Beaufort Street Bar Clarences Closes Its Doors After 14 Years and a String of Owners

Evolving alongside the suburb, Clarences has been an institution since it opened in 2009. On Friday November 3, after a subtle sign-off on Instagram, the Beaufort Street bar closed for good.

Over the years, the small bar weathered the ups and downs of Mount Lawley’s hospitality scene, as the popular Beaufort Street strip felt the impacts of increasing rent and utility costs, changes in consumer behaviour and spending habits, the pandemic and other factors. During the last few years, Clarences contributed to the suburb’s quiet hospitality resurgence.

In 2020, Eli Barlow picked up the baton for what would become the bar's final era. A marketing professional by trade, Barlow came across an ad on Gumtree selling the bar for $50,000. It seemed like fate for Barlow – who, eight years earlier, used to sink a few pints with the team at Clarences after his shifts “marching up and down Beaufort Street in a taco suit” while working for Zambrero.

“Mount Lawley holds a more important place in my heart than any other suburb in Western Australia,” Barlow told Broadsheet. “And, all these years later, I rewind back to making that decision and I can hand-on-heart say I don’t regret it.”

Barlow officially opened his version of the venue, Clarences Company Store, in January 2021. As a newcomer to the industry, he started by taking advice from everyone he knew who had worked at Clarences, while gathering the best team around him. Barlow credits Dean Buchanan (one of Diageo’s top 20 bartenders of 2019) for crafting a highly lauded drinks program during his year as bar supervisor.

Barlow imbued the space with new life, bringing in a New Orleans theme featuring live jazz, piano and blues, as well as a Creole-inspired menu. The venue was understated and inviting, a cosy space with timber floors and exposed brick, dimly lit by vintage lamps and a “beast of a light feature” – a tangle of trumpets illuminated by festoon lights – that Barlow built himself.

Inspired by Shady Pines Saloon in Sydney, he decided to choose one song to play at the end of every night, a song the regulars could stick around and sing along to – he even learnt piano so he could perform it for them on occasion. Then, during the pandemic, he opened a “ ghost kitchen ” called Shanghi from a secret door on Clarence Street, offering online orders and delivery.

The closure of Clarences was a difficult choice for Barlow, but it followed the plan he agreed to with his wife at the beginning of the journey: if the business wasn’t quite “clicking” at the end of three years, he would either look for an investor or sell. When they reached that three-year mark, he looked for an investor, but couldn’t find the right fit. So, after years marked by lockdowns, staff shortages and a cost-of-living crisis, Barlow decided to sell the bar.

Barlow said goodbye to 566 Beaufort Street on November 3 and the space is now being renovated to become Ban Dem, an Asian-fusion restaurant run by Paul Truong and Sunmi Lee, the minds behind Koba in Subiaco and U&I Cafe in Northbridge.

Barlow appreciates that he was able to “write the end” of the story for Clarences. Also, he was able to tick something off his bucket list: “I [always] had a picture of me with a tea towel over my shoulder, doing jokes over a bar, and I got to do that – so many times,” said Barlow, “I’m proud of what we did.”