Darlo Country Club

Do you like your lobster truffled and cocktails ridiculous? If yes, you're going to love what's happened to The Victoria Room.

After the Darlinghurst old-girl served her last high tea in May, hospitality duos Michael Hwang and Eddie Levy (Lobo Plantation) and Adam Abrams and Julian Tobias (party pontoon The Island) swooped in and opened ski lodge-themed pop-up The Chalet. The snow melted on that venture and in November the team launched Darlo Country Club permanently in its place. It's modelled on the pastel toffiness of Californian country clubs and I dig the space a lot.

Honeydew green beams prop up plantation-shuttered windows and cream walls covered in black-and-white pictures of wealthy people playing tennis, golf and other sports requiring Ralph Lauren activewear. Leathers, woods and succulents are the design orders of the day and my favourite spot is two high-backed chairs by a fireplace replete with a rack of vintage Playboy mags and a taxidermy pheasant (or is it a grouse? I'm never sure). It's all brought together visually by staff buzzing around in white shoes and whiter shirts.

If only the cocktails were as conservative as a country club's dress code, though. Components listed include bubblegum-infused tequila, Sichuan honey syrup, chai syrup and grape citrus foam. Not keen on anything involving lavender honey grenadine, I order Harbour Vieux ($22), a twist on the vieux carre with English Harbour rum, yellow Chartreuse, dill-infused rosso vermouth, pimento bitters, orange bitters, and a dash of sugar syrup. It's the herbal equivalent of schoolyard fisticuffs and tastes of medicine and the colour brown.

The Eton Fizz ($17) fares better. Garnished with strawberries, thyme, and love-hearts of something orange and untraceable, it looks like what I imagine a drunk clown sees in the mirror each morning. It also tastes just dandy, thanks. A mellow mix of Tanqueray, strawberry shrub, lemon juice, thyme syrup, egg white and soda you can sit on.

There's food here if you're keen, such as $24 mac'n'cheese with lobster and truffle oil for which no sommelier in the world could find a wine match, and a perfectly fine scotch fillet with chimichurri ($28) that finds friendship in a glass of Hay Shed Hill 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon ($12). You could make meal out of the menu, but Una's is across the road.

You know what you really should do though? If you've got enough people and your pockets are bursting with dollar, dollar bills, y'all? If the idea of ordering a cocktail and waiting for it to be made is too much? If you want to big-note yourself as lord, president and Grand Poobah of the Club? Two words, my friend: Bottle service.

A whole bottle of Bulleit Rye for the table? No dramas, club secretary-elect, that'll be $400. Johnny Walker Blue label? Mo' money, no problems – all yours for $1050. A six-litre methuselah of Ciroc vodka? A cool $2500 without change.

Six litres of spirits is an audacious claim on the Fairfax expense card, so there were no tanks of vodka for bugalugs here. However, if you were to get Biggie with it and order six litres of Ciroc, I can't imagine you can get a doggie flask for the leftovers. By my calculations you would need 24 mates to finish the bottle and that's if everyone had eight standard drinks over the course of the evening (a radical or very conservative estimate depending on how you want to look things).

Although if you were to imbibe like a bunch of Harvard-graduate Russian gangsters, the venue can accommodate, as its booths are huge and designed for parties who like to party.

I think that's the key to enjoying Darlo Country Club, too: the art of having dumb fun with mates. Just head along with a few friends, pretend you're in a P.G. Wodehouse novel / Coolio music video / 1980s Sprite commercial and embrace the winking silliness in all its glory.

THE LOW-DOWN
Go for... the chance to unleash your inner toff.
Stay for… the vintage Playboys.
Drink… a methuselah of vodka.
And… the champagne selection is predictably outlandish and delicious.