Eau de Vie to expand

Darlinghurst's Eau de Vie - recently crowned the world's best new cocktail bar at the annual Spirited Awards in New Orleans - will branch out and open a spinoff bar-restaurant at Potts Point. Eau De Vie's personable owner, Sven Almenning, has been spotted looking around the Apres restaurant site on Orwell Street, Potts Point.

"We've exchanged [on the business]. We're hoping to have the keys late November,'' he tells Short Black. ''The bar will open before Christmas and the restaurant in early January."

It will be named The Roosevelt, a nod to the nightclub of the same name that once operated at the site, attracting the likes of the touring Frank Sinatra.

"We want to bring back some of the Hollywood glamour, have a bit of a Mad Men-era feel about it," Almenning says. But with a modern twist: staff will wear goggles and gloves as they handle liquid nitrogen and prepare new-age drinks and food. The Roosevelt will offer a five-course cocktail degustation. "It might be a Negroni sorbet matched with a dish," Almenning says. "It's more of a show. I like to think of it as buying a ticket, not making a booking."

Source: Sydney Morning Herald