an open air rooftop (with added wet weather protection) that looks set to be a Sydney destination this summer.
East Village Sydney is open Monday through to Saturday from 11am to midnight, and on Sundays from 11am until 10pm. You can find them at 234 Palmer Street Darlinghurst or on here on Instagram and Facebook.
