Mystery bar number 42

File under: drink, nightlife, Wellington

As I've already mentioned, the previous mystery bar was Ernesto. Some may quibble with my designation of it as a "bar", as it's clearly more of a café during the day, but in the evening it goes through a subtle transformation as the counter food is cleared away and replaced by bottles of hard liquor. Nice.

While Ernesto goes out of its way to achieve a casual boho vibe (serving bottles of wine with random tiny tumblers rather than stemware, for instance), today's mystery bar goes all out for jazz-age glamour. Custom furniture and light fittings combine with some clever use of proportions and colour to define spaces with varying degrees of grandeur and intimacy. There's a lot of dark leather and chrome, giving it quite a masculine feel, but that's balanced by heavy velour curtains and subtly patterned wallpaper.

The drinks selection is much more balanced than one might think at first, with prominent display being given to wine, beer and liquor. The wine list starts fairly modestly, but quickly shoots off into the stratosphere, with an interesting selection of European aromatics alongside the usual suspects. While not quite in the league of Matterhorn or Motel, the top shelf is quite impressively stocked with premium spirits, including the now-obligatory Tanqueray Ten. This is definitely an upmarket bar, but should appeal to a broad enough cross-section of Wellington bar-goers to succeed in a location that has proved difficult in the past.