Queensland’s best cocktail bar, Rosella’s has a new list — here’s how it happened

I love a good drinks list. The best menus are things you want to pick up and look at — they can be conversation starters, something to turn to when you run out of things to say. But they’re also a roadmap to each bar: they tell you a bit about the place, its reason for being, and what to expect. It shows that the people who run the place care about it, and have a vision for how you should think about it, too.

Which all leads me to this: there’s a new list launching tonight at Rosella’s, and it’s a looker.

Rosella’s is a little Gold Coast bar doing big things. If you haven’t been there, a night in Rosella’s is worth the flight to the Gold Coast alone (although there are a few other great bars there, too — just see the list of the best 30 bars in Queensland). It’s a bar that is big on the details, too: little design touches are scattered throughout the bar, but perhaps its most striking room is that of the toilet, adorned with photos of Home & Away’s Alf and equipped with such stool time reading as their own Rosella’s Weekly Sunday Roast cookbook. It’s funny and whimsical and nostalgic, all at the same time.

And the drinks — the drinks! — are what put Rosella’s in the upper echelon of Australian bars. Drinks here are a collaborative effort, as owner and bartender Jack Connor explains in our interview below, with a lot of technique and thought put into them ahead of service.

It’s an approach that has seen Rosella’s place at number two on the Boothby Best Bars QLD Top 30 just last month, and pick up the title of Best Cocktail Bar QLD presented by Grada.

Rosella’s drinks tend to be both approachable and unique to the bar, drawing heavily upon native ingredients and Australian cultural touchstones — see their excellent Fantales cocktail, developed after the iconic Australian lolly was discontinued. In that drink — which landed at number 10 on the 2023 Boothby Drink of the Year awards — you can see their attention to detail. Yes, the flavour is reminiscent of the namesake confectionary, but it’s not sickly sweet; it works as a drink even if you don’t have the lolly as a reference point. The recipe is also full-on Australiana: caramelised wattle seed butter, Pennyweight oloroso from Victoria, a Rosella’s Blend Bundaberg rum infused with Daintree Dark Chocolate and milk-punched with rainbow Paddle Pop milk. Throw in some macadamia liquor from nearby distillery Brookie’s, and a little mushroom garum caramel for depth.

And then there’s the presentation: the drink arrives with a custom-made Fantales lolly wrapped in what seems at first glance to be a Fantales wrapper; on closer inspection, you’ll see the Rosella’s logo in place of Fantales, and the famous quiz questions are all Rosella’s own.

There’s a lot of work that goes into that one drink, which is why I’m glad to see it still takes a spot on the latest Rosella’s menu, which launches at the bar today. (They open at 4pm — go and check it out.)

The new menu is titled A Taste Of Oz, and is something of a flavour-driven journey around the country. Jack worked on the drinks with Rosella’s bartender Romony Archer, with the concept coming from general manager Kimberley Tempestini. Get a look at the menu below, too — it’s presented in a fold-out format, with a map of the country on one side featuring big slurps of design nostalgia, from Ben Cutajar of the Brisbane-based Ajar Studio.

Below, I talk to Jack about the new menu, and he shares the process that went into the menu, why highlighting the local Jellurgal indigenous area is important to him and the team, and how they’re balancing new drinks with old Rosella’s favourites five years into business.

While I have you — I’ve got some good news: we’ve published a print magazine! It’s called Bottled and we launched it up at the Bartenders’ Weekender in Brisbane last month — and it’s now available to buy. There are over 100 pages of stories about drinks and the people who make them from around the globe — stories you’ll only find in print. You can read more about what’s in the magazine and get your own copy at bottledmag.com. We’re shipping around Australia, New Zealand, the whole world really. I can’t wait for you to read it.

Sam Bygrave: Your last menu is one of my favourites. They’re all bangers on there. It was a really cool design.

Jack Connor: Amazing.

How long was that menu in place for?

It’s been a year now. However, we’ve taken a few away and replaced those with a few new ones throughout the year. Some of the ones that stayed around for a while — like Blinky Bill [which landed at number 16 on the 2022 Drink of the Year Top 50]`, and Fantales stayed on there as well. Which will stay on the new menu too, just in a little subsection called Rosella’s Classics.

Because yeah, you’ve got a few of those now, right?

There’s a few, yeah.

That Blinky Bill has been on there a long time, right?

Yeah. That’s, that’s coming up to five years soon. It’s just one that we just can’t take off. Every single week — it’s the most popular drink and it’s most popular by a mile. It has become synonymous, I guess, with the venue.

It’s just one of those classics you can’t get away from — you’ll be making that in 10 years time as well. Okay, let’s talk about the new menu. What’s big idea with the new menu? Have you changed much in terms of the structure of things and design?

It’s still in the same sort of layout where it’s a fold out kind of menu. However he’s done it in a map style, kind of old school but new school as well.

We’ve coined it as A Taste of Oz. He’s done little pictures of the landscapes that we’re basing the drinks around which is kind of cool. So you can kind of see those areas and on the map and then, yeah, we’ll have like a little trail on where to go, where to start and where to finish.

It embraces that Australian culture where we love to travel.

And that’s a very Rosella’s thing to do, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s definitely embracing Australia, but in a different sense. That old menu was a little bit more of the nostalgic feels of your famous lollies and whatnot.

This one’s a bit more focused on those areas. We delved a lot more deeply into native ingredients too. We’ve always championed that, but this one has just gone full steam ahead on native ingredients.

Can you run us through a drink or two to explain what you’re talking about when you talk about place?

One of them that we did want to do, which probably isn’t as famous as the other locations, but we want to push it a little bit more is the Jellurgal drink, which is the indigenous name for the Burley Headland area.

We’ve done a lot of native ingredients from the area and then tied it with some of the aspects of the Burleigh Headland itself.

We did the [Jellurgal] indigenous tour that we have here with the guys, which was super, super cool. Learned so many things. And through the drink, we want to promote that tour as well, to get people to go there and do it. It’s such an amazing tour and such a big cultural history of this particular area — a lot more people should be doing it. It is great to learn that immense history that’s thousands and thousands of years old here.

What sort of ingredients are going into that one?

Bunya nut is one of the biggest ingredients in there. Because it’s very much a native ingredient to this area. Those massive pine trees with those huge kind of pine cone-esque type things, we get the bunya nuts out of there. Indigenous people have been eating it for thousands of years. But it is a very hard ingredient to try to use. But we managed to do it a lot easier now, getting those massive PVC pipe cutters. We roast those bunya nuts and then we infuse that into a neutral spirit. And we’ve gone with more tropical vibes too, to fit in with Queensland and the tropical areas that we live in. So yeah, clarified pineapple juice, and a bit of Mexican marigold, which isn’t native, however, it’s an incredible ingredient to use. Another term for it is passionfruit marigold, we just thought that flavour would be amazing, but it’s also a pretty cool little link as well to the Jellurgal headland. There is like a lot of invasive Mexican flowers on the hill itself — the hill is just littered with these beautiful bright yellow Mexican flowers. And then we’re using Burly Citrus Gin as the base, which is a new brand on the block in Burley here. So yeah, just a super bright, refreshing, long fizzy drink — which I hope takes on Blinky Bill.

So you’ll have a section for the classic Rosella drinks that you’ve done, but then the new signatures will take pride of place — is that right?

Yeah. We’ve got Blinky Bill and Fantales there that we’ll keep. Then every now and then we’ll just throw in some other classic that we’ve done over the years, because we still like to play on the nostalgia feel of things. And now that we’re five years in, even doing a drink from our menu a year ago is a little bit nostalgic. Which is quite wild too.

Yeah, it’s fantastic — that’s what you want.

We’re bringing back a Kylie Minogue Martini this round.

Really? What’s in a Kylie Minogue Martini?

That one’s like vodka, gin, elderflower and verjuice. Yeah, just all equal parts and then you shake it into a Martini glass. Super simple. But just so delicious. Everyone just loved them.

How long did take to work on this menu? How long have you been getting through the drinks and what kind of approach do you take?

Yeah, a very big team approach actually. We’ve been working on it for probably about six months really. So it’s been a while.

At a lot of the takeovers that we do, we do new ideas and new drinks. And then if they go amazingly well on those nights then they most likely do get a spot on the menu.

That’s a way to make takeovers work.

Yeah that’s where Fantails came from, that came from us doing a takeover at Alba last year, and the Uluru drink, that one came from our Seven Seasons takeover with Daniel Motlop.

We were brainstorming ideas around a new menu about six months ago. And then Kimberly came up with the idea around landscapes. We wanted to adapt this map style thing, and then champion sort more native ingredients and a bit more history around Australia.

How’s everything going now that you are five years in? What’s the feeling like there these days?

Yeah, it’s good. Last year was a tricky one, but this year —it’s very good. I thought that the tram coming in was going to blow things out, but that hasn’t really affected us too much. I think if we just keep doing what we’re doing, and keep doing new things and all that people still want to come here, which is good.

You’ve got to keep things interesting for people to come back, right?

Yeah. I don’t want to be stuck doing the same thing for years and years because, the way hospitality goes, you need to progress in a pretty rapid rate to keep going.

Absolutely. And I can’t let you go without talking about your win for Best Cocktail Bar presented by Grada, at the Boothby Best Bars QLD Awards up there. What was that like on the night? How did that feel?

Yeah, that was great. It was very unexpected. We were just sort of like... so focused on the best bar, like where we’re going to sit on the ranking. The guys were a little bit pessimistic about it, I guess. They’re all like, oh yeah, if we get in the top 15 or top 10, that’s pretty great. Then we saw us get the Best Cocktail Bar and we’re just like, what the fuck? It was pretty wild going up against all those giants in Brisbane. Like, you’re The Gresham, you’re Frogs Hollow, you’re Maker and all that. And then for them to think so highly of us, it’s very rewarding. It’s very nice.