Mystery bar number 22

File under: drink, nightlife, Wellington

The previous Mystery Bar, as I revealed earlier, was Lumiere on the corner of Manners and Willis St. It may very well be a pleasant enough café and restaurant, but it's not so great as a bar, and I certainly wouldn't recommend ordering a Martini there.

This week's mystery bar was visited during our Bar Safari last Saturday. The intention was to drag ourselves out of our habitual watering holes and into the sort of places that we wouldn't normally venture, and we certainly did that. The itinerary went something like this: sports bar, wine bar, gay bar, piano bar, backpacker bar and this place. Apologies for the dim and blurry photos, but my camera doesn't handle dark conditions very well, and besides, it's not an inappropriate look for this sort of bar.

The clientele was relatively mixed in terms of age and ethnicity, though I suppose they could all be described as "mainstream" in some sense. Another common factor was fakeness: we noticed plenty of fake smiles, handbags, tans and breasts. The cocktails are reasonably authentic, though: I had quite a decent Martini, and have previously had a well-made Daiquiri (a real one, not one of those sorbets in a glass).

If I'd been on the pull and lacking in discrimation this might have proved fertile ground, but as it was it was more a source of amusement for us. The most fun to be had was sitting outside, watching the inebriated and/or underaged trying to convince the doorman to let them in. Inside, it was hard to talk, move or breathe, but that's to be expected at 3am on a Sunday morning.