A deep dive on how The Waratah works with Evan Stroeve

There’s just one day left to enter the 2024 Boothby Drink of the Year Awards — visit boothby.com.au/drinkoftheyear now — will we see your drink on the Top 50?

This isn’t a cocktail comp, it’s not driven by brands — this is about the drinks you serve over the bar night after night throughout the year. Enter now at boothby.com.au/drinkoftheyear.

The first few weeks of trade for any new bar can be tough; the doors are open, but there’s often still a lot to iron out, service to perfect, systems to get right. And that’s what The Waratah’s co-owner Evan Stroeve was expecting when the two level Darlinghurst bar opened at the back end of 2023.

“I wasn’t expecting them to be perfect, but I think any first-time bar owner goes into this kind of thing with a degree of expectation,” Evan says in this week’s episode of Drinks At Work. “You think it’s going to be amazing and wonderful and more often than not, the pipes are leaking and the printer dockets go down and the aircon stops working and suddenly there’s no music. And that’s what happened.”

The Waratah has come a long way since then. It quickly became a place for off-duty hospo types and in the know punters, and the Darlinghurst locals have come to embrace the place. They’ve also picked up some awards along the way — The Waratah landed at number two on the Boothby Best Bars NSW Top 50 back in July, taking out the trophy for Best New Bar, too.

And if those first few weeks were tough, it seems like it has stood the team in good stead for the year ahead.

“It was a kind of baptism by fire, but it was great,” Evan says. “That brought the team together, I think. We’re all kind of in it together.”

This episode is another of the live interviews I conducted at the Better Bars Summit presented by Glenfiddich at the Bartenders’ Weekender up in Brisbane back in June, and in it Evan talks about how The Waratah works — it’s an inside look at the systems and the way the team is structured, how they work and change their menus, and what makes The Waratah distinctive and as good as it is. It’s a good listen for anyone who one day wants to open their own bar.

And there is some recent news from The Waratah, too: bar manager Jeff Santony has called time on his hospitality career and left the industry (we hear he’ll be photographing it instead, so keep your eyes peeled for one of the nicest photographers around), and they have hired award-winning bar manager Cecile Schoen to replace him.

You may know Cecile from such award-winning bars as Alba Bar & Deli in Brisbane — she was the bar manager who guided the place to its number one spot on the Boothby Best Bars QLD Top 50 earlier this year, so that’s a pretty neat hire.

Listen to the full chat with Evan here, and below, get a few takeaways from the chat.

“Story adds flavour.”

You may have heard Evan say this before; it’s something of a mantra for him. Because The Waratah puts such an emphasis on the growers they use and the produce they secure, they like to emphasise a sense of place not just because they think it’s important to understand where your food and drink comes from — and it is — but because the stories that come from this relationship with their growers actually enhance the way the drinks taste.

“You see it in the wine world all the time,” Evan says, “see sommeliers explain who grew the grapes and how it was processed and the name of the dog that runs around the winery and it’s something that chefs do really, really well. And it does, it adds flavour.”

As I keep returning to, taste is subjective, and a great story can make things taste amazing.

“Only after that 12 week period will you write your own menu.”

While the cocktail menu at the bar upstairs at The Waratah changes seasonally, the cocktails downstairs change each week (save for the Waratah Spritz, which is a constant). And each week one team member will be tasked with developing the menu. It’s a system Evan has adapted from his time spent at Bulletin Place — the chief difference being that Bulletin Place changed their list of five cocktails every damn day. It’s still crazy to think about.

“I know the locals and I know the community and then I can set an example for my team.”

They’re the four favourite words of any regular guest at a bar or restaurant: “I know the owner.” People love to share that with their mates (it’s less fun, obviously, when they’re dropping names to get a table).

And knowing the owner can be both a blessing and a curse for the bar. In one sense, it’s essential for a new bar, a small, independent place like The Waratah, for the customers to connect with the people who own the place, to be able to put a name to the face. It gives their relationship to the bar an intimacy that you don’t get from a corporate bar run by a management group.

But it also means that it can be difficult for the owner to step away from that business and open bars number two and three, and I suspect that might be why The Waratah shares the stories of their staff so prominently on social media.

Punters love a bar where everybody knows their name, sure, but we love to know the bartenders’ names, too.

There’s just one day left to enter the 2024 Boothby Drink of the Year Awards — visit boothby.com.au/drinkoftheyear now — will we see your drink on the Top 50?