It's Beautiful Here
in Melbourne

 With Matthew Bax

​

Matt and I first met way back in 2002 when I returned from living in London and moved in with two of my best friends in Melbourne's Richmond. Matt's bar, Der Raum (which opened a year earlier on Church Street Richmond), was a 2 minute walk from our house. It quickly became our local. We had never really seen anything like that before in Melbourne - a beautiful, cosy bar serving classic drinks, underneath a mass of hanging bottles. It was amazing. I asked Matt if I could book out the bar for one of my birthday parties, and then did it the next year as well. We became fast friends. There were many fun times spent between those walls.

But it wasn't just Der Raum that kept him busy. An artist by trade, Matt was also doing art shows both in Australia and Germany (where he lived for a long time) at the same time. I remember going to one of his shows in St Kilda maybe 17 years ago! His drinks started getting every more fancy as he began experimenting with molecular gastronomy techniques using things like nitrogen and evaporation - there was a drink that was served in a medicine bottle for example, with an Aperol-filled syringe and a sherbet pill. Everything was made in- house. Der Raum became a Melbourne institution and it was sad for everyone when it closed in 2012.

In 2009 Matt also opened The Tippling Club in Singapore, and then in 2011 he returned to Melbourne to open Bar Americano in a back alley of the city. Teeny tiny and with only a license for 10 people (standing room only), it was hidden away in a graffiti covered laneway and quickly became the place for the best cocktails in town (the negroni being the most popular). It was Melbourne's first really good hidden laneway bar (with just an Italian Tabbachi sign out the front to mark its location). 

When Der Raum shut down in 2012, Matt went on to open a very different style bar, Bar Economico, in the former Der Raum site, and Bar Exuberante as well. He didn't stop there though, also opening a bar called Gamsei in Munich, which he ran in 2013 and 2014; a popup tea room SAMU in 2016; and then later the Grau Projekt, a contemporary art gallery space located in a 1050sqm warehouse in Clifton Hill, in 2018.

Needless to say, he has been busy. Matt has done A LOT. He has done a lot for Melbourne. He has certainly brought an enormous amount of creativity and inspiration to the Melbourne bar scene and art world, and for that we should be very thankful.

Last Saturday 3 December 2022 was the final day of service for Bar Americano.

The tiny little bar that we all love so much has sadly come to an end.

It was an honour to be there for last drinks.

And it is an honour to speak to Matt here.

Matt, thank you. Melbourne owes you a lot. x