Category: Food & Drink

Drinking in the streets

The Masked Barfly has joined the prob­lem drinkers in Cuba Mall. No, I haven’t start­ed quaffing meths or wrestling din­ers for their steaks (it’s all a filthy lie): Good Luck have gone over­ground and now have an out­door drink­ing area in the mid­dle of the mall. I sup­pose the local retail­ers don’t mind peo­ple drink­ing in the streets as long as we’re pay­ing them $15 a pop for the priv­i­lege.

A cou­ple of us flies were still buzzing after the Ornette Cole­man gig, and after a quick stop at Kazu to fill our abdomens (and to sup on salt-rimmed sake & ton­ic — so wrong and yet so right) we head­ed off to Hap­py for the rumoured “after par­ty”. Well, it was def­i­nite­ly after­wards, and I sup­pose it was a par­ty, but unless we left too ear­ly (the New­town bus was call­ing) there was no sign of Mr Cole­man or even one of his myr­i­ad bassists. Oh well, a Chris Knox sight­ing will do for now.

So, “El Toro” is it? It seems all things Mex­i­can are hot right now, and while it’s not exact­ly a tequi­la bar, Viva Mex­i­co from the much-missed Wake­field Mar­kets will be mak­ing a wel­come return. It opens this Fri­day at the back of the Left Bank, com­plete with old favourites like Divorced Eggs and new hip­ster-friend­ly Dios de los Muer­tos décor.

Speak­ing of come­backs, Herd Street Brasserie is appar­ent­ly set to reopen next month. Let’s hope that the new own­ers are more savvy than the orig­i­nal ones: though let’s face it, that would­n’t be hard. And the Masked Barfly also hopes that they con­tin­ue an empha­sis on alco­hol as well as food: all togeth­er now, “Oh I do like to drink beside the sea­side…”

Fly on the wall

Greet­ings: it’s The Masked Barfly here, and I’ve been keep­ing my com­pound eyes peeled for drinky sto­ries to keep you informed, enter­tained and ine­bri­at­ed. With the Fest about to kick off, and the Fringe well under way, it’s going to be a busy time out on the town for a while.

Bars near the Fowl-house and Town Hall are like­ly to be hum­ming, and while I don’t expect the luvvies and K‑block matrons to be hit­ting Blend or Down­town Local (now, that would be a scene to see!), cafes like Felix, Finc and The Lido will be crammed with eth­i­cal­ly-faux furs and rent­ed tux­es. Ponci­er bars such as St Johns will be tak­en over for spon­sors’ drinks, such as for tonight’s open­ing Ornette Cole­man, though I won­der what most of the bray­ing suits would make of the squawk­ing sax?

While there’s nowhere brand-new to take advan­tage of the free-spend­ing boomers, the fly is notic­ing a buzz build­ing around the Courte­nay Place and Blair St area, and is get­ting quite excit­ed. No, not over The Tem­per­ance (while any barfly can appre­ci­ate the iron­ic moniker, three floors of tanked-up boof­heads is not my idea of fun), but over a cou­ple of high­ly-antic­i­pat­ed and long-rumoured open­ings. UU (did any­one ever call it that?) has been closed for ren­o­va­tions, and a sneaky peak revealed the mir­rors giv­ing way to brick. That, com­bined with the appear­ance of bull­fight­ing posters in the win­dow, has me won­der­ing: could this be a prop­er tapas bar at last. And as for what’s hap­pen­ing in Blair St … well, my mandibles are sealed.