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A selection of four different cocktails lined up on the bar at T
Photograph: Anna Kucera

One of Darlo’s most beloved cocktail bars is closing the doors

Matty Hirsch
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Matty Hirsch
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After five years, Darlinghurst cocktail bar This Must Be the Place is calling it quits. This month marks the end of the current lease, and the decision has been made not to renew.

The intimate Oxford Street drinking spot burst onto the scene back in 2015, care of two former Diageo World Class Australia Bartenders of the Year, Luke Ashton and Charlie Ainsbury (who stepped down as co-owner last year), and is pretty much singlehandedly responsible for introducing Sydney to the art of the Spritz before it became the city’s drink of choice. A short, seasonal cocktail list featuring housemade syrups and fresh cold-pressed juices sounds pretty common these days, but these guys were ahead of the curve and some of the first to embrace the lighter, brighter side of building, shaking and stirring.

The bar took home the Time Out Sydney Bar Award for Best New Bar in 2016, and cleaned up in 2017, claiming both the Best Cocktail Bar Award and the prize for Bar of the Year. Last year, the bar reinvented itself as This Must Be the End – a post-apocalyptic, dystopian bunker bar using exclusively dry-store products, house ferments and hyper-locally grown herbs and plants – for a six-month stint in order to highlight the importance of sustainability.

Sunday, October 20, will be last call, and if the bar’s Instagram is anything to go by, expect "a big closing party, so maybe take the Monday off.”

Need to limber up before you start bending the elbow? Take one of the best 12 walks in Sydney.

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