Bar Planet takes the world's most divisive cocktail — the Martini — and builds an entire, joyful, psychedelic inner-west bar around it. Made by the same team behind our No. 7 room, Cantina OK!, this Newtown favourite won Gin Bar of the Year at the 2025 Australian Bar Awards. It sits at No. 10 on our national ranking.
The Martini is a drink people have strong feelings about, and Bar Planet leans into every one of them. Rather than treat it as a solemn ritual, the bar reimagines it as the centrepiece of a groovy, colourful, come-as-you-are neighbourhood spot — somewhere you can have a genuinely excellent, precisely made Martini without a shred of solemnity, to a soundtrack that leans loud and fun. It is the rare specialist bar that is also a great local, and it captures everything that makes Sydney's inner west such fertile ground for brilliant drinking.
Why it's Australia's No. 10 bar
The anchor is the award. At the 2025 Australian Bar Awards, Bar Planet took Gin Bar of the Year — recognition that, in a category defined by gin and the Martini, nowhere in the country does its particular thing better. That is a serious honour for a bar built on a single, sharply defined idea, and it confirms Bar Planet's place among the best specialist rooms in Australia barely into its life.
We rank it No. 10 because it is, by design, a focused specialist rather than an all-rounder, and because its whole personality is built around one drink. But that focus is exactly its strength. Taking the Martini — a cocktail many bars treat as an afterthought or a test — and constructing a complete, distinctive, award-winning bar around it is a genuinely original move, and Bar Planet pulls it off with style and a sense of humour. As a Martini destination, it has very few equals in the country.
A psychedelic Martini den
Bar Planet's personality is written all over its room. This is a psychedelic, colourful, low-lit inner-west dive — a space that reimagines the buttoned-up world of the Martini as something groovy and playful rather than austere. The aesthetic is fun and a little trippy, the energy is high, and the whole place feels like a neighbourhood bar that happens to take its signature drink extremely seriously. It is the antithesis of the hushed hotel Martini lounge, and that irreverence is precisely what makes it feel fresh.
The result is a bar that works on two levels at once: a serious drinks destination for people who love a great Martini, and a genuine local you can drop into for one and stay for four. That duality — specialist quality with neighbourhood ease — is hard to achieve, and it is exactly why Bar Planet has become such a fixture of the Newtown and Enmore drinking scene so quickly.
The Mucho Group pedigree
Bar Planet comes from the Mucho Group, the team behind the agave shrine Cantina OK! and the beloved Tio's Cervecería — among the most influential operators in the modern Australian bar scene. Its co-owners include Jeremy Blackmore, Daisy Tulley and Alex Dowd, names that carry real weight in the industry; members of the group were inducted into the trade's Hall of Fame at the 2025 awards. That lineage is why Bar Planet is far more than a novelty built on a gimmick. It is the work of people who have already built award-winning, internationally respected bars, applying that same obsessive craft to a single classic drink.
That pedigree also explains the bar's confidence. It takes a certain authority to build a whole venue around one cocktail and make it sing, and this team has it. The same crew's fingerprints across Cantina OK!, Tio's and Bar Planet make them one of the most decorated bar groups in the country — and mean that when they open a Martini bar, you can trust the Martinis.
The drinks: a house gin and a signature Martini
What sets Bar Planet apart from any other bar serving Martinis is that it makes its own gin. The house Martini is built on the bar's own spirit — a seasonal gin made with local produce, developed with a Marrickville distillery — accompanied by vermouth, lemon and an olive. That vertical integration, from the botanicals in the gin to the finished drink in your hand, is unusual and serious, and it means the Martini here tastes like nowhere else. It is the bar's whole reason for being, and it delivers.
Around that centrepiece, the bar explores the Martini and its variations with real range, so whether you like yours bone dry, dirty, wet or somewhere in between, there is a version dialled in for you. This is a place to learn what you actually want from a Martini, guided by bartenders who have thought about little else. And crucially, it does all of this at prices that keep it a genuine local — Bar Planet is well known for cut-price Martinis on Monday evenings, which has made a world-class drink an accessible midweek pleasure rather than a special-occasion splurge.
Who drinks here, and what to order
Bar Planet draws a mix of Martini devotees, inner-west locals and drinkers who have heard this is where the Mucho Group crew have turned their attention. It is an easy, energetic room that suits a spontaneous night, a casual date, or the start or end of a crawl through Newtown and Enmore. The order is obvious and correct: start with the Bar Planet Martini, built on the house gin, and decide how you like it — the bartenders will happily steer you dry, dirty or wet. If you are in on a Monday, take advantage of the cut-price Martinis. And approach it in the right spirit: this is not a hushed Martini temple but a fun, loud neighbourhood bar, so settle in and enjoy the energy.
The neighbourhood and where to go next
Bar Planet sits on Enmore Road in Newtown, the beating heart of Sydney's inner-west nightlife, surrounded by great bars, live music and late-night food. That makes it a natural anchor for an inner-west evening. Pair it with its sibling agave bar Cantina OK! in the CBD for a Margarita-and-Martini crawl, or roam the Enmore and Newtown strips around it. For a bigger night, start in the city at our No. 3 bar Old Mate's Place and work your way west. Our full Sydney bar guide maps the inner west, and the national best bars in Australia ranking shows where Bar Planet sits among the country's best.
Planning your visit
Bar Planet is at 16 Enmore Road, Newtown NSW 2042, a short walk from Newtown station and easy to reach from the city by train or bus. It is a neighbourhood bar rather than a bookings-first destination, so you can generally walk in, though it gets busy and lively later in the evening and at weekends — and on Monday nights, when the discounted Martinis draw a crowd. Check the bar's current hours before a special trip, as inner-west venues often keep their own schedule.
On price, Bar Planet is one of the best-value serious drinks bars in Sydney, sitting comfortably in the $$ bracket, with those Monday Martinis making a genuinely excellent drink remarkably affordable. That value is central to its identity as a local rather than a special-occasion room. There is no dress code and no attitude; the vibe is relaxed and playful. Come ready to enjoy a great Martini without any ceremony, and you will understand exactly why this small Newtown bar took home Gin Bar of the Year.
The house gin, made down the road
The detail that elevates Bar Planet from a clever concept to a genuinely serious bar is its own spirit. Rather than build its Martinis on someone else's gin, the bar developed its own — a seasonal gin made with local produce in collaboration with a Marrickville distillery, just down the road from Newtown. That kind of vertical integration, from the botanicals in the bottle to the drink in your hand, is rare and telling: it means the team has thought about every variable in the Martini, right back to the base spirit, rather than simply assembling a good drink from off-the-shelf parts. The payoff is a Martini that genuinely tastes like nowhere else, with a house character you cannot get by ordering the same drink elsewhere.
It also reflects the ambition behind the bar. Making your own gin is a statement of intent — a declaration that this is not a novelty venue riding a Martini trend, but a room that intends to own its signature drink completely. That seriousness underneath the psychedelic, fun-loving surface is exactly why Bar Planet won its category, and why it holds up to repeat visits long after the novelty of a Martini-only bar has worn off.
Newtown, Enmore and the inner-west scene
Bar Planet is also inseparable from where it sits. Newtown and the Enmore Road strip form the beating heart of Sydney's inner-west nightlife — a dense, diverse run of bars, live-music venues, theatres and late-night food that has long been the city's counterweight to the polished CBD. Bar Planet fits the neighbourhood perfectly: unpretentious, creative, a little offbeat, and priced for locals rather than tourists. Dropping in here is a way of tapping into one of Sydney's best nights out, with dozens of other venues within a short walk if you want to keep moving. That sense of place matters; Bar Planet could only really exist in the inner west, and it draws much of its character from the neighbourhood around it.
The Martini, demystified
One of the quiet pleasures of Bar Planet is that it takes an intimidating drink and makes it approachable. The Martini has a reputation for being fussy — dry or wet, gin or vodka, shaken or stirred, twist or olive, dirty or clean — and for many drinkers that thicket of choices is off-putting. Bar Planet cuts through it. Because the whole bar is built around the drink, the bartenders can guide you to the version you will actually love without any snobbery, and because they make their own gin, there is a clear house style to anchor the conversation. It is, in effect, a place to finally figure out what you want from a Martini, taught by people who have thought about it more than almost anyone.
That demystifying instinct is a big part of why the bar has won such a following. A Martini bar could easily be austere and exclusive; Bar Planet is the opposite — playful, welcoming and happy to meet you wherever your taste sits. It manages to be a serious drinks destination and a genuinely friendly local at the same time, and that combination is much harder to achieve than it looks.
How Bar Planet compares
Within our national top 20, Bar Planet is a specialist that pairs naturally with its own sibling. Together with the Mucho Group's agave shrine Cantina OK! — our No. 7 — it shows how the same team can build two very different bars around two very different obsessions and win a category with each. Where the grander rooms higher on this list win on scale, glamour or setting, Bar Planet wins by taking a single, divisive classic and building a whole joyful, well-priced neighbourhood bar around it. As a Martini destination it has few equals in the country, and as a fun, affordable local it is one of the most likeable rooms on the entire list.
The verdict
Bar Planet is the bar we send anyone who thinks they don't like Martinis, and anyone who knows they love them. By making its own gin and building a whole colourful, joyful room around a single classic drink, it has turned the most divisive cocktail in the world into one of the most fun nights in the inner west. Gin Bar of the Year is the industry's confirmation of what Newtown locals already know: this is the best place in Sydney to drink a Martini, and one of the most likeable bars in the country. Order the house Martini, decide how you take it, and settle in.