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The Clare Bar

Callan Boys
Callan Boys

The  Old Clare Hotel, Chippendale.
The Old Clare Hotel, Chippendale.Sahlan Hayes

Contemporary$$

Attention all ABC journalists, UTS communications students and general layabouts who used to drink at the Clare: your favourite Chippendale pub has reopened under new management and things have changed. A lot.

The (old) Old Clare called last drinks on July 12, 2013. It was a terrific night with table-top dancing, free-for-all graffiti, epic sing-a-longs and so much beer consumed the pub ran out before midnight. "Everyone, come back," yelled the publican to a crowded footpath. "We've still got vodka." Most people were halfway to The Townie by then anyway.

The room that was once the guts of the pub is now known as the Clare Bar. It's a lobby bar for the (new) Old Clare Hotel - the highly-hyped 62-room boutique inn that's also home to restaurants Automata, Silvereye and yet-to-open Kensington Street Social.

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A Damson in a Stress cocktail.
A Damson in a Stress cocktail.James Alcock

The sagging, black hole couches of "back in the day" have gone. The green, should-have-been-heritage-listed "County Clare Inn" sign out the front: also gone. The graffiti-plastered toilet cubicles: most definitely gone (the new bathrooms are quite nice, though, and don't smell like public-pool change rooms).

The yellow wash-down wall tiles are original, so there's that. Gig posters from a time when Augie March was a thing wallpaper the lobby, and the bar manager (a charming British gent) tells me the carpet, although new, is a facsimile of The Clare's mottled grey floor that once copped a barrage of durrie butts and beer slops.

Reschs is still on tap except it's $10 a pint or $5 a half. Thanks for coming.  

A pint of Reschs beer with pork crackling.
A pint of Reschs beer with pork crackling.James Alcock
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These nods to the Clare's former life feel like a paunchy dad trying to win approval from the kids by wearing a Deus ex Machina​ hat and listening to Drake. Instead of stitching together shadows of the past, perhaps our new Chippendale overlords should have started completely fresh, because there's a few things to like about the new Clare where Parker-style furniture, slowly-rotating wooden fans and an autumn-paneled bar work together to create an elegant space that's perfectly fine for a pre-dinner drink.

Cocktails are $17.50 and have cringe-making names like "Barley Davidson" and "Mary Hoppins". The "I Ain't Going Stout Like Dat"  is an excellent elixir of "house grog" (Appleton, Gosling's, Diplomatico and macerated pineapple) with stout syrup, peppermint syrup and chocolate bitters lifted by a pineapple shrub. Meanwhile, the "Vermouth Will Set You Free" is a tall and a refreshing mix of Regal Rogue white vermouth, lemon juice, star anise and celery and you'll wish there was a sunny beer garden you could drink it in.

There's a short, fun, natural-leaning wine list and a respectable selection of rum and other spirits (hey, look, it's that Aylesbury Duck vodka I can't get enough of). The only food for now is complimentary pork crackling but when Jason Atherton's Kensington Street Social opens in November it will provide the Clare Bar with hot dogs and other pub-foodie things.

The ''Vermouth Will Set You Free'' cocktail.
The ''Vermouth Will Set You Free'' cocktail.James Alcock

I don't mind that the new Clare is nothing like the old Clare - it was never going to be. I do care that an opportunity exists to do something fantastic with the space and it hasn't been realised. It feels like a lobby bar at any swanky boutique hotel in any city in any country. There's nothing inherently bad about the place - it just seems like an afterthought to the big-name restaurants next door.

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A friend made the comment that it feels like a cocktail bar that's had a one-night stand with a pub. I think it's more like the two had a Tinder date, but the pub nicked off while the cocktail bar was fixing its make-up in the loo.

Go for… a negroni before eating at Automata or Silvereye.

Stay for… a whisky after eating at Automata or Silvereye.

Drink… I Ain't Going Stout Like Dat.

And… the Clare's rooftop pool bar is on target to open by summer and everyone's invited - not just hotel guests.

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Callan BoysCallan Boys is editor of SMH Good Food Guide, restaurant critic for Good Weekend and Good Food writer.

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