Venues
Sydney’s HOME nightclub has undergone a little but if a revamp thanks to their longstanding partners, Red Bull, through the Red Bull Curates program.
The partnership goes back some time, with the nightclub (which opened in 1998) being Red Bull’s first Australian on-premise account.
Sydney’s Oxford Street is set to get a fresh injection of tikitastic escapism when The Cliff Dive, a new bar from the boys from Tio’s, opens in late October. Located on Oxford Square in the space which housed the Gaff (and earlier, Rogues), The Cliff Dive is drawing on tiki influence from Australia’s near neighbours in PNG and East Timor.
Regular Bartender contributor Nick Reed has left his post running the bar at venerable Melbourne cocktailing institution, 1806, to return to his hometown of Geelong and set up his own bar.
Well, what Brisbane’s rockabilly scene has lost, their whisky drinkers have certainly gained. Owners Asa Boardman, Trent Goodwin, and Martin Lange (Sling) have turned what was once a rockabilly hairdresser into a bastion of whisky in the heart of the West End.
Why is it now, that after only three short years, I find myself writing about moving on and leaving Canvas behind? After just three years of great success within the Australian bar scene we have decided to sell Canvas.
Influential Adelaide bar, Cushdy, is set to close its doors forever at the end of September, citing a long standing struggle with location as the chief factor in its closure.
It must be a pretty good time to be a rum importer right now — one might even go as far as saying that 2013 turned out to be the year of the rum bar. And back in February (and also in Fitzroy) came this cracking new rum joint, The Rum Diary Bar.
Last October we brought you the news that Perth’s Andy Freeman — award winning operator of Luxe Bar and member of this year’s Top 50 Most Influential List — was working on a new bar for Perth’s CBD, called Varnish on King. Well, they’ve now thrown open the doors and we thought we’d take a look at what’s on offer.
It looks like this is the month when the rum switch got flicked! From the team that brought you such bars as Lily Blacks and Mr Wow’s Emporium (see our December issue on that), comes a new bar that draws on all things Cuba, Los Barbudos…
It’s not often that tapas bars wholly embrace the San Sebastian style — you might get smaller portions, but the price rarely dips as small as what’s on your plate.
Prahran’s High Street has seen some drastic changes in the rebuild and refit of the Prahran Hotel. Owners Matt and Andy Mullins, Tom Birch, and Doug Maskiell of the Sand Hill Road Hospitality Group are behind the resurrection of the hotel, the centrepiece of which is the erection of a two storey high series of concrete cylinders.
“We trade as a third waver café by day and a bar by night,” said Dax Byrne (ex theloft, Bathers Pavillion), one of the owners of this new Melbourne bar and café. Third wave coffee is getting in to more and more coffee joints — that is, going beyond the espresso thing and into pourover coffee, filter coffees and all that. They take an approach to coffee that seeks to be only a step removed from the growers — an approach that we think will increasingly be applied by bars with respect to the spirits they stock.