Sydney’s best cocktails
Cocktails at Dean & Nancy on 22 in Sydney
Somewhere along the line, ordering a drink in Sydney stopped being a matter of saying gin and tonic and became an event involving spacecraft, artificial intelligence and, occasionally, something that looks as though it ought to come with an evacuation procedure.
Space Odyssey cocktail
At Dean & Nancy on 22, high above the city, one of the current favourites is the 2001 Space Odyssey, a cocktail inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film of the same name. This is the film, of course, in which HAL 9000 quietly demonstrates that artificial intelligence can become extremely troublesome if left unsupervised.
The cocktail is much less alarming.
Made with Glenfiddich 21 Single Malt, apple, pear, cacao, cinnamon, Calvados and Paragon Timur Berry, it is served in a metallic pouch designed to echo the film’s use of light, symmetry and altered perception. The latter, admittedly, is something bartenders have been helping people achieve long before Stanley Kubrick got involved.
The drink is one of 14 creations on Dean & Nancy on 22’s Time Machine menu, developed with the team from Maybe Sammy. Each cocktail reaches back into the 1950s and 1960s for inspiration, which turns out to be an extremely fertile period if your interests include space travel, cartoons, instant photography and things that can plausibly be served with tequila.
Road Runner Beep Beep Cocktail
The Road Runner “Beep Beep”, for example, arrives in a custom 3D-printed dynamite vessel. This is a sentence that would ordinarily cause some concern when used in connection with licensed premises, but here it is apparently all part of the fun.
Instant Camera cocktail
Then there is Instant Camera, a vodka highball inspired by Edwin Land’s invention of the Polaroid. Guests have their photograph taken and receive the instant picture as a garnish. It is possibly the only garnish in Sydney you can take home without wrapping it in a napkin and feeling vaguely criminal.
Restaurant and Bar Manager Krisztian Csigo says the menu was designed to take Dean & Nancy back to the idea that originally inspired the venue: the glamorous hotel bars of the 1950s and 1960s.
“I wanted to take us back to the roots of the original concept behind Dean & Nancy, which is the ’50s–’60s golden era of hotel bars, and this menu takes our guests on a journey back to this era,” he says.
“Our Time Machine menu celebrates the people and moments that shaped a generation, brought to life through playful techniques, vintage references and modern mixology – it’s a fun and nostalgic trip back in time.”
He describes the 2001 Space Odyssey as an example of how a cocktail can combine history, pop culture, storytelling and mixology into something more than simply a drink.
Cocktail theatre in Sydney
Dean & Nancy takes the theatre of cocktail making seriously enough that its signature menus remain in place for a full year, allowing patrons to work their way through the collection at a pace unlikely to require medical intervention.
The approach has also earned the bar international recognition. In 2026, Dean & Nancy on 22 was named a Top 10 Honoree in the Best International Hotel Bar (APAC) category at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards, marking its fourth consecutive year on the list.
So, yes, you can still go to a bar and simply have a drink.
But you can also sit 22 floors above Sydney drinking whisky from something resembling astronaut equipment while contemplating HAL 9000.
And you know, civilisation has taken stranger turns.
