Folio

A Bellini before the curtain

The peach is smoked before it meets the flute, and Charlie Ainsbury, bar director at Folio in Walsh Bay, Sydney, has built that gesture for a theatre crowd with little time to waste. His station here is the bar beneath Roslyn Packer Theatre, opened in 2024 by The Fresh Collective, where the drink has to read quickly without losing its shape. Ainsbury comes to Folio with the habits of a working Sydney bartender, not only a consultant’s distance. His practice sits across Folio, Darling Glebe and This Must Be The Place, with service still close enough to the counter to keep the advice honest. Australian Bartender of the Year sits beside that daily work as a trade marker, less a decoration than evidence of how he holds speed, control and room sense under pressure. At Folio, that matters because the room moves in waves. Guests arrive before a performance, return after one, or stay long enough for the bar to become the night. The program has to meet each pace.

Classics held to theatre time

Ainsbury’s Folio list works from recognisable forms: martinis, margaritas, mojitos, champagne, house beer, wine and the house signatures that give the bar its own hand. The Smoked Peach Bellini points to brightness with a prepared edge; the Tableside-Flamed Martini turns the pass itself into part of the drink, not as theatre alone, but as a controlled service moment. Folio also names a curated wine and champagne program, which gives the bar a second register for guests who want a glass rather than a build. That breadth suits a room attached to performance. Some drinks must land before the call to seats; others can take the slower rhythm of the back bar after the house lights come up. Ainsbury’s known signatures, House Bellini, Flame of Love and The Infinity Old Fashioned, sit in that same language of familiar structures handled with intent. The method here is not obscurity. It is timing, dilution, temperature, and the handoff at the exact point the guest is ready to move.

Velvet, low light and a live counter

The bar takes its mood from New York supper clubs and speakeasies without turning the room into a set. Velvet trim, low light and a close scale give the counter its charge, while the theatre above keeps service in motion. The noise is lively, and the room earns it: glassware lifting from the back bar, tickets tightening near performance time, a martini leaving the station while another guest asks for champagne. Folio is small enough for the bartender’s read to matter. Ainsbury’s program depends on that read, because a theatre bar cannot ask every guest for the same kind of attention. Some want the sharp line of a martini. Some want bubbles. Some want the smoke in the Bellini to arrive, register, and be gone before the first act.

A program built for the interval

Folio matters most when the bar understands that theatre drinking has its own discipline. The work is not only the recipe; it is the interval between arrival and curtain, between applause and the last drink. Ainsbury has shaped a program that can hold both pressure and polish, with enough range to carry a quick aperitif or a longer post-show table. End the night at the counter, and the concrete memory is likely to be the flame touching the Tableside-Flamed Martini.