Ante

Modelled on the Japanese jazz kissa — a listening bar where the records matter as much as the drinks — this King Street room trades the Newtown bustle for something darker and more deliberate. Above a long blackbutt counter, lit racks hold some 2,500 LPs from a co-owner's own collection, and the soundtrack stays strictly vinyl: jazz, soul, funk and disco, played rather than streamed. The pour is sake, sixty-odd labels from a couple of dozen breweries, guided with the ease of people who know the category well — one founder built a name importing it. The kitchen is no afterthought. Run by a chef whose CV takes in Café Paci, Pinbone and Billy Kwong, the food blurs Japanese precision with European looseness: expect a pasta or two, perhaps tagliatelle with fermented shiitake, playful riffs on izakaya and convenience-store snacks, and a few elegant desserts to close. It reads less as a themed bar than a coherent idea — sake, sound and cooking tuned to one another. Dim, unhurried and built for lingering, it rewards the kind of evening spent working slowly through the list while a record spins down. Closed Tuesdays; open late the rest of the week.