Sante named 2022 Regional Bar of the Year
Sante named 2022 Top Regional Bar in Australia. . . and that’s a lot of Australia!
Published: 12 September 2022
Written by Sam Kirby
You know when you sense something is coming…
I mean, this isn’t one of those ‘I told you so moments’, that somehow we knew. We’re not going to try to tell you that we bought Apple shares in the 90’s or Bitcoin in 2011 and there’s no rolled-up Sports Almanac hanging out of our back pockets. We certainly weren’t sitting here as if we have some kind of direct link to the cocktail-gods (although it is quite possible that Loic and Alex of Sante just may).
No no, we didn’t know, but when the announcement came through back in July that Toowoomba’s very own Sante Cocktail Bar had been Top-10 shortlisted for Regional Bar of the Year, well there was something in us that…sensed.
See tucked away in a tiny laneway in the city centre, you would be forgiven for not even knowing Sante was there. A moody, single-room lounge hideaway, it opened in 2019 when Alex returning to Australia from the London bar scene, convinced Frenchman Loic to join her. And so, returning to Toowoomba, the award-winning duo set about opening the cocktail bar of their dreams, and they’ve been slinging up cocktails and a limited food offering ever since.
Long a fan of the chic vibey bar and its bespoke offering; with it’s use of weird and fanciful ingredients, its not uncommon to find cocktails featuring poppyseeds, and capers, or mushrooms and twists on seasonal fruits like blood orange or tangerine (check out Sante’s Blood Orange Sour featured in the most recent TFG Spring Newspaper). And it’s been this creativity, this willingness to push the boundaries, coupled with a sense of fun and flair, obvious talent, and love for what they do, that shows why this isn’t their first award, and why they’re so deserving of the win.
Stop in for a drink after work, or on a weekend evening after a show, and be sure to congratulate Alex, Loic and the team! We’ll see you there Spicy Margarita in hand!
