First Look: Just When You Thought Enmore Road Couldn’t Get Any Better, Along Comes Deadwax

There’s no better place to be thirsty than Enmore Road. The strip has become the go-to place to drink in Sydney. It’s always been hot with spots like Bar Planet, Famelia and Fortunate Son, but in the last few months it’s turned up the heat with new venues like Silver’s Motel, Vineria Luisa and Bar Demo. The street’s collecting hotties like it’s casting a reality TV show.

Over the weekend, another hot new bombshell entered the villa: Deadwax.

The red-hued vinyl bar comes from a trio of hospo mates: Conor O’Brien and Dan Teh (of Otis in Leichhardt) and Davyd Blacksmith (ex- Nola Smokehouse).

“We knew each other from around the traps,” Teh tells Broadsheet. “Conor and I met working at neighbouring hospitality joints – he was at Tio’s and I was at Butter. Then, years down the line, I worked in Glebe at The Little Guy.”

Blacksmith and O’Brien were both Little Guy regulars, and eventually, when O’Brien and Teh opened Otis, Blacksmith consulted on the food.

Deadwax has taken over the old Enmore Country Club space. “We’ve been looking at Enmore Road for a while now – we all drink around here, we’ve all lived around here.”

While Teh admits that “ the vinyl train has kind of left the station ”, he says Deadwax is offering something he’s “never seen done in Sydney, let alone Australia”.

The team wants to celebrate music with as little pretension as possible. All music fans are welcome here. “Some nights we’ll be playing dad rock, some Miley Cyrus, Veronicas, Sabrina Carpenter and stuff like that, but other nights we’ll be playing some pretty solid, iconic hip-hop and groove. On our vinyl request nights, there’ll be indie nights, folk and country … [We’re] creating a place where we can listen to music that we don’t normally hear in any of the vinyl bars in Sydney.”

DJs will spin on weekends, but vinyl request nights will become a Deadwax signature. Cards presenting selections from its 400-strong vinyl collection sit in a trough, and punters are encouraged to leaf through, then take their pick to the DJ. And out the back, within a month, Enmore Road’s first karaoke room will open.

It’s a completely new, stripped-back fit-out – banquette seating runs alongside tables ready to be pushed back for dancing. The homemade bar top is a swirling psychedelic beauty that involved layering and sanding down 70 pieces of resin-soaked denim.

From here come the drinks, which nod to the history of Japan’s vinyl bars. “There’s a lot of honeydew and Midori-inspired drinks, a sesame oil Martini, a ponzu Old Fashioned and a pear highball. We’re working on getting a spritz tap, so we’ll have a yuzu gin spritz down the line, too.”

Blacksmith’s snacky, simple food menu is on till last drinks. There’s a Wagyu pastrami sandwich with melted Swiss cheese and yuzu Dijonnaise; a taramasalata-topped crumpet with salmon roe and grated bottarga; and sour cream Pringles arrive in their can, ready to swipe through Yuzu ranch and salmon roe. He’s also working on instant ramen pots, set to be a signature.

For its opening weekend, partiers swamped the little bar, settling in for the night and spilling onto the footpath – a ringing endorsement on a street where primo drinking dens are plentiful. And Deadwax is only set to get better, with that karaoke room, ramen and a coveted 2am licence.

Deadwax
182 Enmore Road, Enmore

Hours:
Wed to Sunday 4pm–midnight

@deadwax.enmore