Red Bull Music Academy’s magazine has a great story on the storied old Melbourne nightclub, Honkytonks. As the article by Nick Connellan points out, in the spot where Honkytonks once resided there is now an Indian restaurant, called Tonka: “It’s typical of the city: new, upmarket, pricey. Totally hidden unless you know it’s there. Achingly cool, then.”
Tag: bars
We’ve been talking about jazz age drinks for years now — but where has been the jazz? New Perth bar, The Laneway Lounge, looks set to rectify all that.
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.
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…
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.
Has a dish ever gained so celebrated a status so quickly? And has said dish been a burger? Sydney’s boozing and drinking set is known for being fickle; on to the next trend — be it a drink or burger — quicker than you can type 140 characters. But these are great…
Brought to you by owners Aaron Whitney and Andy Emans (of Melbourne’s Murmur fame), the delightfully hipster-looking menu lists its beer sections as “A little bit of Punch”, “Cidery Goodness”, “Drink it all Night”, and “The only light beer”. They even have a section devoted to longnecks, called “Just a couple”. Indeed.
When the Newtown Hotel swung its doors open, after a major nine month renovation by new owners the Keystone Group, Newtown was just hitting its stride again as an entertaining, delicious destination.
If you’ve been to Balmain recently, you’ll know that the blue collar crowd that once filled the terraced streets is merely a memory. This ritzy postcode with its sweeping city views is more ristretto than Nescafe but some of the vestiges of its proud working class roots are still on show. Mostly with its historic pubs (of which there are many!) and now, thanks to the Riversdale Group (the fellas behind Lo-Fi in Darlinghurst and more recently The Marlborough in Newtown), with a small bar called The Workers on Darling Street.