Botany inspires Melbourne’s new Bar Ferdinand
Hunter St Hospitality will open Bar Ferdinand above its steak restaurant 7 Alfred in Melbourne’s CBD on 22 April.
The building in which 7 Alfred and Bar Ferdinand sit is heritage-listed and dates to 1885.
The 21-seat cocktail bar is inspired by the building’s history, including its origins as the German Social Club. The venue was once frequented by Ferdinand von Mueller, a leading botanist of the time.
Hunter St Hospitality’s beverage director, Ali Toghani, has collaborated with bar manager Greg Thompson to create the menu, which is structured as a walk through a fictional garden.
Each cocktail is tied to a different plant collection, such as Rose, Fern and Herb & Medicinal. These categories will remain throughout menu changes, with the individual drinks evolving.
Thompson’s background includes stints at Apollo Inn, Gimlet at Cavendish House and Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.
He said: “The gardens give us a framework that we can keep returning to, even as the drinks change.
“A Rose Garden cocktail in a few months’ time will be very different to what it is now, and that’s true of the whole menu. What shifts is how each one is expressed at that moment, depending on the produce, the season and where we want to take it.
“Sometimes that means thinking less literally. With Fern Garden, for example, you can’t really work from fern as a flavour, so it becomes about capturing the feeling of walking through a fernery: the drop in temperature, the earthiness, the smell of rain. That challenge is what keeps the menu alive.”
The cocktails
The first Fern cocktail features Cognac, kaolin clay, pu erh tea and petrichor.
Elsewhere, Camellia is a ‘bright, gently savoury’ serve made with a house blend of black, green and jasmine tea, steeped into fino Sherry with orange and sugar, then poured over crushed ice.
Rose, meanwhile, features a house rose liqueur, rosé vermouth, Peychaud’s and Macedon Ranges rosé, which is force-carbonated.
On the darker end, Oak is made with rye whisky and manuka honey, which are placed in an ultrasonic machine with heavily charred oak chips to mimic the ageing process. Absinthe is then added to serve.
Bar Ferdinand will also offer two signature cocktails outside of the garden menu. One is a House Martini that blends gin, vodka, Cocchi Americano and freeze-infused apple mint.
The second is a Japanese Slipper that pays tribute to the cocktail’s origins in the very same building, where bartender Jean-Paul Bourguignon created it at ground-floor restaurant Mietta’s in 1984.
Bar Ferdinand’s version is reworked with house melon liqueur, yuzu liqueur and citrus cordial, designed to be more ‘playful, vibrant and lighter on its feet’ than the original.
Alongside cocktails, the bar will offer bottled beer and a compact wine list.
The food offering is inspired by a ‘polished’ picnic hamper, with options including oysters, roasted macadamias with native spice, and Olasagasti anchovies with lemon.
The bar’s interiors are designed to feel ‘warm, layered and slightly transportive’, featuring wooden herringbone floors, burgundy studded leather lounges, suede chairs, marble-topped tables and brass finishes.
A large hanging installation of dried Queen Anne’s Lace forms a sculptural centrepiece, while elsewhere guests can find native bracken, fan leaf palms and smaller pots of greenery.
For more global bar openings, check out our roundup of winter’s best.
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