Address: Basement, 113 Lonsdale Street, Central Business District, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia
Tel: +61 3 9663 6363
Website: view Sweatshop’s website

Door: Open door/walk-ins
Style: Dive bar
Food: Bar Snacks

Owned, like Seamstress above, by Tally Konstas, and set within the same building, Sweatshop is a very different style of bar: a fun, funked-up cocktail bar styled as a dive bar. A cheap date to its sibling’s sexy splurge.

Junk wood seating platforms scattered with silk cushions line the narrow space; bottles descend from the ceiling; menus come as 7-inch or 12-inch records, complete with sleeves; and graf on the walls celebrates the groove.

The cocktails are unashamedly kitsch and colourful. A Hillbilly Koolaid (a cherry sour made with Bourbon), arrives in a jam jar (itself something of a Melbourne bar trend). Margaritas will make purists faint with horror but raised a grin of guilty pleasure over here: they come blue, slushy and blended to oblivion.

One to kick back in later in the evening, when the DJs come on stream.