You don’t need to be huge Wes Anderson fan to appreciate his iconic film style—the colourful, symmetrical and whimsical aesthetic has spawned Instagram fan pages, exhibitions and more, and now it’s the inspiration behind Henley’s, a charming cocktail bar and eatery opening in Teneriffe on Thursday 7 November.
Dubbed a ‘culinary adventure of the Orient’ (so Wes, we know), Henley’s comes to us from Tom D’Arcy, one of the original owners behind Mr Vain and Dirty Sultan, who has spent the last six months perfecting every detail of the quirky venue. Taking over a blank canvas space inside a heritage building on Commercial Road, the bar is like something you’d expect to find on Pinterest, with a pastel yellow and green palette, vintage furnishings and Accidentally Wes Anderson prints perfectly placed on the walls.
While you don’t need to have even seen a Wes Anderson film to appreciate the interiors, diehard fans will find some movie Easter eggs dotted around the venue, from a red beanie perched on the shelves behind the bar to a vintage orange phone that plays movie dialogue if you pick up the handset and put it to your ear. Impressively, D’Arcy designed and crafted almost the entire venue himself, right down to doing the cabinetry, which is of course almost, but not quite, symmetrical (IYKYK). Make sure you take a moment to appreciate the tunes playing in the background too (aka the soundtrack)—that Beatles song isn’t what you think it is on first listen.
Depending on what you’re in the mood for, Henley’s could be labelled a cocktail spot, noodle bar or pan-Asian bistro, and that was entirely by design. You can walk in and grab a seat at the bar to work your way through the list of cocktails, book a table for a date night dinner or even order takeaway when it launches in a few weeks. If it’s the first option, you’ll find a list of creative cocktails named for Wes Anderson movie characters awaiting you, all of them featuring slightly off-kilter ingredients—think calamansi (a citrus fruit common in the Philippines) gin, rambutan (similar to a lychee) and Chinese five-spice bitters. Complementing the cocktail list is a rotating selection of fun and approachable wines from Cork & Co.
On the food side of things, you can snack on a menu of pan-Asian eats that includes everything from spiced beef rice balls with tteokbokki sauce and tocino pork and pineapple skewers to Coca Cola fried rice and Taiwanese knife-cut noodles with crispy pork belly and bok choy. Make sure you stay for dessert—the mando pandan crepe with Biscoff crumble is worthy of a starring role in any dining experience.
As D’Arcy himself puts it, “From the cocktails to the food to the design, Henley’s aims to be wonderfully weird and unique, not just unique for Teneriffe but for Brisbane as a whole. Hidden underneath, Henleys is my tribute and fan-addition to the world of Wes Anderson, but what is very important to me is that you don’t need to know Wes Anderson, it’s not Wes-themed. The more films you know however, the more you will see it everywhere you look."
Henley's opens on Thursday 7 November, and you can make a booking now—we'd suggest doing so before this one hits Instagram.
Image credit: Henley's | Supplied