A beautiful Fish Lane bar has been reborn as a buzzy martini hub

Butler was here. And then it was gone, one of Brisbane’s best new bars of 2022 barely lasting six months.

It was a shame because not only was Butler an excellent boozer, it was also just a great space. Brisbane has struggled in the past to present compelling small venues, often because it has lacked the small tenancies in which to create them.

Here was a cracking wine bar run by Lune, a celebrated Australian operator (when it comes to fancy pastries, at least), and decked out by designers Hogg & Lamb in mirrored glass and great sheets of spotted gum. On a buzzy night, it was a vibe.

But it wasn’t buzzy enough, the Lune team quietly pulling stumps on Butler at the start of the year after not getting enough bums on barstools.

So, in creating Midtown, Daniel Miletic and Amelia Taylor knew they had to do something different. The husband-and-wife team – best known for popular Kangaroo Point seafood restaurant One Fish Two Fish – opened their new cocktail and small-plates bar in the old Butler premises in early September.

“A lot of [potential operators] looked at this place, but maybe we were the only ones who had the idea to move the kitchen,” Taylor says. “So everyone’s walked in and thought, ‘it’s not going to work’.”

The kitchen shift enables him to punch out a larger and more varied menu than Butler could ever manage.

The inspiration for Midtown came from restaurants and bars Taylor and Miletic have frequented in New York, Spain, Italy and Singapore – small, narrow spots with a kitchen out the front of the space. It’s the defining feature of the venue, chef Miletic setting up an efficient cooking space just inside the front door.

You might neck a dirty martini oyster shooter, or eat steak tartare cigars, prawn croquettes, and miniature lobster croissants with hollandaise and chives. Larger plates include a 10-hour barbecue bourbon brisket, or a Fraser Isle spanner crab tortellini with a lemon-cream reduction and herbs.

“Since we opened, [our sales] have been 50 per cent food, which we weren’t expecting,” Taylor says.

To go with the food, the pair have created a cocktail-forward drinks menu with a particular focus on martinis. There are French, espresso, elderflower and olive leaf variations, among a bunch of others, or you can just choose to create your own. There’s also a martini flight, which dishes up half serves of Midtown, elderflower and espresso martinis.

“People automatically assume martinis are just super boozy,” Taylor says. “Whereas we go from super-super dirty – creepy-uncle dirty, as my friend likes to call it – all the way to a French martini or lychee martini. So there are multiple options there.”

Elsewhere, there’s a short list of classic cocktails and a tightly curated 35-bottle wine list that hits a balance between old world and new.

The venue’s design is much the same, with all that beautiful timber and glass in place. Otherwise, the bar has been given a touch of colour, with bright yellow coasters and a carefully arranged back bar. The rest is under-the-hood stuff, with some wine fridges cleverly hidden behind the spotted gum panelling.

It adds up to something more loose-hipped than Butler. It’s the kind of venue where, sure, you might start or end a night, but it has also been designed to kick on from drinks into dinner.

“It’s not actually named Midtown because of a New York reference, but because it’s the midpoint between West End and South Brisbane,” Taylor says. “West Village is just a [couple of blocks] away … [and] we’re doing supper club on Friday and Saturday nights, so we’ll be cooking until midnight.”

“We made our food offering a lot larger for that reason,” Miletic adds. “We didn’t want to be just a starting or finishing point; we wanted to be a place you have dinner. When it’s dinner time, we want people to say, ‘Let’s just get a feed here.’”

Open Tue-Thu 4pm-late, Fri 12pm-12am, Sat 4pm-12am.

15 Manning Street, South Brisbane.

midtownbar.com.au