Three To Try: New Bars for Local Drops, Live Music and Mango Sticky Rice Martinis

Jacket Bar, Thornbury

For Turkish-born musician Tamer Taşkaya, music is the ultimate form of communication. That philosophy informs Jacket, a new neighbourhood jazz bar in Thornbury. Designed in collaboration with Studio Heck, whose founders Emily Crocker and Jack Monte are also musicians, the fit-out was guided not by traditional design blueprints, but by a playlist made by Taşkaya. That soundtrack – a custom mix he describes as “a little bit playful, a little bit moody” – was intended to inform the fit-out through rhythm, tempo and tone.

Wood-panelled walls and repurposed materials run throughout the handsome, kitschy space, which hosts music from live jazz acts to soul and funk DJs and flamenco nights featuring Senes Flamenco Trio. 

For Taşkaya, it’s important to keep things approachable when it comes to Jacket’s music and beverage offering. Drinks include a tight range of beer and wine – mostly local, the Guinness excepted – alongside cocktails using the house-made syrups and infusions that line the walls. Those include the Camorcci, with cinnamon and orange peel-infused vodka, chamomile syrup, sweet vermouth and prosecco; and the Gin Kicker, with pepper and rosemary-infused gin, Cointreau, lemon juice, sugar syrup and orange bitters.

719 High Street, Thornbury

Joe Taylor, North Melbourne

From the outside, Errol Street’s Joe Taylor still looks much the way it did in the early 1900s. Of course, back then, it was a tailor. Today, behind the original painted glass signage that hangs proudly over the entrance, you’ll find a new wine and cocktail bar with a Thai sensibility. 

Matt Went of Exhibition Street bar 1806 designed a cocktail menu that balances technique with ease and playfulness. Cocktails such as the Mango Sticky Rice Martini (vodka, pandan liqueur, mango liqueur and bianco vermouth) draw on co-owner Mini Punapaprasurt and head chef Taarn Kasemra’s childhood memories of the beloved Southeast Asian dessert.

There’s an extensive wine collection, curated by sommelier Pinitnat “Gigs” Sutarosvatcharathon, who previously worked for wine importer Wine Garage in Bangkok. The list, which changes roughly monthly, includes mostly Australian drops and some European bottles.

Snacks include shoestring fries dusted in a tangy tom yum seasoning, and seasonal preserves served with chilli salt, toasted rice and lime – both go particularly well with a drink. But there are also larger dishes that lean into homestyle cooking with a refined contemporary touch. These include duck miang kham, a take on the pepper leaf-wrapped snack, served here with pandan-infused pâté and duck that’s smoked in-house for three days. And a spanner crab tartlet, a savoury reworking of traditional thong muan (a wafer cigar) filled with crab, young coconut, nashi pear and macadamia nuts.

7 Errol Street, North Melbourne

Little House, Collingwood

Little House on Smith Street, Collingwood, is the kind of understated yet playful venue that usually only comes from people who’ve spent enough time in hospitality to know how to strike the perfect balance between those qualities. 

That expertise is immediately apparent in the wine list – designed by sommelier Chris Winter, whose CV includes Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London. It keeps Victorian producers at the centre. Bottles from Avani, Quealy and Petronio sit alongside international pours from Austria, France and China.

The playful energy continues with a small cocktail list cocktail list from Ben Jensen (ex-Juni) that includes a Raspberry Bullet Sour (gin, raspberry, lemon and absinthe) and Them Apples (black tea rum, brandy, walnut orgeat, apple molasses and milk punch).

To match what’s in the glass, head chef Federico “Freddy” Carnevale (formerly head chef at Attria in Richmond and sous-chef at Bistrot Bisou) delivers a menu that walks the line between polished and comforting. Roasted scallops sit in glossy hen’s jus. Carnevale’s suppli (deep-fried Roman rice balls) are loosely inspired by amatriciana and come filled with Fremantle octopus, tomato and pecorino sardo (a sheep’s milk cheese from Sardinia). And brick chicken lands somewhere between comfort food and precision cooking – crispy skin, sticky eucalyptus honey and the citrussy lift of lemon myrtle.

98 Smith Street, Collingwood

Additional reporting by Quincy Malesovas, Nomi Makin and Sebastian Pasinetti