Overview
Naming your brand new bar after a Talking Heads song gets immediate brownie points around here. If you're creating bevs with a Victorian-era cocktail shaking machine, you can stay. Two of Australia's most regarded (and awarded) bartenders, Luke Ashton (ex rock and roll bar Vasco) and Charlie Ainsbury (ex cocktail heaven Eau de Vie), have today opened their new Darlinghurst cocktail bar, This Must Be The Place.
The cocktail-tired will want to scurry to this joint quicksmart; Ashton and Ainsbury have channelled their award-winning skills into creating a modern twist on the ever classic Spritz. A 60-seater bar focused on unpretentious cocktails, seasonal produce and specialty wines, This Must Be The Place features a reclaimed timber bar, lounge chairs and a floor-to-ceiling blank 'canvas' wall to be decorated quarterly by established and emerging artists.
But the real drawcard here is the 'Tanqueray No.TEN Crawley’s Imperial Shaker', a mighty, six-foot-tall Victorian era cocktail making machine. Yep. Stay with us. The bar's Imperial Shaker has been recreated from a nineteenth century drawing, if you can believe it, by industry expert Jason Crawley. Crawley's created just five of the machines from the drawing, all handmade in New Zealand. Four buggered off to the States, while the fifth sits in this brand new Darlinghurst bar. Just look at the thing:
Ashton and Ainsbury have a certifiable bucketload of accolades under their belts, some which paid for the the brand new bar — Ashton took out 2013's Diageo Reserve World Class Australian Bartender of the Year, raking in a $100,000 prize to open his own bar. Not too shabby. Then Ainsbury won the following year and the lads earned themselves a nice little bar-starting stash. Hence the Imperial Shaker.
This Must Be The Place can be found at 239 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst. Open daily 3 - 11pm.
Image: Daniel Boud.