Welcome to our end of year series of interviews with the people behind the award-winning bars from this year’s Boothby Best Bars Awards program. Next up is Alexandra Percy, co-owner of Santé Cocktail bar in Toowoomba, winner of the 2025 Best Cocktail Bar in Queensland presented by Ilegal Mezcal.
It’s the little cocktail bar in regional Queensland that has made a big splash on the national bar scene. Santé Cocktail Bar is a small place, with space for just 40 people, and is staffed by its owner-operators — Alexandra Percy and Loic Mouchelin — every night it’s open.
It’s that smallness, and intimacy, which makes the bar great. The bar is also beloved by the trade in Queensland, which saw them vote Santé into the number two spot on the Boothby list of the Top 30 bars that was unveiled at the Boothby Best Bars QLD Awards in June this year.
The bar also walked away with one of the big major awards on the night, scoring the title of the Best cocktail Bar in Queensland presented Ilegal Mezcal.
Below, Alexandra talks about what makes Santé special, how they’re charting a course through a world of rising costs, and more.
BOOTHBY: In your opinion, what is it about your bar that resonates with the bar industry?
ALEXANDRA PERCY: Passion is the word we would use! We genuinely love what we do, we always think that passion is contagious. It welcomes people into the bar and, we hope, makes them feel at home. It’s also because of this passion that we try to attend all the industry events and be inspired by the likeminded people we get to meet, the venues we get to visit and the opportunity to learn about what people do and how they operate, which is always invaluable.