Drinks Service Award

For innovative beverage offerings that take restaurant meals to another level.

Lûmé South Melbourne

THE BAR AT Lûmé, and its manager Nick Tesar, are among the very best in Australia, full stop. The creativity, techniques, ingredients, and flavours are second to none. The ‘Postcard’ cocktail with rum and wattle seed smells like an old hayloft and tastes like biscuits and honey. But, so much more than cocktails, every aspect of the drinks service is on point. The outstanding wine list includes beautiful fortified wines, sakés and local vermouths. The spirits offering includes gems like agricole rum, mezcal, whisky from India, Western Australian gin and some of the rarest American whiskey in production. If you’re sitting down to dinner, you’ll want to do the matched drinks. Your Jerusalem artichoke bread with smoked eel butter and honey comes with a special bottling of unfiltered Maidenii vermouth, the intense wormwood grabbing the deep earthiness of the artichoke and tossing it into the stratosphere. A starter of a corn taco might be served with Boon’s Mariage Geuze, a sour, salty beer that’s then metamorphosed with the addition of house-made liqueur into a cherry lambic to match the next course. Mind blown. ´ 226 Coventry St, South Melbourne 3205. 03 9690 0142. www.restaurantlume.com.