Crafty Dining in Potts Point
We are proud to announce our fourth Crafty Dining experience as part of Good Food Month and Sydney Craft Week. Showcasing the rich variety of vintage & contemporary fashion, design and dining options on the elegant streets of Potts Point.
Minerva Vintage
Located in the heritage listed building after which Minerva Vintage is named, this compact shop punches above its weight when it comes to its vintage fashion and homeware offerings. The Minerva building is the sister building of the Metro, built shortly after the Minerva Theatre (built 1939).
Carefully curated by its proprietor Gregory Bolton, vintage aficionados often rifle excitedly through its swathes of kimonos, piles of old treasured linens and glass cabinets of handmade and exclusively designed jewellery to find their treasure. With over 2,000 items of designer clothing, jewellery, accessories, glass, ceramics and “the unusual”, his showroom is an Aladdin’s cave of glamour just waiting to be explored and discovered. Articles are showcased in fine, high gloss Black-Japanned cases. Minerva also stocks Italian silk ties and many other objet d’art.
The shop itself is a masterclass in design elegance with its curved entrance window, original designer terrazo and dramatic gold embossed lettering, all signature elements of the Art Deco period.
Gregory has been a small business owner since 1974 and is fascinated by history and architecture. His clients are “fantastic” he says, “and always interesting, especially the Bohemians”. He has previously run his own successful fashion label and jewellery business for 35 years and has been fascinated with design since the age of 14. He ran his own boutique at 16 years old.
Minerva attracts local fashionistas, often caters for models and is for those who don’t fear fashion.
Kings Cross Distillery
Kings Cross Distillery is located at the intersection where the once mischievous glittering half mile of Darlinghurst Road, meet the increasingly glamorous Macleay Street of Potts Point. The stripped-back brick space was formerly a speakeasy and gambling den in the 1960s, before becoming an adult bookstore named Private Book Shop and later Ecstasy Adult Bookstore in the late 1970’s. Upstairs there was the usual shadowy, pleasures of a by-gone era befitting of the postcode 2011.
The pot-still that produces the gin is affectionately called “Miss Pottsy” and sits gleaming in the heart of the distillery. The colourful and rich and risqué history of Sydney’s Kings Cross and its surrounds, are the inspiration behind the vapour infused gins.
Kings Cross Distillery (KXD) is led by distiller and “spirit architect” Odelia Potts, a former contracts administrator who spent a year studying spirit production, making her one of just 40 qualified female distillers in Australia.
Odelia is working alongside general manager Ben Moechtar, the renowned sommelier who helped launch Aria and was head somm at the lauded diners MG Garage and Wildfire. Potts has been working away at the venue’s still on a dry gin inspired by a recipe from the 1930s.
The new venue still pays homage to the colourful history it has seen, with the former vault now being used for storing the bar’s most prized possessions, their bottles of gin, as well as a cheeky wall of pin up photography which nods to the former bookstores which existed there.
Kings Cross Distillery accommodates 120 guests, once COVID-19 restrictions are fully lifted. The venue will offer an array of mezze and tapas style dishes such as bites of baked kibbeh, vine wrapped sardines, and harissa carrots. Naturally, the bar will serve its own premium gin, vodka and whisky, as well as an array of Australian and international spirits.
One of the special features of this venue is the availability of personalised spirit lockers, where guests can keep their own bottles and consume them in any gin concoction of their choice- be that the perfect G+T, or a gin cocktail from the cocktail list of their choosing.
The KXG Australian Classic Dry Gin includes botanical’s such as juniper, coriander seed and cardamom pods, as well as Sydney-grown organic lemons. Served in cocktails or with mixers from the bar, alongside house-made whisky and vodka and a range of international and local spirits.
On the menu for Crafty Dining:
Kings Cross Distillery Cocktail:
Bee Kind, Please Unwind - this drink is a twist on the classic Negroni using clear libations, the inclusion of melted honey and beeswax adds florals and mouthfeel. A gentle reminder to be kind to oneself and others in this often hectic world.
Ingredients: Kings Cross Distillery Australian Classic Dry Gin, Lillet blanc, Suze aperitif, Fiorente Elderflwoer liqueur, Honey – Bees Wax
