I’ve just spent a wonderful week in Melbourne, visiting burger boy’s youngest bro mugsie (who lives upstairs in a pub), making the most of Zara’s grand opening & the stock-take sale and visiting as many Melbourne bars as we could fit in. And Melbourne as always didn’t disappoint.

First Melbourne bar we visited was The Standard Hotel in Fitzroy. It’s one of mugsie’s locals, doesn’t look fancy on the outside and you wouldn’t spot it unless you’re a local or like us introduced.

The Standard Hotel has a relaxed pub atmosphere and delicious comfort food especially on a cold Melbourne evening (mugsie thought it was one of the warmer Melbourne evenings but burger boy & I sure felt the chill being the spoilt Perthies we are).

The chat potatoes were a yummy snack. It had a delicious garlic and herbs flavour and the mustard mayo was a nice complement – the mustard wasn’t too overpowering.

The pork rib nibbles were amazing, the meat just fell off the bone and being bite-sized it was so easy to eat!

The sausage rolls were ok but belonging to an Italian family, I’m a tough critic, so I can’t say I’d order them again.

Next stop was Madame Brussels, a quirky roof top bar which I’ve heard about heaps but hadn’t been to on any of our previous Melbourne trips as we weren’t sure if it was going to be too quirky for our liking.

Madame Brussels had a cute chic decor, wait staff in tennis styled outfits and a great range of drinks. It was within our quirky threshold and I enjoyed the view of the city with a lovely glass of gypsy cider…

Seems like we spent a lot of time in Fitzroy this trip…

We had a great time at Black Cat which was a dim red funky chilled out bar in Fitzroy.

burger boy, mugsie & I enjoyed a few ciders with Zoey The Northern Bogan and Jack. The Northern Bogan had been on a 12 hour drinking sess and was quite excited that Black Cat had some sort of food partnership with the café across the road (Black Cat don’t serve food), the pizza took a good 45 minutes to arrive which was longer than expected as the café wasn’t busy…

Pizza wasn’t great but worked a treat for a very drunk northern bogan.

The atmosphere at Black Cat is very similar to Perth’s Ezra Pound.

The Local Tap House in St Kilda was one of our favourite bars.

We ordered our drinks at the bar and took a seat by the cosy fire outside.

 

We spent a good couple of hours trying different beers and ciders…I enjoyed the Pink Framboise Raspberry Lambic (raspberry beer!!) and the boys loved the Salvator Bier Doppelbock which had a great caramel flavour.

The Local Tap House has a fantastic range of beers, a chilled out atmosphere and also holds Beerista and Ale Stars Beer Appreciation courses which would have been interesting to do if we were in Melbourne for a little longer.

My last drinking expedition for our trip was Gerald’s Bar in Carlton which had a different character to all the other bars. Gerald’s reminded me of the TV series Cheers, in that it’s a bar where the bar owner/staff know everyone by their first names and knows exactly what everyone drinks.

As we sat on the bar stools drinking and listening to records (yes old school records!), I observed my surroundings with interest.

There was a warm dim lighting, cool leather couches with some people playing cards, tables further in with people chatting and drinking wine / eating cheese, hand written bills which you pay at the end of the evening and a tin as a till.

There was also a cold meat slicer at the other end of the bar…the fresh salami and cold meat platters sure looked tempting. But we were completely stuffed from our American feast at Misty’s (review coming soon) and amazingly resisted.

We also went to Naked for Satan, a bar in Fitzroy opposite Black Cat which serves 80c tapas but it was for lunch and we didn’t drink so I will write about it very soon in a separate post.

The Great Northern Hotel in Carlton is also a great place to go if you love your boutique beers…ask for mugsie, he’ll look after you.

I love the Melbourne Bars scene and look forward to visiting more bars next time we head over.

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