Small Bar – Sydney CBD
On a Friday evening Small Bar (which despite its name covers three levels) is packed. As a friend of mine and I walk down Sussex Lane, which borders one side of the bar, we see office workers desperate for release and cigarettes puffing outside the cellar entrance while others are crammed within the bar’s stone walls. We take a deep breath, lunge inside, and then within moments hurriedly pile out as the claustrophobia sets in.
I go back a few weeks later on a Thursday night after 9pm with a different friend (a Kiwi who believes eatin’s cheatin’) to find the place at a more comfortable capacity – and it’s a good sign for the bar that at even this hour there’s a decent crowd. The bottom level, which is an intimate sandstone cellar that makes me think of some of the small laneway bars you find in New Orleans’ French Quarter, is crowded with what looks like a group of workers from the same office, while on the second floor a jazz band plays in the corner. Wooden floorboards, ceiling fans and the odd painting gives the bar a cosier and quirkier feel than is usual in the CBD, although it still feels more restrained than such Surry Hills contemporaries as Pocket Bar and Low 302.
I grab a glass of Nanny Goat pinot noir from Otago, New Zealand, that’s a little earthier and heavier than your average pinot noir (in a good way) while the Kiwi gets a Stella Artois. All the tables are full, so I decide not to order any food (and the Kiwi’s attitude to food has already been explained) but menu options include antipasto, burgers and fish and chips.
It’s almost a year since Small Bar launched as the first bar to make use of Sydney’s new small bars licensing laws and while there haven’t been a lot of other bars following suit, Small Bar certainly seems to be making a go of it.
Incidentally, at the time of writing a new space called Balcony Bar has recently opened next door (click here to see our review) and other empty shopfronts on Erskine Street and Sussex Lane have real estate signs saying they can be used as bars – so it’ll be interesting to see if this laneway does become a bar strip. We’ll keep you updated when we know more.
Small Bar, 48 Erskine Street, Sydney. Phone 9279 0782 or see the Small Bar website
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