For siblings Laura and Julien Bouskila, Uncanny has never really been about simply opening a cocktail bar.
Five years in, the Newtown venue has become exactly what they wanted it to be: somewhere locals can settle in, order a genuinely good drink and stay for as long as they like.
“Uncanny is first and foremost a community space,” said Julien Bouskila. “We like to describe ourselves more as a community space that’s got a great kitchen and a bar, rather than a bar first.”
The idea is simple. High-quality drinks without the formality that can sometimes come with them.
“We are friendly, low pretension,” he said. “It’s a place where you can get CBD-quality products, but in a really laid-back, put-your-feet-up, bring-your-dog kind of way.”
For Laura, it is about creating something closer to a home away from home.
“You can be yourself, you can be at ease whilst enjoying good conversation, nice music, drinks and good food,” she said. “You can show up however you feel comfortable. Whatever represents you as a person, whether that’s wearing a suit or trackies, everyone’s welcome.”
That philosophy extends behind the bar too. There are no uniforms or rigid ideas about how the team should present themselves. Instead, Julien and Laura have tried to build the same sense of comfort and mutual respect among staff that they want guests to feel when they walk through the door.
It is an approach that has helped turn Uncanny into a proper locals bar, with familiar faces returning week after week and friends, family and regulars becoming part of the venue itself.
Even the fit-out tells that story.
Julien describes the room as somewhere between a New York cocktail bar and his teenage bedroom, filled with objects, artwork and pieces collected over time. When the venue opened just after the pandemic, money was tight, so rather than spending heavily on decoration, Julien and his dad quite literally emptied pieces from their family home onto the walls.
The jukebox is one of them.
“It’s from our family home,” said Laura. “My dad loves Elvis, and when he started doing well with his business, that was his treat-yourself moment.”
It is still sitting in the venue today, alongside local artwork, pop culture references and pieces that have gradually built up around the bar.
Hospitality, however, was not new territory for Julien.
Before Uncanny, he had spent around 12 years working across the industry, including venue management, pubs around Sydney, and the opening team at The Lady Hampshire. He also spent two years managing a cocktail bar in Paris, an experience he credits with teaching him plenty about running a venue when the responsibility ultimately sat with him.
When Covid-19 hit, an opportunity appeared.
Julien initially opened the business with his father and, after looking at possible sites in Surry Hills and the city, it was his dad who asked the obvious question: why not Newtown?
It turned out to be the right fit.
“I think it represents our vibe so much more,” said Laura.
For Julien, Newtown also gave them the freedom to follow through on the original idea.
“Our vision had always been a high-quality, low-pretension style place,” he said. “We don’t want to take ourselves too seriously.”
Today, Laura and Julien run the venue together, describing themselves loosely as the heart and brains of the operation.
Working with your sibling naturally has its moments, but Laura said there is also freedom in being able to speak directly and understand what the other needs without having to explain everything.
That flexibility has become part of Uncanny’s wider workplace culture.
The pair place a big emphasis on communication and allowing staff to have a life outside hospitality, rather than expecting work to come before everything else.
“Communication saves stress,” said Julien.
“If you let me know at the start of a shift you’re not 100 per cent, awesome. We’ll work with you.”
It seems to be working. Julien said he has never worked at another venue that has retained staff for as long as Uncanny has, with venue manager Nicole progressing from bartender to bar manager and now venue manager over three and a half years.
That same investment in the team can be seen on the cocktail list through Uncanny’s Bartender Series.
The concept is one Julien first developed while working in Paris, but at Uncanny it has evolved into a way to give the entire team a chance to experiment, learn and put their own drinks in front of guests.
Each series starts with a distillery or broad theme before the bartenders are given a brief to work from. Recent iterations have focused on Australian producers including Gospel and Starward, with the team challenged to work with Australian whisky without simply falling back on stirred-down classics.
“We build a whole education program for the team,” said Julien. “As a cocktail bartender, you always want to get yours on the list.”
The idea is not only to create new drinks, but to give bartenders the skills and confidence to develop concepts, understand products and eventually take that experience into competitions and future roles.
Alongside the rotating bartender creations sit the drinks that have become part of Uncanny itself.
One of its signatures is the Julio Richter, a mezcal-driven take on a Tommy’s Margarita created with Laura in mind.
The drink incorporates freshly pressed Lebanese cucumber and a salt and za’atar rim, tying Julian and Laura’s Mediterranean background into a familiar cocktail structure.
“It uses products and has a story to it that speaks a lot to the venue,” said Julien.
The name, meanwhile, comes from Marvel’s X-Men universe, which also brings the story back to Uncanny itself.
Julien had wanted to call a bar Uncanny long before the venue existed. A self-described “massive nerd,” his connection to the X-Men went beyond simply liking the comics.
For him, the stories were about people who did not necessarily fit in, something he identified with personally. Once the name was locked in, the rest of the venue began to fall into place.
That is ultimately where the idea of “Be Uncanny” comes from.
“Be yourself,” said Laura. “Whoever you are, we accept that. We love that. We want you to accept and love that too.”
It is perhaps the clearest explanation of what Laura and Julien have built over the past five years.
Uncanny serves cocktails, food, whisky and plenty more, but the drink in front of you is only part of it.
The rest is about making sure whoever walks through the door feels comfortable enough to stay.
