A seasoned industry veteran is spearheading a New Orleans-inspired cocktail bolthole that will shake with music and stay open until 3am seven days a week.
Finally, Brisbane’s drinks scene is beginning to evolve.
A few years ago, the city boasted a bunch of cracking cocktail bars – Death & Taxes, Maker, The Gresham, Dr Gimlette, Savile Row – but not much else. While Brisbane’s restaurant scene diversified, our smaller boozers felt stuck in a low gear, new operators seemingly unable, or unwilling, to take a swing on fresh ideas.
But then came Frog’s Hollow and Alice and Barry Parade Public House, and wine bars suddenly got both more freewheeling and serious, with the opening of Dark Red, Milquetoast and Dark Red’s new sister venue, Dark Blue. All have a unique angle or location, or a combination of the two.
Now comes The Alligator Club, a New Orleans-inspired basement bolthole due to open in the Valley in early August.
Owned by Glenn Hosking and Shaman Lee, it’s being managed by industry veteran Justinn De Beer. De Beer has spent much of the past half decade working as a gun-for-hire around the city, and was ready to take a break from the industry. Chat to him about The Alligator Club, though, and you see why he had a change of heart.
“I was absolutely ready to jump out of bars for a while,” De Beer says. “It’s a young man’s game. But I love what I do. And when I came in and met the guys, I could feel an instant synergy, which is rare.
“I left the meeting and instantly dove into a creative mode trying to generate ideas. We have a lot of similar aesthetics and were seeing eye to eye on the creative ideas for the space, so we dove in whole hog.”
He’s not kidding.
Wander up Warner Lane behind Goros, turn left, and there’s an enormous mirror ball – 1.5 metres in diameter – already hanging 15 metres above The Alligator Club’s entrance, in front of a vertiginous piece of street art by Fintan Magee.
Inside, the venue is still under construction, but De Beer says to expect plenty of exposed brick, dark cladding, velvet curtains, and mirrored and copper features. A second mirror ball will feature towards the back of the venue, in front of a stage earmarked for funk and soul bands.
“It won’t be jazz or acoustic,” De Beer says. “We want it to be about the party – fun and upbeat. On Mondays, we’ll do Mardi Gras Mondays, as in New Orleans Mardi Gras. The final title will be something different, but it’ll be a big-band soul night.”
The venue itself is long and narrow, with an enormous bar running almost its entire length, with room for four service wells. The fitout, from Mr Mista owner Kwan Leigh Fong, is clever, with no fridges along the back bar, enabling De Beer, Hosking and Lee to keep the bar relatively shallow, leaving more room for the venue floor and fixed seating along the back wall.
It’s incomplete, but standing in the space it’s hard not to be reminded of classic cocktail bar The Bowery, which for years dominated Brisbane’s drinks scene around the corner on Ann Street.
For drinks, The Alligator Club will lead with cocktails. Expect a rotating list of eight house cocktails, which De Beer says will gently twist the classics.
“I was absolutely ready to jump out of bars for a while. It’s a young man’s game. But I love what I do. And when I came in and met the guys, I could feel an instant synergy, which is rare.”
Justinn De Beer
“They will be very strong but also forgotten classics,” he says. “I want to do things like Death in the Afternoons and my favourite drink of all time, the Mary Pickford.”
Otherwise, there will be a clutch of wines – “two whites, two reds, a Pol Roger champagne” – and four beer taps, which De Beer is yet to finalise, plus beer by the bottle.
A small kitchen out back will punch out a short pinsa and fries menu. The idea here is to go late – towards the venue’s 3am closing time – seven days a week to cater to night owls and local hospitality workers.
“I want to be a staple,” De Beer says. “People say, ‘What are you gonna do Mondays and Tuesdays?’ But the whole city is full of hospo people. I imagine we’ll be relatively quiet on a Monday night until 10pm, say, but then we want the hospitality workers to come in. We want to be that destination.”
The Alligator Club will open on Warner Lane in Fortitude Valley in early August.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
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.
