TIME BAR at Art Gallery of WA steps back with classic cocktails and speakeasy style

Perth bar boffin Andrew McIntyre loves a martini. He prefers London dry gin and a healthy measure of Lillet Blanc aperitif wine, garnished with lemon zest and finished with a spritz of absinthe. Oh, and three green olives on the side.

But the veteran of the local wine and spirits scene isn’t so fussy that he won’t try something new.

He was concocting the cocktail menu for TIME BAR, a speakeasy-style bar in the smash-hit TIME RONE exhibition at the Art Gallery of WA, with Melbourne restaurateur Guy Grossi, who suggested a Marsala Martini.

The drink using Belvedere vodka, Lillet Blanc and a splash of Italian fortified wine is a fixture at Grossi’s venues.

“I loved it,” McIntyre says of the American classic given an Italian twist, one of eight signature cocktails available at TIME BAR.

There’s also a Grossi Negroni and his Italiano Alpino, which lands somewhere between an Americano and a highball.

The total banger on the cocktail hit-list is the Porcini Old Fashioned, using Basil Hayden bourbon, porcini mushrooms, Canadian maple whiskey and thyme.

“Using savoury ingredients in cocktails is hit and miss,” McIntyre says, “but it’s been selling really well.

“It’s our third biggest seller, which for a brown-spirit drink is unusual.”

Then there’s a classic Paloma and an Italiano Margarita, both using Volcan tequila blanco — a Mexican detour in the otherwise Italian-inspired menu.

“We can’t ignore the commercial reality that people are drinking margaritas and tequila,” McIntyre explains. “It’s huge. It’s only getting bigger.

“I think it helps that every movie star comes out with their own tequila.”

Speaking of movie stars, the entire TIME RONE exhibition feels like a lavish film set, perhaps set in the 1950s.

That period also inspired the cocktails, McIntyre says, adding that several were invented during the era, or earlier in the case of the all-time classic Sidecar.

McIntyre suggests that the menu is likely to evolve, with the talented team led by bar manager Callum Sumner working on fresh takes of speakeasy standards.

With blacked out windows and vintage furnishings, the bar in a former courtroom in AGWA’s Centenary Galleries is truly a time machine, especially when fuelled with a cocktail or wines from WA and the St Hugo range.

As McIntyre says: “It’s a beautiful space to just lose a bit of time”.

TIME BAR is open Wednesday to Saturday from 4pm.