The Melbourne Identity

"Bar Ampere's bartenders, dressed in lab coats, shake up cocktail experiments. After they've eaten, Melbournians wander down alleyways and slip behind unmarked doors or up creaky sets of stairs to one of the city's "laneway bars." Supposedly. I have heard tell of these mythical places but have yet to manage to find one. Tonight, though, I am armed with maps, carefully drawn and marked on the backs of old menus or bar napkins by helpful waiters and strangers. One couple I meet at the beloved tapas bar MoVida leads me six or seven blocks out of their way ("Typical Melbourne," I imagine Roy Choi whispering) to show me Meyers Place, one of the great examples of the genre—but it's not open yet. One of the mysteries of the laneways' bars is the incomprehensible hours they keep. I wander alone, squinting with increasing despair at my cocktail napkins. I pass by the restaurant Pei Modern, which Banjo Plane, the manager of Attica, had recommended. I stay the course, but I worry that I'll never find one of these alleged pocket bars. And then there one is, down a cobbled alley, under an archway next to an electrical substation—Bar Ampere, tiny enough to happily entertain hobbits. Inside it looks like a 1930s-era laboratory, with white tile, a wall of wine bottles and a dark varnished bar shaped like a horseshoe. The diminutive, mustachioed and lab-coated fellow behind the counter welcomes me and, at my request, pours me a cocktail newly minted and enigmatically named: the Keen Keener, made with gin, China Martini liqueur, Herbsaint and both orange and Angostura bitters. "Let me know how you like it," the bartender tells me. "It's all still an experiment." - Julie Powell