Mixologist Matt Whiley will open a reimagined dive bar, Little Cooler, in the Sydney CBD and rebirth his award-winning bar, Re, after partnering with the team behind the award-winning Maybe Sammy cocktail bar.

Re, which landed on the prestigious World’s 50 Best Bars list during its three-year run at Eveleigh, was originally slated to relocate to The Norfolk Hotel in Redfern in a deal struck with Public Hospitality. But when Maybe Group split with the embattled Public group in July, Whiley followed.

“I went there to work with them,” Whiley says of Maybe owners Stefano Catino and Vince Lombardo, the duo behind Maybe Sammy bar in The Rocks and Randwick pizzeria Maybe Frank.

The trio is close to locking down a Sydney CBD site for the relaunch of Re, the pioneering no-waste bar concept, which closed earlier this year. The launch of Little Cooler will unveil the first peek at the combined talents of Sydney’s bar stars.

Little Cooler will open in November in the former home of Grandma’s Bar, at 275 Clarence Street. Steel and Stitch, the design outfit behind glam Potts Point dining room Parlar, is reworking the space, which Catino says will pay homage to the dive bars of 1990s New York.

“We won’t have vinyl – there are enough people doing that,” Catino says. Instead, there’ll be “music selectors” playing rock and hip-hop from that era. And Whiley will be responsible for old-school cocktails, which will include a Tequila Sunrise, Appletini and Sex on the Beach.

“We’ll make the cordial for the Appletini, so there’ll be a choice of apple varieties,” Whiley says. Other cocktail ingredients will include fermented rhubarb wine in the Naked & Famous, raspberry ferment in the Tequila Sunrise and house salted peach liqueur in Sex on the Beach.

“We want to do these classics like you haven’t seen before, for the modern palate,” Whiley says.

Little Cooler is a pop-up with a pre-determined two-year expiry date, longer than the lifespan of many regular Sydney venues.

“This is a [joint] project built on the ashes of our experience at Public,” Catino says.