An ex-203 chef is cooking European and Argentinian-inspired share plates, backed by a star barkeep’s cocktails and a sharp Franco-Australian wine list.
The former Apothecaries Hall almost hides in plain sight in Fortitude Valley.
Revellers tend to breeze right by this two-storey 19th-century edifice as they walk up Ann Street to Brunswick Street Mall. But spend some time in the area and you come to understand the quiet presence the building has among its neighbours.
Tyla Dombroski and Trad Nathan noticed after buying The Zoo in late 2024, the iconic live music venue’s first floor windows look diagonally across Ann Street towards Apothecaries Hall.
“Trad and I have had a love of food and wine for years, and we’ve always toyed with the idea of a wine and small plates bar,” Dombroski says. “We weren’t really looking at places but we might occasionally see something for lease and think, ‘That’d be cool.’”
As it turns out, The Zoo — now Crowbar — and Apothecaries Hall share a landlord, Arthur Apostolos.
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“Arthur took me over late last year,” Dombroski says. “As soon as I walked in, I just fell in love with it. It has such beautiful heritage elements … It was right place, right time.”
Apothecaries Hall has done time as a number of venues since being refitted for food and beverage a decade ago — most prominently The Apo and, later, Uh Oh Spaghettio. Now, Dombroski and Nathan have reimagined it as Never Enough, a vinyl-driven, late-night wine bar.
“Trad [who used to regularly tour as a member of post-hardcore band The Amity Affliction] has eaten out a lot over the years, in different parts of the world, and we always took note of what we loved,” Dombroski says.
“We presented those ideas to [chef] Trent [Lymn, ex-The 203], and he worked it through [into a menu].
“It’s meant to be [flexible]. You can come in by yourself and have a couple of plates and a couple of wines, or you can come in with a big group and enjoy a big lunch or dinner.”
Lymn’s menu will change regularly with the seasons. It has a strong European influence, but also elements of South American cooking he learnt when travelling with his wife, who is Argentinian.
Expect smaller plates such as piquillo peppers with anchovy, marjoram and olive oil; fried artichokes with white bean and salsa verde, escalivada with paprika dressing and faina; and fried chicken tenders with white sturgeon caviar and creme fraiche.
More substantial plates include a Moreton Bay bug and prawn casarecce with a tomato sugo; Murray cod in a pil pil sauce with Yarra Valley roe, a 21-day dry-aged cheeseburger with champagne onions and tarragon mustard, and eggplant Milanese with ricotta salata, tomato jam and lemon.
For drinks, Mikey Pattison (formerly Alice and The Bowery, among many others) oversees a wine list that prioritises French and Australian drops but, given his background, there’s also a sharp list of signature cocktails.
Dombroski and Nathan have, perhaps unsurprisingly, also incorporated a strong musical element, with DJs playing vinyl on Friday and Saturday nights from an in-house selection of around 300 records.
If you visited Apothecaries Hall in its Apo and Spaghettio days, you’ll discover the bones of the venue are much the same, with exposed brick, heavy timber, metal balustrades and polished concrete.
But Dombroski worked to soften the space by applying plenty of pink and burgundy, and fine-tuning the lighting.
“It’s a versatile space that’s meant to be used for different things,” she says. “Late night was a big part of it, with the location of the building. We’re just finalising our extended trading licence. Once that gets going there will be food until midnight, and then you can go upstairs and listen to DJs until the wee hours.”
Open Wed-Thu 5pm-late, Sat-Sun midday-late
690 Ann Street, Fortitude Valley, 0431 128 106
neverenough.bar
Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.
