Matt Whiley and Luke Whearty on collaboration, bartenders they admire

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Two boundary-pushing bartenders, cut from the same cloth. Sam Bygrave talks to Matt Whiley (Re, Sydney) and Luke Whearty (Byrdi, Melbourne) about collaborating, bars, and messing with each other.

WHILEY: I listened to a podcast during Covid and the question was, who are your two favourite chefs? So the question for you Luke would be like, who are your two favourite bartenders?

BOOTHBY: Okay. Off you go, Luke. I know who he wants you to say.

WHEARTY: Yeah, fishing for compliments here isn’t he.

WHILEY: No, no, definitely not.

WHEARTY: Wow, it’s off to a blazing start. 

BOOTHBY: How did you guys get started as friends?

WHILEY: Without realising it, before we even became friends, our careers were intertwined  way before we even knew. When I had my first bar in 2010, we opened Purl¹ and we set out to open a bar that was a speakeasy of the era, but making drinks that you would find in competitions. When we were doing our research, we found this bar in Melbourne called Der Raum² [where Whearty worked]. And then we found Tippling Club³ [where he also worked] and we’re like, fuck, we’re not actually as cool as we thought we were, because there’s people already doing what we thought we were about to start doing. 

So I’ve always been on his shirttails trying to keep up — and that’s as nice as I’m going to be.

WHEARTY: Funny. I had a similar experience on my end as well. But I remember this is still early days of the internet —  one big thing that I used to do at the bar, we had the work laptop and every time I thought I had a new idea about a drink, I would enter the base recipe into CocktailDB. And it would  come up with a recipe. I can’t remember how many times I entered something in thinking I have come up with some original, but it was like, I’ve basically just recreated the Toronto.

And then just from doing a bit of research, Worship Street Whistling Shop⁴ in London came up and that was Matt. I remember at the time thinking that this bar looks like it’s doing some cool stuff. I’d never been to London before. 

Over the years, like Matt said, our kind of careers were intertwining. Then one day Matt sent me an email and was like, I think it’s about time we met. When I had Operation Dagger⁵ in Singapore, people would come into the bar saying, I’ve just met the British version of you. And I’m like, what are you talking about?

And then I looked him up, saw a photo of him and was like, what the fuck? That's an insult. 

WHILEY: Listen to this guy.

WHEARTY: No, actually back then, Matt was quite smartly dressed in his suspenders and bow tie. So it’s a different look now. 

WHEARTY: That was when we connected to bring Luke and Aki over to do Imbibe and do a shift at Peg & Patriot⁶. That would have been 2016 or 2015. And I think since then we’ve pretty much always shared our ideas to make sure that we’re not copying each other.

BOOTHBY: What would you want your team members to ask each of you?

WHILEY: I think all my staff always think that Luke’s quite a serious individual. He obviously is, but there’s an element of what we do, we actually have fun when we’re actually at work. It’s not always serious — what we do is quite serious, but we have fun while we do it. I think Luke probably shouts a little bit more than me.

BOOTHBY: Who’s the cranky one between the two of you? 

WHILEY: Me. But I’m more of a silent cranky person.

WHEARTY: But you know what, that’s progress — a couple of years ago he wouldn’t have admitted that. So we’re seeing some progress here. You’re developing, Matthew.

BOOTHBY: What were your first impressions of one another when you did finally meet?

WHILEY: It just felt like I’d known Luke for ages.

WHEARTY: It was never an effort to hang out or talk. I think we’ve got the same priorities. The first time I sat down and had Matt’s drinks was at Peg & Patriot. I was there with [my partner] Aki — over the years, Aki and I have been to a million bars together. She’s my life partner as well. She knows quickly just with a look whether I'm enjoying myself or not, or what I think of a drink or bar or bartender. And she turned to me and she looked and she was like, Yeah, what? What are you going to say about this? I was like, this guy can make good drinks.

I couldn’t remember a time before that, that I actually sat down and went, yeah, this is awesome. Without nerding out on it too much and breaking it down, the layers of flavour within Matt’s drinks were super well-defined, and complex at the same time.

BOOTHBY: Something different, special.

WHEARTY: And taking you on a bit of a journey rather than it just being two dimensional. We were talking about this the other day, it’s really hard to find those really outstanding drinks these days, I find, but at the same time, the base level is really good.

BOOTHBY: That’s the thing, right? This is partly because of the influence of both of you — everyone has picked up those techniques and learned and the baseline goes up. Those extraordinary drinks, though — they were always were hard to come by, but maybe picking the signal from the noise is even harder today?

WHILEY: I think the base level standard of bartender, globally, is as high as it’s ever been. But I think the gap between the bangers and that is pretty, pretty big.

People are pushing maybe a bit too much, and I’ve been as guilty as anyone of pushing the envelope of what things can be. And I know when I’ve made a shit drink and when I shouldn’t put it into the world. 

WHEARTY: It’s not necessarily that it’s a shit drink. It’s just, I think what Matt was saying, about using a technique just for the sake of it, rather than actually having a purpose there. But when he says, I’ve made a shit drink? I don’t think you can make a shit drink, Matt. If you try it, it’s still fucking good, but he’s always searching for what he calls a banger — he’s always searching for that.

There are plenty of fine drinks out there, but we’re not aiming for fine, are we? It’s kind of like,  imagine if every pub you went to were putting out solid food, but they’re not your Nomas of the world — that’s the gap there, between the pubs busting out solid pub classics and Noma.

BOOTHBY: That’s the gap between fine drinks, solid drinks, and bangers.

WHILEY: Trends go in stages. We’ve gone through the stage of drink-focused venues being where the beverage is first and foremost. And it’s still the thing that I want to spend my money on because it’s what I enjoy. But we’re in a time now where the beverage is actually way, way behind what most people want to pay for — people are paying for vibe at the minute and you only have to see that in the trends around the world, the bars that are trending. There’s still the bracket of bars like Sips⁷ in Barcelona and places where the drink is  first and foremost. But there’s a lot of venues that are based around having a good time. I don't know if that's because we’ve lost nightclubs so there’s nowhere to go after a bar. Historically, you’d go for dinner, drinks, and you’d go out and be out later. Now, there’s not so much of a nightclub era, so they’ve kind of merged together.

BOOTHBY: Well, spending 25 bucks a drink all night, that’s not really doable for a lot of people right now, right? It starts getting real expensive real quick. 

WHILEY: Yeah, it’s about trying to say how do we merge that together to bring value for money, value for vibe and value for the thing you’re drinking and eating.

BOOTHBY: I’m going to exclude Alex Kratena⁸ from this one, because you’ll both say him, but are there a couple of bartenders out there for each of you that you are looking at thinking, wow, they’re doing something great?

WHILEY: We’re going to say the same person. We’re definitely both going to say Hampus Thunholm⁹.

WHEARTY: Yeah, Hampus makes some solid drinks.

WHILEY: I would say Hampus because I think he’s made some of the best drinks I’ve had around.

BOOTHBY: He’s on your cocktail list at the moment, right, Luke?

WHEARTY: Yeah. The last time Hampus and I spoke, we each had  a bit of a full circle moment; I had this amazing experience at Fäviken¹⁰ and similarly, when he was working at Fäviken, he was looking at the stuff I was doing at Dagger, not realising that Dagger was directly influenced by Fäviken. He just makes really good drinks, but at the same time it’s interesting things that I want to drink. It’s following all those things that I guess Byrdi, Re, Scout¹¹, that we’ve been doing for years about locally sourced stuff and then using technique where it needs to be used.

BOOTHBY: Are there people who aren’t in that similar mindset to you who you see and think, wow, that’s amazing?

WHEARTY: I’ve had some really amazing experiences recently in Asia. The two bars that have impressed me the most of late has been one bar in Taiwan, called Moonrock. They’re just starting to get some recognition now¹². I think you’ll hear a lot more about that bar. I had an awesome experience there. 

And then just recently, Bar Us¹³ in Bangkok, was really solid. I really loved it. They were super hospitable and they came to my guest shift and I think I had half an hour before they closed at 12. I got there at like 11.30 — they raced back from my guest shift, got changed into the uniform and basically made me their entire menu from both bars. 

BOOTHBY: That’s very cool of them.

WHEARTY: To be honest, there was barely a drink that I didn’t like. There were all really interesting drinks and well-made and just a cool bar that I look forward to the next time I go there. I think that there’s a template of a bar that I love, where you strip back a layer each time you go. Whereas, I think there’s some bars I’ve been to in the past that I’ve enjoyed, but if I dug any deeper there’s no substance there. Whereas those two bars, you could go five times in a week and strip back another layer each time.

WHILEY: The guy who won the global Patrón competition, Nathan Price, the British guy. I think when you try drinks in competitions, it’s rare that you find that you drink something that’s absolutely banging. Obviously you get to try really good drinks, but those generational drinks where you’re like, that’s literally unreal? He’s definitely one to watch.

BOOTHBY: What are you two like when you get together to collaborate on something? Who is the one who’s like, okay, let’s get down to work and who’s goofing off?

WHEARTY: I think Matt, in some ways he purposely leaves me to my own devices. I think he knows that I’ve got this weird sickness that I have to put myself under pressure to perform. If I’ve got plenty of time, I’m the kid at school that left it to the night before to do the project.

WHILEY: Last minute Larry over there.

WHEARTY: I just had no sense of urgency.

WHILEY: I think I’m closer to Luke, but then you’ve got Alex Kratena, who if you’re like, we need three drinks, 15 minutes later he’s like, bang, there’s my drinks, done — this is my prep, this is my list, this is what ice I need. He sends it weeks in advance. And then mine’s done, and then Luke will send his two days before we leave.

BOOTHBY: What’s it like working next to each other on a well at these Like Minded Creatures¹⁴ events that you do around the world? 

WHILEY: We generally just have fun and pepper each other with drinks and let Alex deal with all the people who come to see Alex, which is 99 percent of the people who are there.

WHEARTY: We used to fuck with each other a little bit more. Take the labels off each other’s batches and put them elsewhere. Once Matt had printed all these stickers, and he had these labels everywhere and I ended up stealing these stickers and he had none left for his bottles. I don’t think we talked for a couple of minutes.

WHILEY: Now I don’t even label my stuff.

WHEARTY: I think that’s why he doesn’t label things now.

WHILEY: Now we generally fuck with each other, but we’ve become a bit nicer to each other.

BOOTHBY: Is that cause you’re getting old? The fire is mellowing out? Are you competitive with one another?

WHILEY: Probably.

WHEARTY: Can I tell the story of Singapore when you didn’t speak to me for that two hours?

WHILEY: Remind me?

WHEARTY: When I slapped you on the ass and then you went to retaliate and I squirted you in the eyes.

WHILEY: I remember now.

BOOTHBY: How did that make you feel, Matt?

WHILEY: I just roll with the punches. I don’t get grumpy anymore. I think we’ve generally become more like the children now, and we just mainly fuck with Alex. 

Because he’s bit more militant than us. 

WHEARTY: Yeah.

WHILEY:  He's got that steeliness where there’s there’s no budging. We were doing a shift at The NoMad in London and he kept asking me to open bottles of beer for him and I just kept cracking them and leaving the lids on the floor. And he comes up to me and he says, Papi, we’re not in a fucking nightclub, pick up the beer bottle lids. And I’m on my hands and knees picking up the lids and the bottles. And he’s like, thank you, that’s better.

BOOTHBY: I love that you actually did it though. You guys have talked about opening a bar together before.

WHEARTY: I mean it’s still on the cards. The only reason we didn’t open was just because the site fell through. From my perspective I don’t want to open something just for the sake of it, to make my life harder. I’ll do it if it’s right. The original idea of opening a bar together was that we were in Milan and were in a little wine bar. We sat down and we just had an awesome time in this place that was not doing anything that we do. And we wanted to open something that was looking at what a bar is, and why do you enjoy a bar? Which I think for us is constantly changing all the time. The bar that we open today might not be the bar that we open in a year’s time. And for that reason, there’s so many ideas — if I had the money, I could open 10 bars tomorrow.

 WHILEY: I think when you open bars, especially with business partners, it’s very rare that you’re in a situation where you trust the other’s ideas so implicitly that you just say yes if someone feels strongly about it. Owning bars with friends or colleagues, there’s a level of diplomacy that you have to employ to feed people’s creativen outlets, different opinions. You don’t trust each other, so you don’t back down. 

I know that when Luke and I open a bar together, I know that if he’s got an idea, we just run with it because it’s something that wouldn’t come up if it wasn't a good idea. You just know that instantly you believe in it because of the confidence that you have in each other.

BOOTHBY: Wonderful. So last question for you: whose round is it next? 

WHILEY: Probably is definitely mine.

WHEARTY: We used to have this thing where between the three of us, Alex, Matt and I, we’d get together and it was when Tayer had first opened, and I knew Tayer was gonna rank really highly in 50 Best. So I put it out there. It was when I had Dagger, and Matt had Scout and then Alex had had just opened Tayer, and I was like, all right: we’ll play this game where whoever ranks the highest, the next day after the awards, we go out to lunch and whoever ranks the highest has got the bill. It’s a strategic bet.

BOOTHBY: It’s a complete stitch up.

WHILEY: I think you got one at Clove Club, didn’t you? 

WHEARTY: That’s right.

WHILEY: But then we’ve been dining out on Alex ever since. It’s so good.