Has Martin Place become the heart of Sydney CBD’s nightlife?

• MP District has emerged as the new evolution of Martin Place.
• The Special Entertainment Precinct has united venues like Caterpillar Club and Burrow Bar with Fullerton Hotel, The Mint and NSW State Library.
• Martin Place now has a healthy spread of bars, restaurants, arts venues, and things to do.

A city’s financial centre is never exciting on a paper, but something has been happening to Martin Place over the past few years that’s rapidly turning the tide for Sydney’s greediest grotto.

Perhaps it started when Swillhouse opened the perennially popular Caterpillar Club at the tail-end of 2023, or the first tracks of change became obvious when The Fullerton took over the historic General Post Office in 2019. Whatever eventually tipped the scales for this grey canyon of cashed-up office workers has done Sydney a solid in its ambitious climb towards a more robust night-time economy.

Martin Place is cool now. In fact, it’s now home to some of the CBD’s most exciting spots including the newly opened Rovollo—which my colleague Amy is still raving about—and the speakeasy-inspired Centro 86, a good time Tequila bar from the absolute masters of good time Tequila bars (Mucho Group, whose Cantina OK! and Bar Planet are amongst Sydney’s most famously unique watering holes).

There’s more than just specialty margaritas and sumptuous hand-made pastas taking Martin Place into a new era, however. MP District is the newly conceived version of Martin Place (Martin Place 2.0, if you will) and it’s rallied all the area’s best local businesses into one newly-minted precinct. In fact, it’s been pitched as one of several new Special Entertainment Precincts for the city, following successful ventures for the likes of Enmore Road and Burwood.

That label has been kicking around Sydney for awhile now. “Special Entertainment Precinct.” Still unsure of what it means? Well, it’s essentially a zoning tool geared towards establishing a more vibrant nightlife for Sydney’s most popular areas. Being designated a SEP allows local councils tighter control over their precincts, stripping the city’s notoriously thick red tape so these locals can control trading hours, sound rules and a host of other practical measures that allow bars, restaurants and other venues more freedom to cater to Sydney’s evolving nightlife.

Because a city with a weak nightlife will always be seen as a weak city, both from an economic perspective, and a touristic one.

Martin Place’s lifestyle offering was most obvious this year with the re-introduction of the strip as a major zone for Vivid Sydney, with more Sydneysiders getting to explore the various changes that are pushing MP District as a major part of the city’s evolution.

What is the MP District?

Zoning is important for big cities. It creates character and segments a city by style, giving both locals and visitors a better sense of what they can do, when they can do it, and where they can do it. Think about New York City, for example. The blueprint for big, vibrant cities would be nothing without proper zoning, with Manhattan alone offering distinctive neighbourhoods like West Village, SoHo, Lower East Side and Hell’s Kitchen.

Segmenting Sydney’s hottest spots into precincts takes a similar approach to zoning, but focusing squarely on the red tape that historically suffocated the city’s nightlife beyond the notoriously misguided and destructive lockout laws. MP District is already a great example of that, taking the area’s arts and hospitality venues and really pushing it as one unified body.

Some of these venues include:

• City Recital Hall
• Theatre Royal Sydney
• The International
• Centro 86
• Morena
• Petit Loulou
• Cabana Bar
• Rovollo
• Door Knock
• AALIA
• Caterpillar Club

Pre-covid, that list would have included Barrio Cellar (Peter Lew’s fun underground SoCal bar), and that’s about it.

Shaping this all into the MP District gives this area some focus, and it’s even got a snazzy new, concierge-style website to help people navigate the area.

What are the best things to do in MP District?

MP District is now an all-hours precinct You can rock up with Petit Loulou for artisan coffee and a better-than-most French pastry in the morning, or you can throw caution to the wind and contend with the crowds at Caterpillar Club well past midnight. And there’s a strong dining scene to fill each hour in between.

If you want somewhere exceptional for lunch or dinner, try AALIA, which sits in the 25 Martin Place development. The coastal Middle Eastern restaurant takes an approachable fine dining lens to flavours from the likes of Iraq and Syria with dishes you’ll not find anywhere else in the city. Leaning more towards brunch? Morena has a Latin-flavoured Brunch de Carnaval menu running every Saturday with everything from Venezuelan tequenos to Peruvian anticucho.

Italian restaurant Rovollo only opened a few weeks ago but the rave reviews have already been steaming in from top food publications. I haven’t tried it myself, but a few of us from Sydney Travel Guide office dined there recently and couldn’t get enough.

There’s now a strong trio of sophisticated, slightly hidden cocktail bars with Centro 86, Burrow Bar and Door Knock all getting by with their clandestine settings. Or, if you want something more party-minded, the open-air vibes of Cabana Bar (just above AALIA) have brought some energy back to after-work drinks on Martin Place.

It’s not all about eating and drinking at MP District, however. The zoning also includes The Mint, the oldest surviving public building in Sydney CBD offering free 30-minute guided tours and hosting its own excellent dining spot with Bullion Bar & Dining.

There are also free daily tours at the Parliament of NSW and, if you head to the top of the NSW State Library, you’ll find an underrated rooftop bar that even most locals don’t know about.

The best thing to do in Martin Place right now? If I had to choose three things it’d be dining at AALIA, having a drink at Panorama Bar (at The International) and seeing what’s on at City Recital Hall.

The beautiful venue, standing on the edge of Merivale’s ivy precinct, was originally built as a complementary performing arts venue for the Sydney Opera House but has since stood on its own with excellent, varied programming (I’ve seen everyone from Tori Amos to The Pharcyde there). Most recently, City Recital Hall has started to host more venue takeovers and texturally varied dance parties, giving Sydney a new, acoustically-driven space for some truly epic events.

From a global point of view, Caterpillar Club is one of the most on-trend spaces in Sydney right now, fashioned as a subterranean long bar as well as a kitchen for substantial late-night snacks, stiff cocktails, and a sweeping collection of vinyl.

It’s not quite the studious listening bars that you’ll find all over Japan, but it’s adjacent enough to music nerds stand shoulder-to-shoulder with socialites and cocktail lovers. Drake even performed a secret show there recently when he was in town for his (very brief) Anita Maxx Wynn tour.

For a better idea of the new Martin Place head to mpdistrict.com.