The Chip Off The Old Block

Gotta love the place!!!
Who knows there’d be a super cozy bar in that area?!
I love the service and the staffs there. Bartenders and the manager were friendly and welcoming. They made the best cocktails I’ve ever tasted by customizing the ingredients based on your orders or you can just tell them how you feel like and they’ll come up with something amazing!
I’ll try some food there next time.:)

I love this little hidden gem of a place — for several reasons:
1) best hot chips in Sydney
2) great drinks including one of my favourite ales in the world — Samuel Smiths Nut Brown Ale
3) amazing little creative/​gourmet English fusion– type dishes like Bacon & Chip Butty (ie sandwich)
4) unusually friendly staff (for Sydney)
and
4) good music especially on Thursdays when they have DJs mix smooth downtempo beats
will be back often!

I cracked what I thought was a walnut and it exploded across the bar, spraying us all with shrapnel.
I mean, I’d seen nut crackers before — those steel tools that look like a pair of wonky chopsticks welded together at one end — and assumed I was competent in their use because, you know, I’m a competent guy. But taint so easy to crack a nut with grace and decorum, apparently. I did okay on the Brazil nut. Less so on the almond, which are hard to get a good grip on.
This place is new, unreal, and already a magnet for Chippendale’s creative types (which is, oh, all of Chippendale). There’s free nuts, dominos and cards for card games, and some damned friendly bartenders. I didn’t eat but the food looks good, and heaps healthy. Perfect place to hit some after work-​drinks.

A bar in Chippendale?
Surely not
But yes the rumours are true.
What they have done though is reduced you to a sardine, canned between stool dwellers. (And this coming from a man defined by most medical journals as a «twig»).
Real estate agents would define this place as «cosy».
And cosy it is. As you attempt to order your drink the people sitting at the bar may become pregnant — you are that close to them; squished by a long immovable bench-​table behind you.
You are thrown into the people sitting at the bar’s conversation or left haplessly to stare slightly above their heads until the bar staff acknowledge you. And when they do acknowledge you, you use some sort of sign language to get the drink you desire, as you are so far away nestled behind the barstool-​people that Morse code seems for an instant like a good idea.
The solution, acquire a table against the wall. I don’t care how many friends you have to make, talk your way onto one. Or, if you dont have that one friend who has no shame or anxiety, wait like an owl and swoop. A kind bar-​lady will then most likely ask «would of you like a drink?», voilà table service ensues. …If table service stops after a while as it did with us when they got busier, its not worth the bar pregnancy again, just move venues.
Nevertheless, cards are provided on each table (or dominoes for the discerning gentleman and/​or gentlelady). Cool.
The lights are cool too, emerging from pipes like a drip of vodka does in the distillery.
Heck, it was pretty chill and friendly so it gets 4 out 5 sardines. Just improve the ordering drinks situation!