Nude
Editorial
It’s easy to form an image in your mind of a venue just from its name. ‘Australian Youth Hotel’ immediately made me picture a dingy hostel, maybe because I misread it at first, maybe because 99 times out of 100 the word ‘hostel’ and not ‘hotel’ follows ‘youth’. Dispel images of uncouth backpackers because this is a very nice place to get a fancy pub feed and revel in your weekend in the picturesque courtyard. Nude is the bar that sits on the second level of the AYH and is very different from its downstairs sibling.
Nude is a sultry and decadent setting for conversing over cocktails. Dim lighting casts moody light over dark chocolate couches and velvet upholstery, and walls are covered with dozens of oily paintings showing women in varying degrees of nudity. It used to be a brothel, and still possesses a slight allure of boudoir eroticism. Breaking this vibe somewhat is the clunky mish-mash of styles, which looks bizarre in certain areas (what’s up with this carpet?).
This is not the venue for kipfler potatoes or fermented yeast – that’s downstairs. Nude is a combination of original cocktails, (rather good) DJs mixing, and a younger crowd spraying their words at each other. After a long hiatus, I introduced absinthe back into my life with a Sadistic cocktail (its actual name; $14) of the Green fairy accompanied by mint and pineapple. The kind of sordid cocktail you can get away with when drinking in an ex-brothel.
Meri Harli, March 2011
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