By Sacha Delfosse
Opened as part of The Star's recent $870 million redevelopment, Cherry is an intimate cocktail bar offering premium drinks and service with stunning views of Sydney Harbour.
The new bar is located between a range of fine dining restaurants downstairs and the new nightclub that will open upstairs in February next year .
Bar manager, Michael Jones told TheShout the new bar is part of the casino's plan to transform itself into a genuine dining, shopping and entertainment hub.
“This is both a before and after dinner destination, as well as somewhere people can come for a drink before heading to the nightclub once it opens,” he said.
The venue has capacity for 200 people, but prefers to keep the numbers to a more comfortable 150 to 180. The bar is also a destination point for celebrity and high roller casino guests, who can reserve and seal off sections of seating if required.
Cherry is positioned as The Star's flagship cocktail bar, aiming for a more mature and sophisticated clientele than its ‘younger sister’ Rock Lily.
“Cherry is the been there done that sister, she’s older, she’s a professional now, she’s making her own money, she likes champagne, she likes premium spirits and she likes expensive cocktails,” Jones says.
One of the advantages of being a part of The Star is that Cherry can offer accessible high end service and premium spirits that are price competitive and not “too aspirational”.
“For example, something that we are launching is Champagne Sundays, which is like high tea; we will be offering 2 bottle of Dom Perignon for $450 which is pretty much the price of one bottle,” Jones says.
And although the new bar has the feel and style of a boutique cocktail lounge, it offers guests more than that, with the floor to ceiling window views of Sydney harbour one of its key selling points.
“It’s not just a case of being a typical cocktail lounge that has no views like a basement bar where it's all about the drinks. For us it’s about having really good drinks and a really good view but also really good atmosphere.”
Jones has developed a cocktail list built largely around signature dessert style feminine drinks, but he has also trained the bar team, who mostly come from boutique cocktail bars, to be able to serve up to 60 classic cocktails.
“We also have all different types of service, if you want a waitress to serve you we have them, if you would rather go to the bar yourself and talk to the bartender you can do that, if you want to sit at the bar you can do that,” Jones said.
"Because we are part of a massive hotel we get a lot of tourists and the ones from the UK and the US are more used to sitting at a bar and chatting to the bartender. Sydneysiders and many Europeans tend to prefer to be further away from the bar and just deal with the cocktail waitress.”