Drink up: Melbourne’s best kept secret bars
A FRIDGE door that gives entry to a tropical garden, a bookshelf that opens to a marble staircase — we take you inside the best-kept secrets of Melbourne’s bar scene.
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YOU want pizza? They got pizza at this place. Margherita, pepperoni, three cheese ... all good and by the slice, just like they do in New York. But if I lean in close to the guy at the counter and ask for the “special”, guess what happens? He waves me towards a rear door and I enter another world. A world that Mad Men’s Don Draper would recognise, where the soundtrack is stuck in 1970, the upholstery is vinyl and the bartender — male, of course — mixes Harvey wallbangers.
THAT'S THE SPIRIT: VICTORIA'S BEST BARS
I’m in Melbourne’s newest hidden bar but, sorry, I can’t tell you what it’s called because it hasn’t got a name, website or email address. Not even a phone number. You just have to be “in the know”.
“We’re very old-school,’’ co-owner Lazaros Papasavas says over a warmed rusty nail. That’s the way customers like it. But this pizza shop cum cocktail bar is not the only well-disguised watering hole in town.
Far from it. Look hard enough and you can find them all over town. Down alleys and lanes, others in plain sight. Some loitering behind shops, others nesting over pubs. A few even curl up inside existing bars, so deeply embedded even regulars don’t know they exist.
Our hidden bars announce themselves in different ways, too … buzzers and bells, secret passwords and service doors. One place is reached through a red telephone box. Another — underground — requires visitors to remove a book from a library shelf to get in.
All this Get Smart gimmickry builds a sense of anticipation, turning bar-hopping into a journey
of discovery.
“It’s the Narnia effect. Stepping into another world,’’ says Serena O’Callaghan, of Windsor’s Jungle Boy.
Mark Dang, of Chinatown’s Manchuria, agrees, “We all love to share a secret, don’t we? That thing of telling others, ‘I know this little place’.”
But the element of surprise only goes so far.
Hard-to-find Manchuria is still thriving after 12 years because it’s smartly managed and genuinely hospitable. Same with Jungle Boy, a tiki-style bar
jiving behind an American sandwich shop.
“When you find us, we want you to come back and spread the word,” O’Callaghan says. “Secret bars are bad for business.’’
So, here’s what I can tell you about this pizza place. It’s at the top (eastern) end of the city, near a big car park and down the road from a trailblazing bar venue.
Good luck finding it. You may need a compass. And when you get there, tell ’em Simon sent you.
JUNGLE BOY
96 Chapel St, Windsor
Open: Nightly 5pm-1am
Vibe: Sandwich shop meets Polynesian paradise
Eat: Boston subs
Drink: Tiki tipples
THIS can’t be right. I’m searching for a Tiki bar at the liquor-drenched end of Chapel St. But instead of finding Jungle Boy, I’ve stumbled into a fluoro-bright sandwich shop whose sign reads Boston Sub. “Yep, you’ve come to the right place,’’ says manager Serena O’Callaghan. Turns out Jungle Boy is close by, through a cool room door. And sure enough, it’s a tropical hidey-hole dense with cactuses and coconut husk lanterns, fern fronds and the odd animal head. If it’s not O’Callaghan who greets you, it’ll be Sam Rose, who tends bar in a Hawaiian shirt, and should he recommend a ginger-spiced Jungle Cult to go with your pulled pork “sub”, or a rum-fuelled Zombie to mop up a plate of poutine (fries, gravy and cheese), take his word for it. “We know our drinks,” Rose says. “Put us to the test.’’
FALL FROM GRACE
477 Collins St, city
stateofgracemelbourne.com.au/#!cellar-bar/cqxo
Open: Mon-Sat till late
Vibe: Decadent drinking den
Eat: Charcuterie
Drink: Old fashioned
SETTLE into State of Grace with its killer martinis and Belle Epoque decor and you are in for a lovely time. But other things stir below the surface here. To find those things, look for a bookcase near the bathroom. One book on that shelf — retrieved at the right angle — springs open a door to reveal an immense marble staircase stepping down to a bigger, even more glamorous bar named Fall From Grace.
It’s all marble, mirrors and chandeliers down there, a see-and-be-seen place in the style of Boardwalk Empire that promises “a little mischief and madness’’. On a Friday night, there’s plenty of that. Fall From Grace is heaving with partygoers, all cast in a golden glow, with waistcoated waiters shaking like mad and jazz amping up the roar of the crowd. A hidden bar? Not for much longer.
SWAMP ROOM
16 Russell Place, city (off Little Collins St), city
Open: Fri and Sat till late. Vibe: New Orleans bayou
Eat: Pulled pork burger with house slaw
Drink: The Rebennack cocktail in a flask
OUT front, its Euroland with absinthe and Napoleon Cider, but Bar Ampere is hiding a little secret that can land you in Louisiana. Just push open the service door here. Beyond that is a dark corridor where crickets murmur and moss hangs from the roof. You’ve found the Swamp Room, a Deep South joint where barman Nate turns a honky tonk piano — its keys encrusted with candle wax — into a dive bar and mixes drinks best suited to life on the bayou.
Twinkling lights and sunken chairs, jungle shrubbery and noir venetians ... yep, the Swamp Room is the next best thing to being in New Orleans. And when Nate cranks up the “music of the South with heart and soul”, you’re gonna wanna dance.
LOCH & KEY
Level 2, 34 Franklin St, city
Open: Nightly till late Vibe: Colonial cool
Eat: Pea soup and toasties
Drink: Corpse Reviver
LEGEND has it that friendly ghosts haunt the bluestone rooms at historic Mac’s Hotel.
None of them spooked me on a nocturnal visit to this 1853 pub, one of Melbourne’s oldest. But the upstairs bar — named Loch & Key — fairly drips with history. Climb a set of winding stairs and you’re in the thick of it. Timber and bluestone, armchairs and antlers, chessboards and books. Loch & Key’s balcony — a 19th-century remnant fronting a 21st-century city — is everyone’s favourite spot and manager Alan Raythorn, an expat Irishman, keeps the real world at bay with cocktails and craft beers, chicken toasties and hot dogs. As winter bites, there’s also the prospect of hot buttered rum ... with blankets and water bottles.
BACK ALLEY SALLY’S
Footscray, upstairs 4 Yewers St
Open: Wed-Sun till late; Sun 2-9pm
Vibe: Warehouse chic Eat: Pizza by the slice
Drink: Wine on tap
HEAD out to Footscray and you’ll find Back Alley Sally’s, a cunningly converted warehouse space serviced by a teeny pizza shop (Slice Girls West) directly below.
The Molly Ringwald (mild chilli beans, chorizo, egg, mozzarella and guacamole) is a nice slice but the gals downstairs send up kransky dogs, vegie burgers and toasties as well. The only hard bit is finding Sally in a back alley. Look for a blue door and a red No. 4.
MANCHURIA
Level 1, 5-7 Waratah Place, Chinatown
Open: Tues-Sat till late Vibe: Oriental
Eat: Chinese crispy pork
Drink: The Power Outage No. 1
DOWN a lane in Chinatown and up a flight of sticky stairs, Manchuria hides its light under a rather large bushel. But tug the brass handles of its big black door and you plunge into a twilight zone.
A dark and brooding den that captures the mysterious Far East. Looks deceive. Classy cocktails are the libation of choice at Manchuria, expertly mixed by barman-manager Jack Lin. And when the denizens of this exotic oasis feel hungry, smiling staffers are on hand to ferry them Asian appetisers. Anyone for Peking duck?
COPPERHEAD ROAD
75 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn
Open: Daily till late
Vibe: All that jazz
Drink: Smoked bacon bourbon
Eat: Calamari with lime mayo
LOOK for the red telephone box. That’s when you know you’ve left The Elgin Inn behind and stumbled upstairs into Copperhead Road. The soundtrack at this rooftop speak-easy is another giveaway with flapper-era songs — some of them scratchy 78s — on the house hi-fi. Velvety curtains, soda siphons and lights fashioned from trumpets complete the Roaring ’20s scene. UK mixologist Jay Brown (left)— who makes all his own infusions — will look after you as you sink into a Chesterfield or settle by a crackling fire. A Sour-Faced Bootlegger? Comin’ right up.
MOONSHINE
34 Swan St, Richmond
Open: Fri-Sun 5pm till late
Vibe: Theatrical
Eat: Cheese platters
Drink: Queen of Hearts
EVERYONE loves a theatre bar but Moonshine is not your usual flute of fizz place.
Lodged at the back end of The Owl and Cat Theatre in Richmond, down a lane strung with little globes, this is a real hole in the wall where you’d be hard pressed to swing a cat ... let alone an owl. Everyone wants to cosy up in the teeny fireplace alcove.
But other seats are scattered about, some in the lane, others in the theatre that often doubles as a cinema.
A proud indie operation, The Owl and Cat employs actors and artists.
So the bar person who mixes you a Golden Ticket cocktail could well be learning lines between orders. Be nice.
FOUR MORE TO EXPLORE
THE CROFT INSTITUTE
21 Croft Alley, off Little Bourke St, city
Science lab vibe.
LULIE ST TAVERN
Abbotsford, rear of 288 Johnston St (entrance on Lulie St).
Garage cool.
HIHOU
First floor, above Kappo,
1 Flinders Lane, city.
Japanese bar-lounge.
CABINET
11 Rainbow Alley, city
Retro chic.
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