10 hours Ago By Matt Zis
Victoria Park craft beer institution DTC has been reimagined as a garden-themed bar and cafe, with the stunning transformation opening up a new back garden space and a menu that treats more than beer drinkers. The previously dark bar with a dingy function room out back has become a light and bright all-day-and-night venue complete with an open-air mezzanine and greenery inside and out. Now called Somewhere In the Park, the makeover was designed to offer something for everyone, co-owner Dan Sterpini told PerthNow.
“The craft beer market is still there, but it is diminishing a little and it still is only about 13 per cent of the entire going-out industry,” Mr Sterpini said. “There was an opportunity, in Vic Park for this venue, to look after not just the 13 per cent but the 100 per cent.” Cocktails and a boutique wine list and store now share equal billing at the bar with on-trend beer offerings, while chef Danny Matthews is dishing up fun and contemporary share plates including charcoal octopus, ricotta gnocchi, chicken cotoletta and stracciatella.
Cafe offerings for breakfast and brunch have helped win over a new Victoria Park crowd since the reimagined venue opened last month opposite John Hughes’ car yards at the very tip of the Albany Highway strip. There’s a deliberate nod to the green-thumbed district it calls home, as well as its crafty past. The Dutch Trading Co name remains inscribed on the door, while the popular DTC burger is not only back on the menu, it has been the new venue’s clear no.
1 seller through its opening month of trade. Like its home suburb and the council that represents it, there’s plenty of greenery inside and out and much of what’s ‘new’ has actually been recycled, or purchased from salvage yards, Gumtree or Marketplace. “Everything’s kind of got a bit of a park vibe.
If you look at the bar, like the beer tap handles panels have rakes and shovels and spades,” Mr Sterpini said. “The colour palette is all about being outdoors. “There’s a lot of greenery here, all the furniture belongs in a garden.
“Because at the end of the day we’re called Somewhere In The Park not Somewhere In The Dark. So we want to make sure that you feel a little bit of that when you’re in here.” A kids’ kitchen play area, selfie bathroom mirrors, birdcage seating and verge swing overlooking the footpath are a cute touch.
As his business partner Joel Beresford said, the new venue is very Vic Park, but not like anything else. “It was a blank slate, for sure, but it was also about looking at the demographic as a whole and working out how do we appeal to them without ‘trying to please everybody but pleasing none’,” Mr Beresford said of the three-month makeover. “Everyone had a very clear idea of what they could do to attract interested segments — we’ve got the dog-friendly people, we’ve got the young families, we’ve got the mature families, we’ve got the singles, we’ve got the couples, but not in a cookie cutter way.
” It’s fair to say the duo — who were also involved in creating Northbridge drawcard Fallow — and their fellow owners like to do hospitality differently. They’re also personally different to what they were nine years ago when they set out to create Perth’s best craft beer venue. “When it was started, I was a young 20-something with no family, nothing, lots of disposable income and plenty of time to drink,” Mr Beresford said.
“But the craft beer people have matured and aged and the next generation is quite different to the previous one. “So I guess this is a maturation of DTC.” Mr Sterpini, a father himself, said a highlight of their first week was watching a group of five-year-olds take over the kids’ kitchen play area.
“Without any instruction, they had gone and put on all the little chef outfits and formed their own production line pretending to cook and serve food,” he said. “One of the dads went up there and called out ‘Oi, how long on my pizza?’. And a little kid with a little chef hat sticks his head out the window and goes “Your pizza is ready when it’s ready!’.
“We also had two ladies walk out the back and the first thing they did was see the waterfall tables, and they actually jumped, and they clapped and they screamed at the same time. “I just thought, yep, we’re ticking a lot of boxes here.”.
