The new cocktail list at Maybe Sammy drinks like a love letter to the silver screen. Inspired by classic films—and with a couple of tributes to television—the menu is aptly titled Showtime. Each drink even comes with its own trailer: short clips shot especially for the occasion and performed by the bar team themselves. This is taking “production value” seriously.
Maybe Sammy, a New Menu Every Year
Tucked into the cobbled lanes of The Rocks, Sydney’s historic quarter dating back to 1788, Maybe Sammy opened in 2019 when Stefano Catino and Vincenzo Lombardo set out to bring the glamour of hotel bars to their city. Here, the unveiling of a new menu is a once-a-year ritual. The twelve months between editions are spent dreaming up surprises in flavour and the theatrical ways each drink is revealed.
Blurring the Line Between Cinema and Bar with Showtime
According to Paolo Maffietti, director of bars for the Maybe Group, this annual rhythm has helped cement the bar’s place in The World’s 50 Best Bars ranking every year since 2019. “Showtime is more than a list of cocktails,” he explains. “It represents an experience that blurs the line between cinema and mixology. We spent months on research, design and presentation so that every drink lingers in the memory long after the last sip.”
The Trailers
Every drink comes with its own short film. Shot around Sydney with the Maybe Sammy crew stepping into the spotlight, these trailers took months to script, direct and edit. The goal was to capture the cadence of genuine movie previews while preserving “the stylised, tongue-in-cheek theatricality that has become our signature.”
The concept was made for social media. On Instagram, a new trailer appeared each day in a countdown that built to 17 September 2025, the night the bar unveiled its latest menu.
That menu lives in three versions—video, print and digital. The printed edition presents each cocktail like a vintage cinema ticket, bound together like a colour swatch, while the digital version unfolds like a film-release website, complete with a calendar of premieres.
Showtime, Cocktails for the Big Screen
Cinema classics lead the way: the Whiskey Highball Crocodile Dundee, the Gimlet The Grand Budapest Hotel, the Paloma The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Then The Shining, a twist on Whiskey Sour; The Great Gatsby, a Spritz reborn; Pirates of the Caribbean, a riff on the Mai Tai; and The Big Lebowski, Maybe Sammy’s version of the Coffee Cocktail. Television gets a turn too, with three Martinis inspired by Sir David Attenborough’s nature documentaries, and a Peaky Blinders Whiskey Highball built around apples.
When the house lights finally dim, the bartenders hit play: the final trailer dances across the screen, the clink of glasses mingles with the closing credits and, as the first cocktail arrives, it feels like the premiere of a film scented with citrus and whisky.
Images courtesy Maybe Sammy
