“Focus on the good.”
That’s the mantra Bar Lafayette owner Brendon Sim is latching onto as the popular CBD haunt enters its final week of service.
Which, in Sim’s mind, means celebrating all the people and drinks that Bar Lafayette has served over the past 13 years, as well as the role the bar has played in its guests’ lives.
“I’m so grateful to have been given this opportunity,” Sim says.
“I’m always asking my kids, ‘Have you made somebody else’s life better?’ I believe Bar Lafayette did that for our guests.”
Opened in 2012 as part of the launch of the CBD’s Brookfield Place precinct, Bar Lafayette embodied the ambitions of four 31-year-olds eager to own their own place.
Half of the quartet – sommelier Richard Healy and bartender Andrea Cardellini, both of whom were working at Rockpool Bar & Grill at the time – had extensive hospitality credentials. The other half, however, did not.
At the time, Sim was working in fashion and clothing, while Stephen Vetten, a friend Sim knew through skateboarding, was a graphic designer.
Nonetheless, everyone was committed to the same vision: a bar that served guests refined cocktails and other drinks in an equally polished space.
Which in practical bar terms, meant having high-end bourbon, gin and Scotch for house pours; serving mixers poured from cans rather than squirted out of post-mix guns; investing in a high-end Japanese Hoshizaki ice machine; collaborating with exclusive house spirits from respected distillers such as Tasmania’s Lark Distillery and Tequila Herradura in Mexico’s Jalisco state; and offering guests table service.
(The black-on-black dress code for staff, meanwhile, brought a quiet elegance and sophistication to any visit to Bar Lafayette, as did the absence of happy hours or two-for-one drinks.)
But most importantly, at a time when freewheeling dive bars and rockstar bartenders were all the rage, the team at Bar Lafayette approached their work with a strict, yesteryear European professionalism.
Considering the space’s past life as the Perth Technical School, it feels fitting that Bar Lafayette has been something of a breeding ground for future hospitality talent.
Notable alum include Nick Baxter, the national brand ambassador for respected Australian distiller Archie Rose; Bar Love co-owner Pippa Canavan; and David Stucken, a one-time Bar Lafayette bar manager who is now running his own show at Terrarium Perth further up the Terrace.
“It was a huge place of learning for me,” says Stucken.
“I built the majority of my career there, and I know I’m not the only one who would say that.
“It was always a high-discipline, high-service style cocktail bar which Perth was lacking a lot of. It was a key reason why I stayed as long as I did.”
While Sim is sad to be shutting up shop – “closing was option 10 after we started going, ‘what are we going to do?’” – he also doesn’t want to play the victim card.
Still, he admits changing social and workplace attitudes towards alcohol, as well as a growing work-from-home movement, have played their part in his decision to bow out on his terms.
One factor that didn’t come into consideration, however, was landlords hiking up rents – an all-too-common theme in hospitality circles.
“Brookfield has been amazing,” says Sim, who became the sole director of Bar Lafayette in 2018.
(In the same year he also opened W Churchill: a more casual pub in the former Trustee space that will continue trading after the closure of Lafayette).
“At the end of the day, Lafayette and Churchill make up less than 1 per cent of their footprint in Brookfield Place, so we’re an amenity for all their other tenants, but they’ve been amazing the whole time.”
Bar Lafayette’s last service is Friday, December 19 and the bar will be open on Tuesday – typically a night off for the team – during its final week.
The extra day of trade, however, is the only change that Sim and general manager Ben Merchant are making to the Bar Lafayette program.
Even during the bar’s swan song, the focus remains firmly on the guest and ensuring they’re getting top-shelf drinks and service.
“We’re still going to be Lafayette until that final drink is shaken,” he says.
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Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
