Welcome to the Boothby Sydney Briefing, coming to you a day late — we’ve been in Melbourne prepping and hosting our fourth annual Boothby Best Bars VIC Awards, which took place last night. If you’re keen to see the best of what the south has to offer, you can see the full list here.
In this briefing:
- The new bar now open from the team behind Chuck Trailer’s and The Beekeeper;
- What to expect at Kokomo Coconut Club;
- New jobs and reopens
In brief
Eau de Vie Sydney is back open, having had something of a flood a few weeks back which forced them to close the doors. They’re back with a Tuesday to Friday happy hour from 5pm to 6pm, with $2 fresh-shucked oysters and $15 petite Martinis.
The members club The Pillars is looking for an F&B director, with a salary range between $125,000 and $135,000 on offer.
What to expect at Kokomo Coconut Club
Kokomo Coconut Club is a new tiki bar that quietly opened in Bondi Beach last week, from the guys behind Northern Hospitality, Ben Campbell and Brendan Darcy. The duo, who also have Chuck Trailer’s in Bondi Beach and in the Sydney CBD, and Bondi pub The Beekeeper (below which you’ll find Kokomo Coconut Club), also had much-missed Bondi bar Neighbourhood in their stable before closing it after Covid.
Here, Campbell talks to us about the drink direction and what we can expect from Kokomo Coconut Club.
BOOTHBY: What’s the big idea behind the new bar?
BEN CAMPBELL: We have always succumbed to the world of tiki, the escapism the excitement, the ability to be transported to another world. Neighbourhood always had some tiki bones and when it closed it felt like a tiki torch went out in Bondi. In the last few years bars in Bondi have been dropping like flies and so we were keen to deliver an escape everyone needs where you could let loose again.
BOOTHBY: How did the name come about?
BEN CAMPBELL: Beej and I have found ourselves stuck in Bondi Beach the 10 years that we have been in Australia, much like any other Brits, so you might even call us The Beach Boys, mix that with a little alliteration — who doesn’t love it — and the Kokomo Coconut Club was born. Subtle nods to a tropical oasis, but with a degree of familiarity.
BOOTHBY: How would you describe the aesthetics of the place?
BEN CAMPBELL: When we first decided that we wanted to open a bar back around 15 years ago, it was always going to be a tiki bar, but it never came to fruition. We have visited a handful across the world now and what is clearly important is that “less is more” is not a term synonymous with tiki. We searched high and low for materials from the Bamboo clad bar to the imported jade breezeway tiles and almost a thousand custom made glass Japanese fishing buoys hanging from the ceiling. Like Donn Beach’s first customers in Hollywood back in 1933 we wanted to deliver something completely unexpected, so you kinda need to just see it with your own eyes.
BOOTHBY: How many people does the bar hold? What’s the style of service?
BEN CAMPBELL: Once the outdoor space is completed we would be approved for 96 pax, which, to be honest seems a little implausible, maybe more like 70 pax. We imagine some more intimate table service-style operation in the mid-week, but offer you to walk up to the bar when we turn up the tempo on the weekends.
BOOTHBY: What’s the idea behind the drink program?
BEN CAMPBELL: It was important to me to deliver something that felt really true to the origins of tiki and as such most of the drinks are slightly tweaked classics rather than a series of house tiki style drinks.
The menu is set out in a chronological order starting with the “pre-tiki origins” section — the 1700’s — which highlights local rum drinks from around the tropics that would have certainly inspired Ernest Raymond Gantt’s tiki world. The second section is a few favourites from the “Tiki Revolution”, or the birth of Tiki and beyond that a handful of “modern tropicals” that were inspired by the likes of Donn Beach and Trader Vic in a kind of full circle fashion. You really get the chance to enjoy rum in all its glory in every form.
BOOTHBY: Is there a particular drink you’d like to talk us through as emblematic of your approach?
BEN CAMPBELL: I guess it seems unfair to claim somebody else’s drink as emblematic of my approach, but part of our international tiki pilgrimage found Beej and I in Waikiki at The Hawaiian Village by the Hilton; here we discovered the first drink from our Modern Tropicals section, the Tropical Itch by Harry Yee from 1957. True to its name it genuinely does give you a tropical itch, layers of Cuban column rum, Jamaican pot, curacao and a spike of vodka shine through mango nectar that has been acid-adjusted to emulate a more mouthwatering fresh mango. We made the 45 minute walk back to the hotel daily to indulge our itch. Oh, and did I mention it’s served with an actual wooden backscratcher so that you can get really deep?
BOOTHBY: Who are the key personnel?
BEN CAMPBELL: Keeping it simple at the moment Beej and I have dusted off our tropical shirts from the Neighbourhood days and taken new recruit Jack Funnel under our wing, and we’re expecting a few celebrity shifts here and there, so feel free to reach out if you want to join the Kokomo Coconut Club.
BOOTHBY: Where and when — what are the hours you’ll be open?
BEN CAMPBELL: Hidden away under The Beekeeper at 45 Hall Street, Bondi Beach. We’ve adopted a bit of an island time feel while we find our feet Thursday, Friday and Saturday from sundown until late, but by summer we hope to be open seven days.
