Matt Whiley From Sydney's Re Has Whipped Up a Sustainability-Focused Cocktail Menu for W Brisbane's Living Room Bar
The bartender's Harbour City watering hole has been named on the World’s 50 Best Bar list — and now his drinks made with discarded ingredients are hitting Brisbane.
Getting Brisbanites tasting top-notch cocktails from award-winning venues around the world has been Living Room Bar's game for a few years now. The watering hole inside the W Brisbane hotel teamed up with acclaimed Barcelona bar Paradiso — aka the best bar on the World's 50 Best Bars list for 2022 — for a special menu featuring the Spanish spot's globally famous beverages the same year that it won that accolade. Now, it's enlisting bartending talents closer to home; however, when Matt Whiley from Sydney's Re is involved, every tipple is an inventive creation.
Re is no stranger to the World's 50 Best Bars list itself, placing 46th in 2021. In 2022, it made the 51–100 longlist in 87th spot. One of the reasons that the Harbour City venue — which is currently making a move to new digs in the New South Wales capital — earns so much love is its sustainability-focused approach. Reducing waste by using ingredients that'd normally be discarded is Re's angle, and an important one.
That ethos comes through at Conscious Cocktails, as the menu that's kicking off on Thursday, May 30, 2024 at Living Room Bar has been dubbed. On offer for six months, it'll evolve over that period, always with reducing refuse at its core. Potato skins, pineapple rind, pumpkin seeds, cauliflower cream, carrot peel: expect to find them all featured.
Take the Re Lamington Negroni, for instance, which uses a cacao husk vermouth blend alongside raspberry gin, Campari and coconut oil. Or, there's also the Re Margarita Spritz, with an entire mandarin going into the sip, plus tequila and mandarin kosho (it can also be enjoyed sans booze).
You can be forgiven for wanting to order the Malt Disney for its name alone — and if you do, burnt potato skin, carrot vinegar caramel, whisky and malt vodka await your tastebuds, as does a malt cloud. Blackened pumpkin seeds are an ingredient in The Seed Money, the roasted cauliflower cream pops up with bread caramel in Space Plant 60, while salad leaves and caramelised white chocolate are among Tip of the Iceberg's necessities. And, opt for the Shroom Service for a libation with onion ash, mushroom honey and pineapple skin.
Whiley has worked on the menu with Living Room Bar Bar Manager Francesco Squllacioti, and will continue to do so as the seasons change over the six-month run (because each one brings with it a new batch of ingredients that can be saved from becoming waste). The venue is also taking its commitment to sustainability beyond the pair's tipples, printing the menu on paper that was once coffee cups, using coasters made from 100-recent recycled plastic waste, composting its culinary waste that isn't part of Conscious Cocktails onsite and donating excess food to OzHarvest.
"My passion for sustainability began ten years ago when I was offered ten trays of strawberries and ended up making 50 litres of strawberry wine. Gradually, I realised 'why isn't every bar in the world doing this?'," explains Whiley.
"Collaborating with Francisco, we identified ten–12 ingredients going to waste in the hotel — our mission now is to transform these into something desirable and delicious, showing that food waste can be luxurious. I want people to leave thinking 'that was delicious', feeling happy, satisfied and knowing they've helped the planet."
Matt Whiley's Conscious Cocktails hit the menu at W Brisbane's Living Room Bar, 81 North Quay, Brisbane from Thursday, May 30, 2024 for six months — head to the venue's website for further details and bookings.
