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Dingy, divey, always lively – The Duke has been the inner west’s best place for cold beers and loud tunes since the 1980s, and now it’s home to a tasty line-up of eats, too.
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Gather round, children, and I’ll tell you a story that will chill you to your very marrow. It’s the story of a city that had no bars. That’s right. Once upon a time, the wretched folk of Sydney were afflicted with bizarre puritan drinking laws and licensing costs that meant you couldn’t order a drink in most establishments without also ordering food. Thanks to this, bars barely existed (cue eerie wind noises howling through bare branches).
The one silver lining? The pubs were pretty great. And one of those pubs was The Duke of Enmore – known to everyone as The Duke – which opened its doors in 1987 and kept the inner west well-quenched with beers and live music from that day forth.
The Duke has passed through many hands over the years, and many fiddly liquor-law tweaks – some welcome, some not – but she has stayed strong and stalwart. Her most-recent owners, the Odd Culture Group, also responsible for the eponymous Newtown restaurant-bar and Woolloomooloo’s Old Fitzroy among other venues, has retained almost every charming detail, from the live music and strong beer roster to the poster-plastered walls. When the bars came, they might have conquered the likes of The Duke, but she more than held her own.
You don’t so much walk into The Duke as kind of flop yourself inside involuntarily before you even realise you’ve exited Enmore Road. It has that feel about it – somewhere that’s always open, always welcoming and you can wander in no matter what mood you happen to be in. There’s usually some kind of live music playing or about to play, someone’s always shooting a few rounds of pool and you’ll inevitably find a clutch of locals hanging out around the tables out the front with dogs at their feet.
The walls are black, the floors are sticky, everything’s slightly off-kilter. In other words, it’s exactly what an inner-city pub should be.
The unspoken rule at The Duke is you have to order a pickleback shot. Actually, it’s not that unspoken – there’s a neon green and yellow sign right out the front that flashes “home of the pickleback”. There are three on offer: the OG, which is the classic combo of pickle brine and Jameson’s whiskey, Gretel’s Gooch replaces the pickle juice with raspberry vinaigrette, while the racily named Elvira’s Wet Dream sexes up the whiskey bit with habanero-chilli brine.
If puckery pickle stuff isn’t your thing, you can get a strong range of big-name Sydney beers on tap – Young Henrys, say, or Brookvale Union ginger beer. Or choose from the Odd Culture-upgraded wine list, which leans skinsy, fizzy and cloudy – Alpha Box & Dice natural sparkling from the Barossa, for instance, and Doom Juice rosé, alongside a few interesting Italian surprises.
Maybe beers aren’t your thing. Maybe all those black walls and ailing rock posters give you unwelcome flashbacks to your teens. Fine. But The Duke does one thing that will pull in even the most sceptical scenesters. Live. Band. Karaoke.
You may remember this phenomenon from the now sadly departed Frankie’s Pizza in the city. The Duke has commandeered the same band, and they tear the place up – with you centre stage on the mic – on two Wednesdays a month. See you there, I’ll be the one smashing out Hole’s ‘Celebrity Skin’ or ‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries, and you’ll thank me for it.
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