Seamstress Bar and Restaurant

113 Lonsdale Street
Melbourne

On going out for dinner the other night with friends, they suggested we meet at a bar beforehand. Little did I realise that the experience would overshadow the main restaurant we were to later attend. Hip, upstairs, great decor and music and an extremely expensive/impressive cocktail bar, Seamstress is the perfect place to pop in for a vodka martini or two before dancing the night away.

I'm guessing that the building is an old sweatshop. There's a bar downstairs with that name (Sweatshop) and then the flights of stairs lead up past cotton reels/spools hanging from the walls. The ceiling of the upstairs cocktail lounge is decorated with hanging lengths of fabrics and those little Asian pyjama jackets hanging from coat hangers. The bar has a distinctly 1930's / art deco look. Suited bartenders taste the cocktails they mix from straw samplers one of whom had a convincing English accent.

I enjoyed a three olive martini (not on the cocktail menu) which I was disappointed to see was stirred with a glass rod (did he think it was gin?) - but was made with Russian grain based vodka and was simply delicious ($18). This I followed up with suggestions from their cocktail menu:

Quicksilver fizz ($15)
A gin, absinthe, lemon, passionfruit syrup and egg white number - a simple twist on the silver fizz

Followed by something the bar staff recommended made with rum and a foam egg white head featuring raspberry dots on top ($17).

Snacks included peanuts heated through with spices (delicious) and prawn crackers.

The music also left me mightily impressed. A mix of acid jazz, lounge, soul and funk. I even heard James Brown while there.

An alcoholics delight, I rate it seven wobbly tentacles out of eight!!

Visit them online at:
www.seamstress.com.au/