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Foxhole's Matt Comensoli snaps up City Hotel

Scott Bolles
Scott Bolles

Small-bar venture: Mr Tipply's manager Matt Comensoli with chef Elaine Lee.
Small-bar venture: Mr Tipply's manager Matt Comensoli with chef Elaine Lee.Peter Rae

Call it the revenge of the younger sibling, but the CBD small-bar movement has upped its assault on the hotel industry by starting to move on the city's struggling pubs.

Matt Comensoli, who cut his teeth at Foxhole, one of the city's first small bars, is involved in the recent deal to snap up the City Hotel. Later this week they'll relaunch it as Mr Tipply's, a venture with many small-bar traits.

Comensoli says old pub practices don't cut it with today's city clientele, so they've moved the gaming from pride of place, replacing it with a bar eatery and small-bar design accoutrements, and dumped any reference to its past as a hotel.

"One of the big changes small bars have brought to the city is personalised service. I'll be on the door. We brought in designer Tamsin Johnson, who is working on the new Guillaume restaurant in Paddington.

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''There's a bar and an Asian eatery, and a cocktail bar opening on the second level next month," Comensoli says.

"Small bars have really raised the bar. If you look at the good [established operators] like Justin Hemmes, they aren't sitting on their hands. They are constantly moving and changing. Two years from now, we'll have to be thinking about what we're doing next here. I'm only 35 but I have to look over my shoulder and ask who's coming for me."

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Scott BollesScott Bolles writes the weekly Short Black column in Good Food.

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