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At the newest bar on Meyers Place, the room is lined by shelves stacked with records, fluffy red carpets lend an Austin Powers aura, and a huge disco ball reflects dots of light that cruise around the room like roller skaters. This is LB’s Record Bar, the new venture from Michael and Zara Madrusan (The Everleigh, Heartbreaker), who have partnered with Sydney hospitality behemoth Merivale on the group’s first foray into Melbourne.
The bar feels like a homage to the silliness and fun of the disco era, a DJ booth with turntables for vinyl taking up prime position next to the bar. As you would expect, the sound system is pretty epic, with thumping bass that I can feel through my forearms leaning on the bar, but clean enough that conversation doesn’t have to be shouted. And while the music is obviously an important part of the offering here, “It’s not a listening bar,” says Michael. “We took inspiration from a bunch of cool bars around the world — Mexico City, Portugal, not so much the Japanese style. All these cultures have their own take on that listening bar concept, so we took inspiration from those worldly variations on the idea.”
This is the space that was inhabited for many years by Lily Blacks, a hospo favourite and the scene of much late-night debauchery. The big, central bar is in the same place as always, but the island in the middle is now dominated by big yellow shaved ice machines for the house Daiquiris, with the big shelves removed so you can actually see across the room, making the venue feel much bigger and more open.
“We’re making great drinks with great people, we’re making people happy.” — Zara Madrusan
The drinks, while deliberately crowd-pleasing, are perfectly executed, as you would expect from these operators. In the disco era, cocktails were more about colour and sugar and fun than they were about fresh ingredients or Milk & Honey execution, but here they’ve managed to combine both approaches. The frozen Strawberry Daiquiri is ace; fresh and balanced, bright with natural fruit flavour and topped with a grating of fresh lime zest — a 2025 trend I’m super here for. The white-collar, after work crowd here seems more interested in the snowcone presentation than the sharp execution, and that’s fine. This is not The Everleigh, and it’s not intended to be.
I asked Michael about that Strawberry Daiquiri and the idea of reviving drinks long considered by ‘serious’ bartenders a sugary abomination. “I knew I wanted a rotating snowcone drink,” he says, “you get so much texture with the shaved ice, so this fresh, shaken Daiquiri underneath a mountain of snow is like Milk & Honey meets Carnival Cruises. There are a few drinks I wouldn’t want to bother with trying to bring back to life, but the frozen Strawberry Daiquiri is transportive, and isn’t that half the fun? If I can help someone have some happy thoughts, then I’ve done my job.”
Despite the fun and frivolity on display, the opening of LB’s is not without controversy. Some in the Melbourne bar world have bristled at the idea of a Merivale venue here, a city so proud of its independent hospo scene. I asked Michael and Zara, whose influence on the Australian bar world is undeniable, if there was a risk to their own reputation by partnering with a group that has received a lot of negative press this year.