Death & Co will open this summer, but it won’t be in Fortitude Valley or the CBD. Here’s why.
Death & Co will open its much-anticipated Brisbane bar this summer, the celebrated US cocktail group has announced. But it won’t be in Fortitude Valley, or even the CBD.
Instead, it will be in Toowong, slotted beneath the Regatta Hotel in the subterranean premises previously occupied by The Walrus Club. Why? Because the local bar will be operated in partnership with Death & Co by Australian Venue Co, which oversees more than 200 pubs and bars across the country, including The Regatta.
The original Death & Co opened in New York in 2006 and was influential in the worldwide craft cocktail renaissance of the late 2000s. It later expanded to Denver, Los Angeles and Washington.
The cocktail group announced in May that it was further expanding to Australia – its first foray beyond US shores – with venues in Melbourne and Brisbane, but it remained tight-lipped at the time about the exact locations.
“From my understanding, we started talking at the start of last year,” says Regatta venue manager Liam Gibbons. “But there could have been higher-level discussions before that.
“But when they came over to look at the locations, that was last year.”
The Walrus Club closed in late September and the site is now being refurbished in a style sympathetic to Death & Co’s US venues. Newly appointed venue and bar managers also spent two weeks in the Denver and New York outlets to get to grips with the brand, its cocktails, and its service philosophy.
“Absolutely, [Death & Co] has had a lot of oversight,” Gibbons says. “Obviously, it’s been between both operators, but it needs to be on-brand and to facilitate their vision.”
Brisbane’s Death & Co will serve to the table US classics such as the Naked & Famous (Del Maguey Vida Mezcal, Chartreuse, Aperol, lime) and the Oaxacan Old Fashioned (El Jimador Reposado, Del Maguey Vida Mezcal, agave syrup, Angostura Bitters), alongside new, locally inspired additions to the menu.
The bar will also serve wine, tap beer and a food menu of “elegant bites … more food options than you can usually get in a cocktail bar”, Gibbons says.
The partnership between Death & Co and Australian Venues Co may seem a curious one, given the latter’s background in running expansive pubs, but Gibbons is sanguine about the bar’s impending opening.
“I don’t think there’s too much pressure around it,” he says. “It’s something this area of Brisbane is probably missing in terms of great cocktail bars. Every venue does cocktails, but not to the standard and complexity – and simplicity, at the same time – that [Death & Co] brings to the table.
“We get a lot of local customers already, but to give them an extra offering, it’s definitely what they’re going to be looking for.
“And there’s so much more that’s going on around here in terms of development, and that’s just going to keep booming all the way up to the Olympics.”
Gibbons wouldn’t be drawn on an exact opening date except to say it would likely be “late November [or] December-ish. That’s obviously dependent on building works and whatnot, but that’s where we’re looking.”
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Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.
