Your guide to Australian craft spirits & Melbourne's cocktail culture
Now here’s a neighbour to whom you’d be happy to lend a cup of sugar. Stray Neighbour is borne from the minds – and smart hands – of a trio of locals who wanted to elevate their home-grounds in the North. Primarily a restaurant, dishing out an unwound Euro-centric menu by […]
Climb The Carlton‘s staircase at the moment and you will find portals into a sextuplet of different worlds. Their Bar Dream contest is in full flight as six former backpacker residences are transformed into competing venue concepts. It’s like moving through a house party on acid as you wander through the […]
Stokehouse City has followed in the footsteps of the former Stokehouse St Kilda Beach which you will recall was a little bit fancy upstairs and housed the much more chilled-out Stokehouse Cafe below. Now, after a year, the CBD establishment has let its hair down to introduce Stoke Bar + Kitchen downstairs. […]
Here are 8 new Melbourne places where you can get you drink on to open in the past month or so, including three pop-up bars (so be quick to try them). Which of the below with become your regular haunts? Fancy Nance, is not just a high tea salon, cafe and […]
As of tonight – and through this winter’s Friday and Saturday evenings – Lucky Penny cafe becomes the Hunter’s Kitchen. Chef Jason Chan has been inspired by the outdoors-men, Vikings and all things Nordic-ly wintry to create a menu of belly-warmers to keep us from hibernation. But mostly, I’m looking […]
Mod Vietnamese restaurant The Brass Coq (the place used to be called Dikstein’s Side Bar so the irreverent naming convention has stuck) a.k.a TBC opened in March. So it’s fitting that the name of their new upstairs bar – officially opening to the public today – will be ‘to be […]
The renowned and often illusive mixologist and artist Matt Bax (Bar Americano, Bar Economico & Bar Exuberante) revealed his secrets to mastering classic cocktails at an Essentials class at the most recent Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. On the merit of going back to the classics “it’s like cooking, once you […]
The Underground Experiment continues. The basement of The Noble Experiment was temporarily a kitsch 80s/90s hidden bar awash with neon. But now we’re saying ‘Aloha Sailor‘ as the space turns tropically tiki. For now anyway. The decor pays homage to 1930’s pioneers like Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber. Creepy […]
Glamping (noun): A form of camping involving accommodation and facilities more luxurious than those associated with traditional camping. Early 21st century blend of glamorous and camping. And all of a sudden the activity that is “glamping” is part of the Zeitgeist. The recent Beyond the Valley music festival offered jacuzzis, […]
Way back when I was a wee budding scribe one of my first assignments for (the fab yet now defunct) Drink Magazine was profiling The Saint. The heritage building was once a bank and the vaults remained. But my how times have changed. The space within the familiar heritage façade […]