Sticky Bar

Sticky Bar is Michael Fantuz's idea. He's the guy behind popular local restaurant Table for 20 which lies downstairs and where the philosophy is communal eating - a big shared dinner party where everything gets passed around. Here you find big platters of roast meat, potatoes, vegetables, hunks of parmesan and a giant slab of tiramisu that Fantuz and his mum take turns making.

Sticky takes that admirable sharing principle and gives it a twist in a refreshing new bar space. Nights at Sticky are about fun - they have a musician who plays covers during dinner and the music is piped through upstairs into the bar. Although the bar's rather hidden and only open when the restaurant is (a bare three nights a week), you don't have to eat downstairs to drink upstairs (however it's highly recommended - it's a helluva lot of fun).

Upstairs you'll find the room stuffed with old school video game chairs (those plastic stools for table style games like Space Invaders), little leather Ottomans for perching on and a mixture of Victorian parlour lounges for sitting up straight on and over-stuffed, round armed deco armchairs for sinking into.

The walls are all painted black and covered in blackboards displaying a very large all-Italian wine list which you can buy by the glass or the bottle as well an Italian inspired cocktail list. Props to bartender Benito Drovandi for putting together drinks like the Hendrick's Mist - a sweet mix of Hendrick's gin, homemade lemon syrup and a touch of Limoncello (a southern Italian lemon liqueur) or the Lovegun - Amaretto, Campari and orange juice. Again, quite a sweet drink. The Amaretto, a sweet almond flavoured liqueur, would probably be better in a smaller dose. But apart from the sweetness, the drinks themselves are interesting and a far sight better than the lychee daiquiris or vodka passionfruit concoctions that are the scourge of Sydney bars at the moment.

That said the cocktails are also quite expensive (a Lovegun will set you back $16) while the average bottle of wine will leave you around $40 out of pocket. The beauty here being that you can order pretty much whatever you feel like and you'll be guaranteed to have a good time. The whole bar has been built to sit around in and relax, drink and eat one of their cheese platters or a few chunks of rich, dark Tuscan chocolate.

There's a distinct vibe here and it spells fun. It's dark, the furniture is made to sit in rather than pose on, the music is loud enough to feel live but soft enough to maintain conversation and the booze is great. And there's something particularly exciting about a place that opens on selected days and is hard to find unless you know exactly where it is (FYI: climb the stairs at the back of the room, walk past the huge piles of dried pasta, olives and loaves of bread and you'll find it). It's open till late and it's a great place to either start, or end the night.