TWENTY YEARS AGO, we opened Bar Lourinhã to share our love of Mediterranean and Iberian flavours, and our belief that true hospitality comes from the heart. We also wanted to highlight the culture of the bar, which revolves around enjoying what’s good in the moment, with no expectations of what will be on offer. Today, it’s easier to explain what we like about bar dining, but when we first started talking about  pening our own place, we had lots of ideas but no clear picture of what we wanted to do. We’d both worked in hospitality for years – Matt as a chef and Jo working front of house – and so we knew the things that we did and didn’t like but, in Australia at the time, there was no culture of bar  dining. There were restaurants, bars, pubs and cafés. Nobody was doing what we wanted to do, so we went in search of it ourselves. We had our first ‘oh my god we’ve done it right’ moment in the first week. There were about 10 to 15 people sitting at the bar at lunchtime, everybody happy  and everybody eating exactly like you would eat in Spain. And it was like:  they get it! All the research and travel, all the eating and drinking in bars, all the talking to people about ingredients and observing how they looked after people came together at that moment. All the thinking about what it was about bars that we loved so much. It was early days and a really small thing, but it reassured us that we were on the right track. Two decades later, we’re still going strong. Seems like people really did want to eat at the bar. As Bar Lourinhã turns 20, we’re appreciating what we’ve created, and the special community that has come with it. And we’re looking forward to the future, with more good times, travels and adventures.