Three drinks (and one recipe) from Little Cooler’s new menu
Plus, a change to personnel at the little Sydney bar where low and highbrow collide.
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Sydney bar Little Cooler opened in December, taking up residence in the basement of a building on Clarence Street; it’s a familiar basement to Sydney bar hoppers, one that was once home to Grandma’s Bar — one of the original Sydney small bars.
The Grandma’s Bar crew (hospitality group Liquid & Larder) pulled out as the building was slated for renovation and development, but that work was since delayed, giving the Maybe Group (Maybe Sammy, El Primo Sanchez, Dean & Nancy on 22) and Matt Whiley an opportunity to open the little dive bar that could: Little Cooler.
The award-winning Whiley (he of Re fame and with regular appearances on Boothby’s Top 50 Drinks of the Year) and the Maybe Group have amicably parted ways, with Whiley’s other consultancy projects keeping him busy. And now, with Little Cooler a 100 percent Maybe Group affair, Paolo Maffieti (Maybe Sammy) and Eduardo Conde (El Primo Sanchez, 2023 World Class Australia Bartender of the Year) have been brought in as owners.
And they’ve just released the second iteration of the drinks menu.
To enter Little Cooler you descend the stairs from Clarence Street — opposite Now & Then — with David Byrne gyrating on repeat on the wall; once inside, it’s a sea of red LED lights and cluttered walls and stools for seats. It feels very divey, but the drinks? Much less so.
The bar is open from Wednesday to Saturday, but we hear rumours that they’ll be using Sundays for bar industry community events — and a once famous bartending competition might be making its raucous return, so watch this space.
The drinks all draw on classics and classic-adjacent cocktails for inspiration, but are given their own Little Cooler emphasis; one side of the 10-strong cocktail list is named for rock and roll bands, the other side for hip hop. It’s a duality reflected in the lowbrow-highbrow aesthetic throughout the bar, where dive bar toilets and technique-driven cocktails worthy of any bar on the 50 Best list coexist.
Cocktails here range between $24 and $25.
So what should you be drinking when you’re at Little Cooler? Behind the bar you’ve got talents like Eduardo as well as Jarah Retana (El Primo Sanchez) and Judith Zhu (Door Knock, Apollonia), and the drinks are of a calibre to match.
Below, Eduardo Conde talks us through his three favourite drinks from the menu.
The Havana Affair Mojito
“We want the drinks to be quite smashable and approachable to people,” says Eduardo. “Often you go to a bar, especially in a dive bar, you have one drink and that’s it, you leave. We want the cocktails to surprise people — Oh, this is actually really good, it’s my vibe. It’s essentially a Mojito with clarified guava juice, very simple. The approach is we do a little bit of technique, but the processes are not complicated.”
The Mango Daiquiri
“I think that’s probably the most complex just because once again, we’re using fresh mango, but we do a rectified and clarified mango juice,” Eduardo says. “We basically try the mango and we see if it’s at its best. And depending on how good the mango is, we adjust the acidity and the sugar levels. And we use a bit of Malibu, just because who doesn’t like Malibu?”
“I think all drinks look a little bit similar nowadays,” Eduardo says. And despite being limited by having just two types of glassware for cocktails — a highball and a lowball — he’s trying to make the drinks more distinctive.
“We want to do the drinks a little bit different, using ingredients that people wouldn’t use nowadays,” he says.
And it’s not a Milk Punch spec, despite the drink having a creamy texture.
“There’s no dairy or anything in that, it’s just a mango that is clarified and the rest of the ingredients just help the mango to come out the best way; this batch is very creamy and textural, but we put a mango slice with tahini on top as a garnish because it gives a bit of acidity as well.
“You can’t really take the Mexican out of me — mango, tahini, it goes well.”
The Watermelon Cooler
“It’s a smashable drink,” Eduardo says. “It’s very simple: we use fresh watermelon juice, a bit of fino sherry, gin for that one. A simple garnish as well, just like a little watermelon sphere, but the same approach as the other drinks, just approachable.”
Havana Affair Mojito recipe
- 50ml Bacardi Carta Blanca
- 100ml clarified guava soda
- 10ml mint and lime syrup
Carbonated 3 times at 46.5 PSI. Served tall in a highball glass. Garnished with mint.
For the clarified guava juice:
- 2L guava juice
- 100ml hot water
- 5g agar agar
Mix the agar with water until it dissolves, pour it into the guava juice and leave it in the freezer for 45 minutes.
Take it out and filter it with an oil filter. When it’s done and clear add 15 grams of sugar for each 50ml of guava juice.