Too much of a good thing is wonderful, according to Mae West, and if you’re a fellow hedonist heading out in St Kilda, Melbourne, there’s a new palace of pleasure to include on your itinerary – the Acland St Cantina. That St is definitely St for Street, not Saint.
Making its home in the now extinct Mink Bar premises, ACS is a hive of action and noise, in the visual sense as well as the more literal one. The Melbourne Pub Group who are behind the place have aimed for “deliberately chaotic” at the Mexican resto-bar-café-takeaway-bottleshop, and they seem to have nailed it.
It’s all go here, from the stencil-like cladding on the exposed brick to the voodoo-esque shrine, the design is energetic, and that’s appropriate given the place begins its day at 7am for coffee and breakfast, and powers through to 3am when the DJ, hidden behind a curtain in the rear, hangs up his/her headphones. Strewth!
