Non-disclosure agreement for top secret sandwich’s Adelaide debut
The oldest laneway bar in Melbourne is bringing its cult favourite sandwich to Adelaide, but everyone involved is sworn to secrecy. Keep your eyes peeled for CityMag‘s taste test.
Adelaide bar Hains & Co will play host to a stand-out sandwich from one of Melbourne’s oldest gin bars for a one-night bar takeover this June, but to learn the exclusive sandwich’s secret, its owner had to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
Hains & Co owner Marcus Motteram thought it was “hysterical” when his long-time friend and Melbourne’s Gin Palace owner Ben Luzz suggested the NDA.
“This chicken sandwich is pretty epic and we’ve had to sign the NDA, so I can’t actually share too much, but it comes with a little rack of bacon salt and Tabasco on the side, which could be really dangerous,” Marcus says.
Marcus says he cannot remember the first time he tried the secret sandwich, but it was “probably after a few 90ml martinis” – another staple of the Gin Palace – and “astonishingly delicious”.
Ben, the owner of Melbourne’s Gin Palace, said the sandwich was a “closely guarded secret” that only about six people knew.
“When I was looking for it to be written down, I couldn’t quite find it because it was passed down as lore,” he says about the sandwich that attracts travellers from across the nation.
“It’s so iconic that we didn’t want it to be then written down and shared around.
You might like
“[The NDA] is a little bit tongue in cheek, but it’s also such an important part of Gin Palace’s brand.”
The gin palace was opened by hospitality giant, the late Vernon Chalker, in 1997, at a time when there was “a proliferation of laneway bars by people that didn’t have a huge budget but had great ideas”.
Though he says he never normally entertains the concept of a pop-up, Ben says Hains & Co is “the only venue we would do one with as it’s the perfect venue to bring the history of the Gin Palace to Adelaide”.
Ben, who has owned the Gin Palace since 2009, said the key to longevity was to “never rest on our laurels and say ‘this bar’s doing well, and it’s fine, it’ll last forever’, because that’s when a lot of bars close”.
“We’re constantly updating it, once we finish fixing one thing, we come back around, have to fix something else; it’s like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge.”
The chicken sandwich, and a 90ml martini – the equivalent of three shots of gin and vermouth – are staples of the Melbourne bar.
Ben said the large pour is “a drinker’s drink, it wasn’t something that was messed around with”.
Subscribe for updates
Ben says the ethos of the bar, “was like those classic stories of men and women sitting around in evening gowns, drinking martinis all night, smoking cigarettes”.
It was something the bar held on to, despite economic pressures facing the hospitality industry in recent years, as insurance and electricity prices rise.
“We’ve always wanted to make it approachable as far as price goes, but it doesn’t make much business sense,” Ben says.
“I couldn’t, in good faith, ever stop serving a 90 mil martini, and we also don’t want to have it where it’s so exceedingly priced that no one will buy it either.
“The business side always wants to push back on that, thinking about margins, but it’s okay to have a few products that you put your hat on and just say, ‘yep, that’s what we do, and we don’t make a huge margin on it, but it’s part of our core belief’.”
The 90ml martini will be on offer at Hains and Co on June 16, for $26, which Marcus says is “a phenomenal price considering there’s really three shots of gin in it, and we’d normally charge $13 for a shot of gin”.
“You can eat food at home, you can drink the same booze at home. You could buy the same glassware, you could put on the same music,” Marcus says.
“But you’re not going to be able to create what we create, and that’s an experience.
“That is actually what we sell and creating events around that to capture people’s imagination…If we’re to maintain what we do, we need to find 20 per cent new customers all the time.”
Marcus says Adelaide’s small bar scene was about 20 years behind Melbourne’s, but it caught up with SA distillers like Never Never and Prohibition gins going beyond our borders and bars like Hains & Co, Udaberri, and Clever Little Tailor setting the style of the local scene.
Melbourne’s Gin Palace has stocked McLaren Vale’s Never Never Gin “since day one”, and Ben backs the SA gin scene as on par with Melbourne’s.
“When [Never Never] first brought it out, I was a little bit worried because it was at such a point in the gin boom… when I tasted it, I was like, you know what, that’s bang on.”
Never Never Distilling Co is partnering with Hains & Co and the Gin Palace for Melbourne Calling: A Gin Palace on Tuesday, June 16, where the sandwich, the martini and more gin cocktails will be on show.
Get ready to hear all about CityMag’s big taste test.
Want to see more stories from InDaily SA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDaily SA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDaily SA". That's it.
