We all have a favourite pub or bar. So exactly where do you figure is the best bar or pub for a booze-up in Melbourne?
There’s plenty of separate components which can make a quality pub in Melbourne: a beer garden, a hotel restaurant… even a house beer. Whether you’re looking for a tavern-style pub or something a little more classy… there’s plenty around to suit everyone’s preferences.
But what matters is what you figure is the best pub in Melbourne. Who takes the prize for Melbourne’s best pub in your books?
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
The Royal Mail on Spencer Street! Great food, different (“Roadkill Wednesdays”), great beers on tap, friendly, down to earth staff. Comfortable atmosphere.
The Standard Hotel, Fitzroy. Best beer garden.
Agree on The Standard Hotel. Great food and huge beer garden. Only bad thing are the possums that occasionally dump in your beer.
The Retreat in Brunswick
Great new pub in Montague St south Melbourne – cnr Buckhurst.
THE FLEECE
Has a rooftop deck you wouldnt know was there + great food too.
The Fleece is weird. It’s like it doesn’t know if it is a tradie pub or an upper class pub. It seems to put out this “newly renovated” image of being wanky and up market but you go in there, and its just the same old brickies and plumbers that’ve been going there all these years.
I have been to Melbourne once. In the week I was there, I visited the Ivy (nice comfy couches and kooky crowd that I fit in with… is that a good or bad thing??), the Espy (great conversation with random travellers), the bar where I was staying at the Novotel (the whole time was spent trying to get on with my book and not to get picked up by lonely older men), the tiny stage and beer garden out the back of Pure Pop Records (that was very cute and musical and snug, but a little TOO snug…. but still gotta love an indie record store with a bar!!)…. and the one on St Kilda Beach with the big cane chairs and the fireplace inside. Gotta say… I usually prefer old, historic pubs, but this new place on the beach had it all; yummy food, great service, hot bartender, lots of different spots to sit and have a long catch-up with a mate, nice beer, and….. BOARD GAMES!! Squeeeee!
I don’t know if it’s still the same a year on, but 12 months ago I had a great arvo there.
I like the Marquis of Lorne in Fitzroy. Cute beer deck up the top. Or the Union Club. Keen on that kitchen of theirs.