Just Open: Heartbreaker Bar by the Everleigh team, Melbourne CBD

Melbourne's off-duty chefs are as likely to be found at Supper Club up to their elbows in chicken and beers as appreciating an expertly tweezed plate. This is not a rejection of artful cooking. It is a reflection of the fact that liking food is sometimes more about the eating – heads down, fists up.

So it should come as no surprise that the city's most fastidious bartenders – Sebastian Reaburn, roving cocktail consult, and the team who brought you twinkling golden-era cocktail bar the Everleigh (plus hand-cut ice company Navy Strength Ice Co) – have launched a second venue that's more about good times than drinks.

Welcome to Heartbreaker Bar: home to rock and roll, icy beers and the single ingredient cocktail.

It's the essence of an LA rock bar brought to life in shades of red, neon, and skull. The pool table is primed. The jukebox is fully charged with Iggy Pop, James Brown and Elton John's Bennie and the Jets. Men pass the kitchen of the neighbouring Korean restaurant on their way to the toilets.

Heartbreaker has been as carefully crafted into a den of iniquity as the Everleigh is a palace of cocktail worship.

The beers and back bar, heavy on bourbons and rye whiskeys, have been as carefully selected as you'd expect, but all cocktail mixing here has already been done.

There's Reaburn's version of a Presbyterian on tap (rye, ginger and soda), and the Everleigh's range of bottled classic cocktails including a martini and negroni are available, but the bar crew's main job will be dispensing chat and dollar coins.

Food is on the cards, but they'll likely rent the kitchen to rotating food vendors.

Open Mon-Sat 5pm-3m; Sun 5pm-11pm; bottled cocktail bottle shop open daily 5pm-11pm.

Heartbreaker, corner Russell and Lonsdale streets, Melbourne CBD.