The Bar Journal

I have had the pleasure to meet a young guy in London while ago, thistly of knowledge and skills for this art, the art of Bartending, and I see his improvement step by step in the last few years. Say that, this young guy is now experience the extraordinary lend of Kangaroo and I have been asking Matteo to write his point of view live from down under…

“I have been asked to write about the main features of the hospitality industry in Australia. That was a while ago… at the time I was bartending in a very nice and cosy cocktail bar in the vibrant Potts point, Sydney. And I had, and still have a pretty clear picture about how our beloved industry works down here. However, Sydney, is clearly not representative of the all of Australia.

To write about features of Australian food and beverage habits you have got to dig a little deeper. Being Australia a relatively young country, you won’t be able to find something, especially for what concern food and beverage, purely and truly Australian. Kinda like a bottle of Martini or a nice Spaghetti dish.. there is nothing more Italian than that and no one will ever dispute that. But here down under everything has somehow taken strong inspiration from other cuisines. Australia is a mix of Asian, Italian, French, American and even English (with the famous Aussie pie!!) cuisines. Drinking wise, the inspiration strongly comes from Europe beer and wine wise and for our cocktails, well the whole world has taken great inspiration from the US..

Why Australia would not? Wine down here has been widely discovered about ten years ago and now you can find various wine regions down in Victoria strongly aiming to gain a place in the higher rankings of the global wine industry.

Australian beer is probably the nation favourite beverage with a beer consumption which could probably compete with the one of the Germans… (Australia has only 22millions people tho…) Cocktails are gaining more and more space within the big metropolitan areas of Sydney and Melbourne. With Brisbane hosting couple of great bars too. Of course, in every field, when the inspiration comes from abroad, or in the Australian case, from overseas, it mainly targets the great metropolitan areas and after that if that particularly trends gets enough audience, it will eventually spread to the less and less urban areas following a sort of “stone thrown in the lake” effect.

This means that high quality cocktail service is something which will always stick to the great cities, Also because the cocktail itself has always addressed the wealthy and the higher side of society. Outside of the main metropolitan areas however, in places such the middle of New south wales or the remote north Queensland, cocktails are still present but, funny enough, they are seen as something which has to be very girly and very sweet! (trust me veeery sweet! You will find the BIG STRONG GUYS downing liters and liters of beers while the CUTE SEXY and most of the times BLONDE GIRLS, are sipping the fruity refreshing cocktail. It may sound funny but believe me this is exactly the way it works.

You are all invited in the little Rockhampton to check yourself! Great are the standards in cities such as Sydney or Melbourne. More than a few very passionate bartenders started to invested money and time into cocktail bars and nowadays, Countless are the spots where you can sip a well-made drink. Probably the standards of cities like London are still little bit behind, however the Cocktail industry and the patrons themselves keep on developing.

The Australian customer in the city, most of the time a great food and wine expert starts to get involved into the world of spirits and cocktails and countless times we have patrons dining with three martinis. Spirits companies and major player are putting big efforts in the Australian cities which helps too. And also the government itself has introduced the “small venue” licence. If you have a bar with less than 100 people capacity, your licence will cost very little money!

Take all this and add on top a lovely weather year round, temperature that rarely goes below the 18 degrees and put it beside the amazing Australian beaches and seaside lifestyle and you have the result.

You think about it!

Matteo Fabbris