Drinks through the Looking Glass
The new owners of the former Public House Bar have grand plans to bring Palmerston North punters a little escapism with their drinks.
David Harris and Mike Dunlay‘s Looking Glass Lounge is slipping into the vacant spot left open in the Grand Hotel Building since February.
Harris said the new furniture had arrived, the final renovations were underway and the bar was set to open next month.
The pair, in the city from Christchurch, plan to transform the bar into a speakeasy-inspired lounge – a low-lit hive of live original music to escape to as the sun goes down, Harris said. ‘‘[It will be] a place with good cocktails, good craft beer and wine, lots of little nooks where you can get comfy on lounge seats and hole up for a while – a place that’s a little bit classy, a little bit dive,’’ Harris said.
He has managed bars for nearly a decade, but this the first time it’s been his own. ‘‘I’ve been running bars for a while and the only step up is to get your own. It’s exciting stuff and I’m pretty nervous at the same time.’’
Dunlay is an old hand in the bar game. He made a career of establishing new bars for a large brewery in the UK, before he decided came to New Zealand and start doing it for himself.
Dunlay founded popular central Christchurch bars Foam and the Porthole, which was built from shipping containers and the first bar to open in Lyttleton after the 2011 earthquake. Harris met Dunlay working the bar at those establishments.
The pair were heavily involved with the Lyttleton music scene. A lot of rising musicians cut their teeth performing at Foam and the Porthole – people like like awardwinning singer-songwriter Marlon Williams and up-and-coming 16-year-old singer Candice Milner.
They want to get equally involved with Manawatu music and have a venue for people to play their own songs – with maybe a couple of interesting covers thrown in for good measure.