Byrdi is the most intellectually ambitious bar in Australia — a fiercely seasonal, native-botanical cocktail room in Melbourne's CBD where drinks are engineered over weeks from ingredients you have never tasted in a glass before. It sits at No. 4 on our national ranking, and in 2025 it was the only Australian bar besides the country's two top-50 entries to feature on The World's 50 Best Bars extended list.
If our top three win on hospitality, glamour and range, Byrdi wins on pure originality. This is a bar for the curious — for the drinker who has had a thousand Negronis and wants, just once, to taste something genuinely new. What Luke Whearty and Aki Nishikura do here is closer to the work of a research kitchen than a conventional cocktail bar, and the results are unlike anything else in the country. It is not the easiest bar on this list to walk into cold, and it is all the more remarkable for that: Byrdi asks something of you, and repays it many times over.
Why it's Australia's No. 4 bar
Byrdi's placement rests on a rare combination of pedigree and recognition. On the record, it has been a fixture of the global conversation since it debuted on The World's 50 Best Bars at No. 80 in 2020 — extraordinary for a venue that had opened only the year before — and in 2025 it appeared again on the 51-100 extended list, the sole Australian name outside the two rooms that cracked the top 50 that year. That makes Byrdi, on the international measure, the third-best bar in the country, and comfortably the most globally celebrated of Australia's experimental venues.
We rank it No. 4 rather than higher because the very thing that makes Byrdi special — its cerebral, boundary-pushing approach — also makes it less of an all-comers crowd-pleaser than the three bars above it. This is a destination for a particular kind of drinker on a particular kind of night, not a room you would send everyone to for a casual pint. But on the axis of originality and technical ambition, nothing in Australia is operating at a higher level, and for many serious cocktail enthusiasts Byrdi is the single most exciting bar in the country.
The people behind the bar
Byrdi is the work of Luke Whearty and Aki Nishikura, the couple behind Operation Dagger — the acclaimed, genre-defining Singapore bar that helped rewrite what a cocktail bar could be in the 2010s. When they brought their approach to Melbourne in 2019, it was a significant moment for the Australian scene: here was a team with a global reputation for radical, ingredient-led drinks setting up shop in a city that prides itself on craft. Byrdi is the expression of everything they had learned, transplanted to Australian soil and, crucially, Australian ingredients.
That lineage matters, because Byrdi is not experimentation for its own sake. Whearty and Nishikura are among the most respected practitioners of ingredient-driven bartending in the world, and the discipline shows: the drinks are strange, but they are never sloppy or gimmicky. Every unusual component is there for a reason, and the whole enterprise is anchored by a genuine philosophy about seasonality, locality and flavour. It is the difference between a bar that does weird things to seem clever and one that does new things because it has thought harder about drinks than almost anyone else.
Seasonality, locality and native botanicals
The heart of Byrdi is a simple, radical commitment: seasonality and locality drive everything. The cocktail list is in constant motion, evolving as ingredients come into and out of their peak, so there is deliberately no fixed, permanent signature drink to order by name — what is brilliant this month may be gone the next, replaced by something built around whatever is best right now. Australian native botanicals are a recurring star, giving the drinks a sense of place you simply cannot get from imported classics.
The techniques are where Byrdi leaves the pack behind. Components are conceived months in advance and arrive at the glass fermented, smoked, reconstituted, centrifuged, or some combination of all of the above. This is a bar where a single cocktail might contain an element that took weeks of preparation, and where the flavours land somewhere between familiar and utterly novel. The effect can be genuinely startling — savoury notes where you expect sweet, textures you did not know a drink could have, aromas drawn from the Australian bush. It rewards drinking slowly and paying attention, and it is the closest thing the country's bar scene has to fine dining's tasting-menu ambition.
The food
Byrdi takes its food as seriously as its drinks, and that is part of what makes it a full evening rather than a quick stop. The menu of small plates is mostly cooked over fire, arriving charred and smoky, and it is good enough that Byrdi functions as a place to eat as much as a place to drink. The fire-driven cooking echoes the bar's whole sensibility — elemental, ingredient-led, a little wild — and the pairing of smoky plates with the constantly shifting, botanical drinks is the best way to experience what Whearty and Nishikura are doing. Come hungry; the food is not an afterthought here, it is half the argument.
What to order
The single best piece of advice at Byrdi is to surrender the wheel. Because the list changes constantly and there is no fixed signature to chase, the smartest move is to tell the bartender roughly what you enjoy — or, better, how adventurous you are feeling — and let them guide you to what is singing on the current menu. This is a bar to explore rather than to order from a checklist: pick the drinks that sound most unfamiliar, ask what unusual ingredient is in season, and lean into the strangeness. Order some of the fire-cooked plates alongside, and treat the whole thing as a tasting experience rather than a round of drinks. If you come wanting a textbook Martini or a standard Old Fashioned, you are at the wrong bar; come wanting to be surprised, and Byrdi is unbeatable.
Who drinks here
Byrdi draws a knowledgeable, curious crowd: cocktail enthusiasts, industry people, and travelling drinkers who seek out the world's most inventive bars. It is a room for people who find the new and the unfamiliar exciting rather than intimidating. That focus gives it a slightly different energy from a general-audience bar — more considered, more attentive — which is exactly right for what it does. It works beautifully for a drinks-obsessed date, a special solo pilgrimage, or an evening with friends who want to be led somewhere they have never been. It is less suited to a big, boisterous group looking for an easy night, and that is by design.
The neighbourhood and where to go next
Byrdi sits in Melbourne's CBD, at the heart of the city's famous small-bar grid, which makes it easy to build an evening around. For a night that spans the full range of what Melbourne cocktail culture can do, pair Byrdi's experimentation with the flawless classicism of Above Board in Collingwood, and the pared-back perfection of Caretaker's Cottage, our No. 1 bar in the country — three radically different philosophies of the drink within a short ride of one another. Our full Melbourne bar guide maps the rest, and the national best bars in Australia ranking shows where Byrdi stands against the whole field.
Planning your visit
Byrdi is located in Melbourne's CBD, in the Ella dining precinct on the corner of Elizabeth and La Trobe streets — a spot that is unassuming from the street and easy to walk past, which suits a bar that rewards those who seek it out. It is well served by the city's trams and a short walk from Melbourne Central station. Because seating is limited and the experience is best enjoyed unhurried, booking ahead is wise, particularly later in the week; check the bar's website for current hours and to reserve, as opening days can be more limited than a standard cocktail bar. If you can, come on a quieter night when the bartenders have time to talk you through the current menu — that conversation is a big part of the value.
On price, Byrdi sits in the $$$ bracket, reflecting the extraordinary labour behind the drinks — components that take weeks to prepare do not come cheap — and the fire-cooked food will add to the tab, but this is a bar where you are paying for genuine artistry rather than mark-up. Treat it as you would a special dinner rather than a casual round. There is no need to dress up, but do come with an open mind and an appetite for the unfamiliar; those are the only real requirements. Give yourself a couple of hours, order adventurously, and let one of the world's most original bars show you flavours you did not know a cocktail could hold.
A sense of place in a glass
What makes Byrdi more than a technical showcase is its rootedness in Australia itself. The commitment to native botanicals is not a marketing flourish; it is the bar's way of putting a specific place — this continent, this season — into a cocktail glass. Australian native ingredients carry flavours found nowhere else on earth, and Byrdi treats them as a serious palette rather than a garnish, building drinks that could not have been made anywhere but here. That gives the bar a cultural significance beyond its drinks list: at a moment when the country's food and drink scene is increasingly interested in indigenous ingredients and a genuinely local identity, Byrdi is one of the most articulate expressions of that movement behind a bar. Drinking here, you are not just tasting clever technique; you are tasting an argument about what an Australian cocktail bar can and should be. Few venues make that case as compellingly, and it is a meaningful part of why the global 50 Best academy keeps returning Byrdi to its lists.
This local focus also keeps the bar honest and evolving. Because the ingredients are dictated by what is genuinely in season and available, the menu can never coast on a fixed set of crowd-pleasers; it has to keep moving with the calendar. That built-in restlessness is unusual and valuable — it means Byrdi is one of the few bars where "the menu changed" is not a disappointment but the entire promise.
Who to bring, and what to expect
Byrdi is a specific recommendation for a specific kind of night. It is close to perfect for a drinks-obsessed date, for a solo pilgrimage by someone who genuinely loves cocktails as a craft, or for a small group of curious friends happy to be led somewhere unfamiliar. It is less suited to a large, boisterous celebration or to anyone whose idea of a good drink is a reliable, unchanging classic — and that is by design, not a flaw. Set your expectations accordingly and the bar is extraordinary; walk in expecting a conventional cocktail lounge and you may feel out of step. The ideal frame of mind is the one you would bring to a tasting-menu restaurant: an appetite for the new, a willingness to trust the people in charge, and the patience to let each drink unfold rather than knocking it back. Come on a quieter night if you can, engage the bartenders on what is currently in season, and treat the evening as an exploration. Approached that way, Byrdi delivers something almost no other bar in Australia can: the genuine thrill of tasting something you have never tasted before.
Ingredient-led bartending, explained
Byrdi belongs to a movement that has reshaped the top end of the bar world over the past decade: ingredient-led, or "culinary," bartending. The idea is to treat a cocktail bar less like a place that combines finished products — this gin, that vermouth — and more like a kitchen that builds flavour from raw materials. That means fermenting, distilling, clarifying, smoking and preserving in-house, thinking in seasons the way a good restaurant does, and prizing a sense of place above adherence to a classic recipe. Luke Whearty helped pioneer this approach at Operation Dagger in Singapore, and Byrdi is its Australian expression, rooted in the flavours of this continent. Understanding that context makes the bar far more rewarding to visit: you are not there to judge whether the Negroni is "correct," but to taste what happens when serious cooks apply their techniques to drinks and to Australian native ingredients. Once you drink with that frame in mind, the strangeness stops being a barrier and becomes the entire point.
How to taste a Byrdi drink
Byrdi rewards slowing down and paying attention in a way most bars do not. When a drink arrives, it is worth treating it a little like a course at a tasting-menu restaurant: notice the aroma before the first sip, look for the unexpected — a savoury note where you braced for sweetness, a texture you can't quite place, an ingredient you've never met — and, if you're curious, ask the bartender what is in it and how it was made. The answers are often genuinely surprising, and the staff are happy to walk you through the weeks of preparation behind a single component. Because the menu changes constantly, no two visits taste alike, so there is no "wrong" drink to have missed and no definitive order to chase; the goal is simply to stay open and let the bar lead you somewhere new. Drink two or three across an evening, pair them with the fire-cooked plates, and you will come away having tasted things you cannot get anywhere else in the country.
A bar that keeps evolving
One of the most compelling things about Byrdi is that it is never finished. Because the whole enterprise is built on seasonality and restless experimentation, the bar you visit this month is not quite the bar you would have visited last month, or the one you will find next year. Since opening in 2019 it has continued to refine its ideas, deepen its use of native ingredients and push its techniques further, and that trajectory shows no sign of slowing. For a returning drinker, this means Byrdi is a bar you can never quite exhaust — there is always a new component, a new process, a new flavour to encounter. In a scene where many venues settle into a signature and coast, Byrdi's commitment to constant reinvention is rare and genuinely exciting, and it is a large part of why the global 50 Best academy keeps it in the conversation year after year.
How Byrdi compares
Within our national top 20, Byrdi is the standard-bearer for experimentation, and it makes an illuminating contrast with the Melbourne rooms around it. Where Caretaker's Cottage, our No. 1, wins by stripping the cocktail back to two perfect drinks, and Above Board wins by executing the classical canon flawlessly, Byrdi wins by pushing the form somewhere genuinely new. Together the three make a near-perfect Melbourne itinerary, precisely because they represent three opposing philosophies of what a great cocktail can be — restraint, tradition and invention. Byrdi is the one that will surprise you most, and the one whose ideas you are most likely to still be thinking about the next day. For a drinker who wants to taste the future of the Australian cocktail, it is the essential stop.
The verdict
Byrdi is the bar we send drinkers who think they have tasted everything. It is the most creative, most technically daring room in Australia, run by a team with a genuine global reputation for reinventing what a cocktail can be, and it has the international recognition to back the claim. It asks more of you than an easy night out — but for anyone who loves drinks as a craft, the reward is a set of flavours and ideas available almost nowhere else on earth. It ranks No. 4 in the country on the strength of pure originality, and on a list where the top rooms are separated by fine margins, Byrdi is the one most likely to change how you think about what a bar can be.