Looking for a bar? Well, don’t bother looking for the sign above a big, bold entry right on a main road. No siree, from what I can gather, those days are long gone. Bars in 2013 are secreted down laneways, up elevators, round corners, behind restaurants, or in basements. Sometimes you need a secret password.
Tag: sydney bars
The much-anticipated opening of the Wild Rover, after a couple of setbacks, is finally here. Opening at the end of next week, the two-level bar from James Bradey and Warren Burns (owners of Grandma’s) will hold 120 people, with the same drinks and food across both levels — downstairs it’s expected will be a quieter affair, and upstairs, with a plan down the track to have live music, is expected to be a little more boisterous.
We stopped by new Sydney bar, Bulletin Place, to catch up with bartender and co-owner Tim Philips — whom you may have heard of — and asked him about what makes a good cocktail list.
Sydney is the new bar capital of Australia. Yes that’s right folks, after more than 13 years of publishing this humble little magazine and always referring to Melbourne as the city with the best bars I now feel it only fair to give credit where credit is due.
This week sees the opening of a new bar in the Speakeasy group’s stable: Bottleneck. Located in the space that the now defunct Art Lounge occupied in the Kirketon Hotel (and practically on Eau de Vie’s doorstep) the new bar from Sven Almenning and company…
Scotch whisky gets a lot of the world’s attention in the global spirits market. But it’s not the only game in town and when it comes to mixing drinks and creating cocktails, bartenders seem to be turning to Irish whiskey more and more – partly due to its mixability (as we’ll see below) but also because it is a category that has been underdeveloped in Australia until recently, with the arrival of Redbreast and Writer’s Tears in addition to the forthcoming Green Spot.
No one that we know of is putting sherry out there in as big a way that these guys are. There is a groundswell of interest building in all things Jerez in the States (bartenders like The Columbia Room’s Derek Brown have been raving about it for a while now) and we’re seeing the local winos talking about it more and more, particularly the Equipos Navazos bottlings which you can find here at Tapavino.
The old Rambutan site on Oxford Street has come alive again. And, just as in its previous incarnation, good food goes hand in hand with great drinking at Kaya Sydney. “It’s loosely based on an izakaya, which is a Japanese bar that serves good food,” said owner Tim Lackey.
It used to be, only a few years ago, that a night out in Manly, home of the silvertails, sandy beaches and surfers, involved heading down to the Corso and into a big ol’ beer barn. There’d you’d order beer, if you were a guy (it’s a beer barn, after all), and you were likely wearing a T-shirt.
Which is not to say that is bad, because there is a time and a place for that. But that was all there was. And it couldn’t be further from the truth today.
We caught up with the Shady Pines and Baxter Inn lads for their pearls of wisdom, like this gem: “No crumb in the no-crumb zone.” Read on…
Is the era of the big ‘group’ in Sydney coming to an end? Or is the landscape just changing for the better?