Snacks to go with drinks, drinks to go with snacks and good old-fashioned Spanish sensibilities to bring it home by the sea in Coogee.
This beachside tapas bar occupies the middle ground in the stunning Coogee Pavilion and, boy, is it pretty. There’s pricey-looking art slung on the walls, more distressed ceramic jars thrown around the place than any human could possibly need, cured meats hanging above the open kitchen and huge bowls of lemons and tomatoes spilling over underneath. It’s like the staff raided Javier Bardem’s Barcelona holiday house and a particularly bountiful market and turned the place into a movie set. With marble, lots of marble. In short, this is a beautiful room to sit in, filled with beautiful people. Even the tanned waiters, who are draped in linen and often speak with an accent, seem to have got the memo.
Whatever you eat and drink is a sure bet. We’re talking snacks to go with drinks, and drinks to go with snacks. So if it’s beers, you can stand up and make like you’re at a tapas bar, Estrella Damm in one hand, anchovy Gilda – a salty cocktail snack on a stick – in the other. All while the sea breeze blows gently through your hair, making you feel like you’re in a shampoo commercial.
Order a wine and it’ll be crisp, light and as refreshing as plunging into the clear blue sea. And while the ballers next door at Mimi’s pop thousand-dollar bottles and flex with caviar bumps, here the price is right. There’s Italian white on tap for $11 a glass, plus a smart pick of mainly French, Spanish and Italian bottles mostly well south of $100. They also play to the crowd, with rosé to last all day, chilled reds geared for thirst crushing, and orange wines with enough skin contact to excite you but not scare your dad. You know, things you want to drink when you roll up out of the surf with salt in your hair and a glint in your eye – just throw on a shirt first.
Then there are cocktails. And what better than the Sangria Roja? A levelled-up take on the premix version, it builds on a base of white rum with vermouth and raspberry liqueur, then tops it up with red wine and lemonade. Sweet and fruity with a lick of fizz, it’s Sangria you always imagined, served in the kind of setting you always wanted to drink it in.
