The Everleigh – may it rest in peace – was right up the more serious end of Melbourne’s cocktail spectrum, fancy glassware, gilt-framed mirrors, a high density of guys behind the bar sporting waistcoats and/or suspenders, the whole bit. With LB’s, Everleigh founders Michael and Zara Madrusan and leaning more towards the party vibes of their other best-known venue, Heartbreaker. But where Heartbreaker’s vibe is firmly dive, and its tunes down the 1970s adult-contemporary end of the FM radio band, LB’s trades the jukebox loaded with Led Zep and Stooges tunes for shelves of vinyl from the likes of Grace Jones, Sade and Hermanos Gutierriez.
With $12 mini-cocktails, lots of snow in the drinks, a big mirror ball on the ceiling, and more than a dash of disco in its DNA, it’s less a listening bar and more a place to get down. Having said that, the drinks are (of course) a cut above. The bar is dominated by three huge ice shavers which supply the snow for the likes of a Strawberry Daiquiri powered by Havana Club. If you prefer your drinks sans berries, the Dancefloor Martini might be more your speed, and the House Margarita, accented with mandarin, mezcal and finished with a grasshopper salt rim, is an instant standout, and beautifully presented at that. There’s a bit of a Latin thread to things, too, which comes out in a smattering of bottles from Argentina and Chile on the wine list, and in plenty of jalapeno, tequila, chilli and mole bitters in the rest of the cocktails (or coctels, as the list has it).
Zara and Michael Madrusan at their latest venue, LB’s Record Bar (image: Kayla May Petty Kook)
The new spot is the first Melbourne opening for Sydney hospitality group Merivale. The group has been active in Victoria for some years now, opening Totti’s Lorne back in 2023, but LB’s marks the first of what will be several CBD openings. Chef Jowett Yu, a newly minted Melburnian who made his name with Ho Lee Fook in Hong Kong and was one of the chefs who opened Sydney Cantonese juggernaut Mr Wong alongside Dan Hong, is leading the food on several key outlets, and has drawn up the snack menu for LB’s.
Here the Latin angle goes more Spanish, and for the moment appears to be a list designed to work out of a very minimal kitchen set-up – fancy Spanish chips, tinned razor clams and good anchovies, Spanish charcuterie. The flipside of the snack menu features a list of some of Melbourne better purveyors of vinyl – Northside, Plug Seven and Alley Tunes among them – under an exhortation to Buy More Records. Always good advice.
And what does LB’s stand for? Lichael Badrusan? Lustin Bemmes? No, it is of course named for Lilly Black’s, the bar that last occupied this site.
LB’s Record Bar, 12 Meyers Pl, Melbourne, 03 9959 4211, merivale.com/venues/lbs-record-bar, @lbsrecordbar