You'd never find Backroom if you didn't know where to look first. There's no signage outside the Ovolo Hotel in South Yarra letting people know it is inside. After entering through the entrance on Toorak Road, walking down the hallway alongside the bustling Lona Misa restaurant, past the reception featuring an open fireplace and pop art paintings of David Bowie before finally down a staircase, you'll find a portrait of a woman holding her finger to her lips shushing.
When the portrait – or 'the secret door' as the staff call it – is approached, it slides open and reveals an underground, single-room cocktail bar. With a more subdued style than the eclectic and retro style of the hotel above it, the lightly furnished, speakeasy-style bar certainly has charm.
Time Out visits when Backroom has only been open a few weeks, and we get the sense Backroom is still finding an identity. One corner is dedicated to intimate booths, while tables line a wall with the centre of the room taken up with comfy-looking couches. Old school speakers playing jazzy music hang above an impressively backlit bar lined with bottles of botanical spirits and vermouth.
Backroom's concept is to offer the limelight to a specific drink, region or brand through both food and drink. When we visit, it's in the throes of an 'All-Australian Takeover', consisting of a special menu of six cocktails and four highballs mixed with the Australian-made Feels Botanical spirits, Regal Rogue vermouth, and flavoured Capi soda. Once we are seated, the staff are quick to inform us they could make most classic cocktails or pour lager for those who aren't feeling overly adventurous.
But why go to an underground cocktail bar and not try the funky drinks on offer? The Regal Rogue Martinez, like all of the takeover cocktails, costs $20 and is a combination of red vermouth, a botanical spirit and Maraschino Orange Bitters, garnished with an orange twist. The hero here is the vermouth, which blends organic Australian wine and Indigenous Australian spices. It's herbaceous and sweet without being sugary.
Next on the table is a Red Ricky highball which combines the flavours of a different botanical spirit, bold red vermouth, and topped with a grapefruit and rosemary soda water. At $18 it's reasonably priced for an intricate drink with depth of flavour.
You can tell a lot about a cocktail bar by how much they charge for an Espresso Martini — as long as it isn't on tap — and the $22 pricetag lets you know Backroom is on the more expensive side, but not outrageously so. The table service is attentive and helpful and the cocktails are consistently tasty, which is always a positive.
While the cocktails and the ambience are highlights, the food here is not a drawcard. The staff and the menu make it clear it's a snack menu and truthfully, you'd be better served getting dinner elsewhere, like upstairs at the hotel restaurant. Halloumi doughnuts set will set you back $18 and pizza comes in at $20. The doughnuts are balls of battered and fried cheese, soft and gooey on the inside, with Morita chilli jam lending a smoky fruitiness to the halloumi.
The pizza packs fontina cheese, white onions, and a topping made of Regal Rogue dry vermouth, mushrooms and truffle. A flavourful pie is only let down by being slightly undercooked and cold in the middle of the base. All the items on the snack menu incorporate the vermouth and spirits featured in the cocktails in some way – a gimmick which comes across as a bit, well, gimmicky. All bites are veggo (but not vegan).
Backroom isn't a dinner venue and it isn't the type of place you go to meet new people. It's a place for unashamed drinks fans to nerd out on new and high-concept libations, and that's fine. You could also stop by for an after-dinner drink, to catch up with friends, or get to know your date better – before hopping over to another more boisterous venue.