Pleasure Club

Pleasure Club is a basement cocktail bar, late-night live music venue, and entertainment space in Newtown exploring the duality of pleasure and pain in human experience.

The cutting-edge culture club is by Odd Culture Group (The Duke of Enmore, Odd Culture, The Old Fitz, and Spon), and draws inspo from the late-night bar scenes of New York and Paris.

The Pleasure Club cocktail concept (titled A Pleasure Club Story) sees leading international bar world figure Matt Whiley of Re and creative beverage lead Sam Kirk crafting drinks to express themes using lab-standard equipment and techniques to lean into creativity and curiosity.

The inaugural Story, Nostalgia Machine, offers creations like the Chicken Parm (with vodka and flavous of comte cheese, bacon, bread crumb, tomato and chicken salt) or Cough Drops with tequila, mezcal, Cointreau, eucalyptus, agave and lime. Come 11pm, a Dark Service kicks in, with additional concoctions that allow the bar team to experiment more with specials and one-offs.

On the food front, it’s four hotdogs using LP’s Quality Meats franks (or Suzy Spoon plant-based dogs), with the option to go deluxe with added frites, sauerkraut, gruyere and mustard.

The entertainment program is expertly curated by Odd Culture Group’s entertainment manager Sabrina Medcalf, who aims to defy convention, immerse and confront audiences, and encourage emotional responses.

The lineup will welcome everything from local solo acts to deconstructed sets from known faces, live theatre and performance art, esoteric musical genres and more, with a lineup revealed monthly and plenty of secret shows and surprise announcements.

Pleasure Club is committed to celebrating night owls, and trades until 4am Wednesday–Sunday.

Now, check out more of the best bars in Newtown.

Image credit: Pleasure Club | Parker Blain

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