Whenever someone visits Sydney and asks where to eat and drink, the first place that springs to mind is the Inner West. Usually Newtown. Usually King Street, the neighbourhood’s sprawling main strip.
But it wasn’t always that way. It definitely wasn’t 12 years ago, when Newtown local Pasan Wijesena, was a bartender in Surry Hills and Darlinghurst – the city’s nexus of cool back then.
“Newtown was always dominated by pubs, by student offerings,” Wijesena says. “We hadn’t yet had that post-Milk & Honey cocktail renaissance.”
“And I was like, well, maybe I can do it.”
Spoiler alert: he did. But first he had to find the right space. Inspired by the burgeoning craft cocktail movement – powered by speakeasies hidden in plain sight – he found his dream location on King Street in an unlikely place: a 60-year-old butcher shop called Betta Meats.
Rather than gutting it, giving the place a designer fit-out and new splashes of paint, Wijesena kept the entire façade intact.
“I wouldn’t touch the shop frontage because that’s iconic,” he says.
It was such a cool shopfront and anyone that lived in the area had memories of it and stories about the old butchers working there together – I couldn’t design anything better than that.”
Pasan Wijesena → Owner, Earl's Juke Joint
The big easy heartbeat
It might still look like Betta Meats to the world at large, but behind those drawn curtains, Wijesena wanted his guests to feel like they were stepping into New Orleans.
“Back then most cocktail bars around were pretty stiff – a little boring, in my opinion,” he says. “I thought, how can I combine music and cocktails?”
“I came up with New Orleans as a focus point, because a lot of classic cocktails originate from there, and a lot of really important Black music started there.”
Which is how Wijesena landed on Earl’s Juke Joint.
The bar is named after Earl Palmer, who was a famous drummer from New Orleans really instrumental in the development of modern music.”
Pasan Wijesena → Owner, Earl's Juke Joint
A roaring start
Earl’s was ready to open its doors. All that was left was to brace for impact and hope for the best. The gamble paid off. People were ready to give Newtown – and King Street – a proper try.
“The first day of opening, seeing strangers walk through the door, I was like “Why are you here? How did you find out about this place?” That was super cool,” Wijesena says.
Over the next decade and change Earl’s – and Wijesena – got plenty of well-deserved success, from industry awards to sibling venues like Jacoby’s and The Trocadero Room. But it also weathered all the usual struggles of small business, with a few catastrophes like Covid sprinkled in for good measure.
Powered by locals
Through it all though, locals kept coming.
“The people around the corner are the foundation,” Wijesena says. “We rely on that community of locals to come in again and again – locals become regulars, then they become friends.”
Now 12 years on, Earl’s has gone from a newcomer inside of a King Street institution to becoming an icon of the street in its own right. All it took was a local willing to bet that his neighbourhood was ready for a serious cocktail bar that didn’t take itself too seriously.
“I have this really funny memory of explaining something to someone who wanted a Martini – I was talking quite seriously and stirring it for them,” says Wijesena. “But in the background there was a girl doing a handstand twerk against the wall.”
“I was like, that just epitomises what this place is.”
Want to learn more about Earl’s Juke Joint has ridden the highs and lows of life in Newtown? Watch the Inner West episode of our Good Neighbours series. ->
