That bird silhouette on the wine glasses? Nah, it’s not an ibis or a spoonbill or a stork. It’s an egret – a prestigious symbol in Chinese culture, with certain species known to migrate between Melbourne and Hong Kong.
That clever little detail tells you most of what you need to know about Bourke’s, “a homage to the wine bars and pubs of Melbourne”. The 35-seater opened in Hong Kong’s heaving Soho district last month, courtesy of the same zeitgeist-y group behind Honky Tonks Tavern, Terracotta Lamma, Quality Goods Club and Mendel’s.
Until recently, the compact space housed Shady Acres, a wine bar two Aussies and a Canadian started in 2019 and unashamedly modelled on Sydney’s Love, Tilly Devine.
“That was the first fun wine bar in Hong Kong,” says Brett Goss, one of four owners at Bourke’s. He grew up in Adelaide and worked the floor at top restaurants including Shobosho and Peel St before moving to Hong Kong in 2019 to import Aussie wines.
The list at Bourke’s is full of them, naturally. There’s Heathcote prosecco, Coonawarra pinot gris, McLaren Vale shiraz and, most intriguingly, Hunter Valley albariño. I didn’t even know the aromatic Iberian grape was grown in Australia. But hey, all it took to find out was an eight-hour plane ride to Hong Kong and hanging with a guy who hasn’t lived here for five years.
Still, these bottles aren’t the sole way Bourke’s flies the flag for Australia. And nor is it just the tap beer (Stone & Wood Pacific Ale), or just the food (which we’ll get to soon) or just the wonderful cocktail list starring Four Pillars gin, Starward whisky, Non zero-alc concoctions and Dave Verheul’s Saison vermouth.
It’s something more intangible. As we wrote about Acru, an Aussie-led fine diner that just opened in New York, “Australian” is less a cuisine and more a mentality. It’s relaxed. It’s friendly. It’s open-minded and embraces any and all culinary influences, as per our multicultural society.
“For me to propose a bar that has a little bit of everything and does everything well,” Goss says, “that’s really quite unique for a city like Hong Kong, where things tend to be very, very traditional, whether it’s traditional European or traditional Chinese.”
He also reckons his staff – a motley international crew – share the fun, engaging approach so common back home: “Hopefully, the idea is that you almost want to be friends with the people working at [Bourke’s] – that they seem like people you’d want to hang out with on your day off. That’s pretty unusual for this city.”
I definitely had that feeling chatting with head chef Tara Margarita, a heavily tatted and intimidatingly cool Filipino who’s lived in Manila, Jakarta and Paris. She previously worked at Hong Kong’s world-famous yakitori spot Yardbird.
Her menu would be right at home in any Australian city. Exhibit A: whipped cod roe dip with crinkle-cut potato chips for scooping. Exhibit B: liver parfait toast, two bready fingers topped with delicate squiggles and served on floral-pattern china. Exhibit C: chorizo and South Australian blue mussels simmered in vermouth. I could go on.
The tiny kitchen also turns out an excellent katsu sando with papaya pickles, and a sea bream crudo cured with the Philippines’s favourite citrus, calamansi – the most obvious reference to Margarita’s heritage. It’s the exact kind of nostalgic (for them) hint a first- or second-generation Australian chef might sneak onto a wine bar menu and, for me, makes Bourke’s feel more true blue than Vegemite or any other icons of Australiana possibly could.
Bourke’s
46 Peel Street, Central, Hong Kong
No phone
Hours:
Mon to Fri 5pm–late
Sat & Sun 3pm–late
bourkeshk.com
