Up above the newly-refurbished The Paddington by Merivale is a cocktail bar that takes a serious approach to crafting the perfect drink by blind-tasting over 600 cocktails.
Led by Sam Egerton and Toby Marshall previously at Palmer & Co., every Sunday for six weeks, classic cocktails were blind-tasted by a team of 8 to 10 cocktail bartenders and chefs to pick the best.
“We did it for 12 cocktails,” Sam Egerton explains. For the Negroni, six different styles of gin were tasted and scored out of five to get the top three. The same process was repeated for six vermouths. Nine Negronis were prepared, tasted and scored. The top three were blind-tasted by Merivale’s senior managers, Paul Mant, Franck Moreau and the Group Heads to select the best.
The methodology alone invites you to take a seat at the leather-fronted cocktail bar with smoked mirrored bar top or huddle around round tables and explore the initial ten strong cocktail list one by one.
Cocktails ($18) are given names that relate to their origins. Cocktail 101 is a Martini with a choice of Beefeater Gin and Oscar 697 vermouth or Ketel One Vodka with Dolin Dry, the former for those who like it slightly on the sweeter/wetter side. Named after the person who created the first frozen Margarita machine, The Mariano Martinez is crisp and dry and very refreshing. Antoine, a perfectly crafted Sazerac with Rittenhouse 101 Rye pays homage to Antoine Peychaud who created the famous bitters. Are they the best cocktails? Don’t just take our word but let your palate be the judge.
The Paddington cocktail bar is about quality cocktails, relaxed imbibing and interaction between bartenders and guests. It’s easy to forget that you are sitting above a refurbished pub and restaurant with a rotisserie-led menu producing 150 chickens an hour.
The Paddington
Address: 384 Oxford St Paddington NSW 2021
Website: www.merivale.com.au/thepaddington
Hours: Sunday – Thursday 12:00pm – 12:00am; Friday – Saturday 12:00pm – 3:00am
Photo by Cocktails & Bars – © Copyright: All rights reserved.
