The surprising new bar you did not see coming from Merivale’s Justin Hemmes

What’s pinker than a Barbie film set, has an A-list cast and premieres this Friday? Justin Hemmes’ JAM Record Bar, the CBD bar kept so under wraps Sydney didn’t know it was opening.

“It’s my youngest daughter’s favourite colour,” Merivale CEO Hemmes says of the bold pink colour choice at JAM, the latest venue from the hospitality giant. JAM, which opens on Friday, April 19 next door to Merivale’s Bar Totti’s on George Street, takes its cues from Japan’s listening bars.

JAM’s broader inspiration is a family affair. JAM is an acronym for “John and Merivale”, the first names of the hospitality scion’s dad and mum. “They had a shop called Jam and Jam jeans,” Hemmes says. They even released a Jam record. “Thank God it was none of us singing [on it],” Hemmes says with a laugh when asked if his family performed on the vintage record and if it’ll spin at JAM.

Hemmes did send Merivale’s “head of music”, Nick van Tiel, out on a dream DJ assignment, curating a collection of 15,000 vinyl records for the bar.

“This is very much a music-led concept,” says Michael Fox, the head chef at upmarket Sushi-e restaurant, who has also been entrusted to oversee JAM’s snacky food menu. “Filet-o-fish” inspired spring rolls and skewers of chicken and zucchini made the cut on its opening menu, and Fox has a longer-term plan for a couple of offal dishes.

“Listening bars in Japan tend to be quieter places, [but] JAM will be louder,” Fox says of the diminutive venue, which seats 40 inside. The tempo will change during the day, but Fox says to expect the unexpected. “It might roll from the Beastie Boys to the Cars,” he says.

The whole room feels like you’re in a giant speaker, the padding, everything.”

Michael Fox, chef

While he’s yet to pull out the food colouring to match the menu with JAM’s sweet shop interior, Fox points to group cocktail creator James Irvine’s vodka plum shiso fizz as upholding the JAM design scheme.

Sydney designer Kelvin Ho has lost count of the number of Merivale venues he’s worked on – a run that started with Ms.G’s at Potts Point and includes Bert’s in Newport. Ho is a fan of the Barbie movie, but it hadn’t been released when JAM was conceptualised. “It’s a colour I’ve always wanted to use,” he says.

Last year Hemmes and Ho took off on one of their research trips to Tokyo, where they did a deep dive into the city’s listening bars. They returned determined JAM would “not be too serious”, as they traditionally are.

“The whole room feels like you’re in a giant speaker, the padding, everything,” Ho says.

While the hospitality industry has felt the squeeze with consumer belt-tightening, Merivale is doubling down with a bullish long-term view. Next week it opens Good Luck, an ambitious 200-seat restaurant in the basement of the Burns Philp Building on Bridge Street, in the Sydney CBD. A Paddington spin-off of Jimmy’s Falafel is also under construction, and Hemmes hopes to swing open the doors on a long-awaited Byron Bay restaurant in 12 months.

Hemmes says the industry has been hit by a toxic cocktail of higher produce and operating costs, creeping compliance demands and higher interest rates, resulting in several high-profile closures and difficulties in both Sydney and Melbourne, a situation Merivale isn’t immune to. It’s a hospitality funk Hemmes predicts the industry will exit in 12 months. “I always take a long-term outlook, I build things to be around for decades … you create your own market,” he says.

JAM Record Bar opens noon-midnight daily from Friday, April 19 at 320 George Street, Sydney.

Good Luck Restaurant Lounge opens on Wednesday, April 24.