It’s worth coming to cocktail bar Nobody’s Baby for the crunchy-fluffy falafel alone.
14/20
Middle Eastern$
It’s mid-evening, dark outside, the trams sound like applause and flash like fireworks. People – young, older, shiny, expensively rumpled – are at new bar Nobody’s Baby before dinner, after dinner, for dinner or just for drinks.
Speaking of, our next round of cocktails arrives: they’re called Fat Bottomed Girls, after the Queen song, or maybe after me. Shaken vodka drinks in long-stemmed coupe glasses, they taste of pepper, honey and lemon with the sesame richness of tahini picking up the Middle Eastern flavours of the food menu.
It’s all timber and curves in here, the components built off-site in Torquay and
installed in three days. Arches separate the bar area from the lounge’s booths and banquettes, and the bar itself makes a broad sweep to a DJ set-up, where a cruisy guy mixes in a record by The Police (later, there’s Khruangbin, and was that Hank Williams?). It’s medium-loud: you’re not whispering, nor are you needing to shout.
My friends and I are full of falafel and love, at that leaning-all-over-one-another stage of the night. Annalisa pulls my hair back into a ponytail. “Why don’t you wear it like this more?” she asks, taking photo after photo. Emma walks in from the toilet out the back. “There’s a tattoo parlour in the yard,” she tells us, presenting un-inked arms in enquiry. Indeed, when the previous bar tenant Raindancer was here, a patron once finished a drink and followed up with a tatt. Not us, not tonight.
I pick up a piece of pickled cabbage and swipe it through zhoug, a Yemeni green chilli relish. A small dog – hitherto hidden under the next table – lets out a polite bark.
“The falafel have a thick, crunchy shell that gives way to a herby, fluffy interior: it’s worth coming for these alone.”
What is a bar anyway? Restaurants have cocktails, bars serve food, so what actually is the difference between a bar and a restaurant (especially when the bar serves food as good as this)? For me, it’s the feeling and the flexibility, rolling from drinks to eats and back again, having people join you later or peel off, the possibility of perching on a stool to ponder life with patrons and pourers alike.
The team here knows all that stuff. Tim Badura and Gustavo Prince met at retro bar Joe’s Shoe Store in Northcote, which Prince founded (he also owns neighbouring Pizza Meine Liebe). When they landed this place, they invited Shuki Rosenboim and Louisa Allan from Brunswick’s Very Good Falafel to bring their pulse-fuelled joy southside.
What a move. The falafel here, handmade using a metal press, have a thick, crunchy shell that gives way to a herby, fluffy interior: it’s worth coming for these alone.
But you may also fall for sumac-cured sardines on challah, roasted Brussels sprouts with pilpelchuma, a Libyan-Jewish chilli and garlic paste, or grilled whiting with harissa and latkes, a perfect assembly of sea, spice and starch.
Chicken skewers and lamb meatballs are cooked over charcoal; the chicken is interspersed with plump green olives; the lamb is squished in pita with roasted onion, tahini and amba, an Iraqi-Jewish pickled mango condiment.
It’s simple and excellent: big flavours, sauces you’ll want to swipe your fingers through, and sharp and salty enough to keep you drinking.
The obvious nightcap is Baby Brulee, a whisky, Baileys and vanilla concoction with a bruleed top. Ask for it to be torched at the table, making your cocktail an event for the whole room and turning Nobody’s Baby into everybody’s wondrous child.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Genial and relaxed
Go-to dishes: Spiced chicken skewers ($24); Fat Bottomed Girls ($22); Baby Brulee ($26); falafel with tahini, pickles and zhoug ($15)
Drinks: Signature cocktails lean towards Middle Eastern flavours but they’ll make classics too. The one-page wine list is mostly Victorian, with all wines by the glass under $20.
Cost: About $60 for 2 people, excluding drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
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