Weekend Hot 100: 17 hot new bars and drinks you have to try
From chic city bars to non-alcoholic brews that are anything but joyless, these are the hottest of hot venues and drinks to check out in Melbourne and beyond right now.
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Whether you are after an after-work bevvy, nightcap or anything in between, there’s a bar, brewery, winery, distillery or pub around practically every corner to suit any occasion.
In this Saturday’s Weekend liftout — which uncovers the 100 hottest things to eat, drink and visit around Victoria ahead of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival — Dan Stock runs the ruler over the state’s latest and greatest drinking establishments.
Oh, and some of them serve excellent food, too.
HOTTEST PLACES TO DRINK
MOON DOG WORLD
Another day, another urban brewery. But, as with everything brothers Josh and Jake Uljans and Karl Van Buuren of Moon Dog have done so far, their new brewery is different. Very, very different.
In the industrial backstreets of deepest Preston you’ll find Moon Dog World, 12,000sq m of hop-fuelled fun times that includes a centrepiece indoor lagoon surrounded by deck chairs under a fully retractable roof.
There’s a huge central bar, a forest of greenery, a secret barrel ageing room and a hidden tropical disco zone for dancing after dark.
It’s wacky, wild and wonderful.
BRUNSWICK EAST
A raft of new openings has given postcode 3057 a strong claim to Melbourne’s hottest food suburb in 2020.
Underneath one of the apartment developments that have devoured Lygon St, Faye sees chefs Daniel Naylor and Marcus Dimabuyo (both ex Aubergine, Canberra) join with winemaker Rhen Dodd (Emphera Wines) in a food-focused wine bar.
The daily changing menu might include knockout smoked-poached mussels to start, housemade ricotta scented with fig leaf to follow and decadent pappardelle with tripe and octopus. Euro leaning wine complements with class.
Up the road, from the talented duo behind North Carlton’s Neighbourhood Wine comes Old Palm Liquor offering Almay Jordaan’s similar wine-friendly fare and Simon Denman’s forward-looking organic/biodynamic minimal intervention wine list featuring 300-odd bottles. The fried shallot – with a squiggle of cashew cream and pickled jalapeño – is vegan snacking par excellence.
Alchemy Brewing is the newest microbrewer to call the suburb home, where it’s all about platters of cheese and charcuterie, toasties and games of pool to go with the IPA, lager and pale ales brewed on site.
They join ETTA, possibly Melbourne’s most lovely local that’s worth travelling to from afar – if only for new(ish) chef Charley Snadden-Wilson’s sourdough with cacio e pepper butter. Wow.
DESSOUS
Meaning “underneath or below” in French, Dessous is the stylish subterranean bar yang to the bright day-through-night ying of bistro Hazel above – the handsome new double act from The Mulberry Group (Liminal, Common Ground Project) that’s taken over three levels of the T&G Building on Flinders Lane.
Shaking and stirring until 1am, there are schooners of Hop Nation American red and negronis and a cellar of 120-odd wines filled with thinking drinking and almost two dozen poured by the glass.
But it’s not all about sips, for chef Dan Sawansak (Higher Ground, MoVida) is turning out a mighty fine range of sups, too.
Whether a fried-to-order doughnut stuffed with spanner crab and corn custard or the fluffy comfort of a pork katsu sando with sweet bulldog sauce there are very many good things to go with that good booze.
Underneath but a cut above, for dangerous, delicious, late-night decadence all roads lead to Dessous.
STEAK NIGHT AT THE PRINCE PUBLIC BAR
It’s been a long time since it hosted dollar pots on a Monday night, but St Kilda’s legendary loved home of louche and loose good times, the Prince Public Bar, is again pouring pints.
While the makeover of the Art Deco beauty at the hands of IF Architecture is in keeping with next-gen St Kilda, colourful locals are welcomed anew in the reborn pub for beers and burgers and breakfast, too.
Counter meals, weekday lunches for $15 and Tuesday and Wednesday steak nights, where 19 bucks gets you 250g grass-fed sirloin, chips and salad, deliver mighty big bang for buck – just like the dollar pots of yore.
MONO XO
Charcoal and rock and roll – that’s what’s on the menu at MONO-XO, a Fitzroy bar serving Japanese slippers, sake and good things cooked on sticks.
Joe Jones (Romeo Lane) and chef Sam Stafford (Clever Polly’s, Momofuku Sieobo) have created a small bar where the music’s good and the food and drinks better, with such skewers as duck meatballs with yolk, beef skirt with mustard glaze and head-and-all whole prawn katsu worth the price of admission alone.
It’s Fitzroy, so those sticks are all gluten-free and vegans are well catered for while Jones’ drinks list – highballs and easy drinking cocktails – is helped along by $6 St Mihal lagers and a fridge of forward-looking wines. Rock on.
MILNEY’S
Look for the red light. If it’s on, it means good drinks, good times and – importantly – good spaghetti is on offer behind the unmarked door on Alexandra Pde, just around the Brunswick St corner.
With a huge courtyard, Milney’s has alfresco sipping signed up – $10 pints of Milney’s lager; wine on tap from Central Victoria’s Boomtown; a fridge filled with cool cult producers – while James Eddy of Good Gnocchi has the supping sorted with $10 bowls of spaghetti and snacks that include mortadella with currywurst sauce, and Pringles with caviar, for those with $90 burning a hole. Low key cool has never tasted so good.
CHIEF’S SON DISTILLERY
In whisky terms, they’ve been around for just a wee dram, but new Mornington Peninsula distillery, Chief’s Son, is already making waves on the world stage.
Founded by Stuart and Naomi McIntosh and launching their first whisky into the world less than a year ago, the first barrel of their 900 Standard single malt won best Australian single cask at the World Whiskies Awards in London this month, while also taking home a silver for their 900 Standard single malt 45 per cent.
Four styles of single malts are created at the Sommerville distillery, which is open for tastings daily.
FREE MEZZE AT MAHA BAR
There might be no such thing as a free lunch, but when it comes to bill-less bar snacks Shane Delia has drinkers covered.
On Friday through Sunday arvos between 3pm and 5pm at his new Maha Bar sippers will be slipped a little something to snack on alongside.
These free mezze – perhaps hobz bil zejt (peppered Maltese cheese with tomato paste), maybe a little feta and haloumi doughnut or some spinach gozleme – provide a bite-sized introduction into the mod Melbourne mezze bar that takes over from Delia’s Biggie Smalls kebab shop.
With house-infused araks and rakis (sour cherry or cola, for instance) Turkish delight martinis and a nice line in themed negronis, thinking drinking is as exciting as those free snacks.
Dig in.
MRS SINGH
It’s the wine bar where your glass is always half full. Jessi Singh’s “unauthentic Indian” plus Australia’s best sommelier equals a rollicking good time.
With Bhatia Dheeraj pouring wine and Singh on the pans, Mrs Singh is part bottle shop, part wine bar, part supper club.
There’s Indian flatbreads from the tandoor, fiery vindaloo momos from the pan and 250-odd wines in the fridge and on the shelf that traverse the affordable and approachable through big-hitting heroes.
It’s colourful, chaotic, loud and late-night louche – Mrs Singh is a lot of grape fun.
DRINKS
PORTUGUESE SPRITZ
Move over Aperol, there’s a new spritz in town. This summer, the cool kids of Brunswick were swapping the sunshine orange of the drink that took over the world for a Portuguese white night at funky new wine bar, Rascal.
Taking white port, topping it with tonic, prosecco and a touch of grapefruit, it’s sharp, tart and outrageously refreshing.
Team with fried chicken served with caviar for a white night in shining amor.
ALCOHOLIC KOMBUCHA
Boozy bucha – now that’s our kind of health drink.
Taking the good-for-your-guts drink that’s taken the health food aisles by storm and letting it ferment for just a little bit longer to give it a kick, alcoholic kombucha has arrived to put a buzz in our bellies.
Melbourne brand Brewhaha comes in such flavours as cucumber and lime, pear and sour cherry, and hemp and green apple, and at 3.5 per cent, take care of good times in moderation.
Other boozy kombucha to look for includes Australia’s first – Naughty Booch – which comes in such fresh and fruity flavours as watermelon, cucumber and lime, and is available on tap at select venues around town.
SITE WINE
Before they were brewers making excellent beer at Footscray’s Hop Nation, Sam Harbour and Duncan Gibson were winemakers – and they’ve returned to their vinous roots with Site Wine.
Taking hand-picked grapes sourced from around Victoria (chardonnay and pinot noir from the Mornington Peninsula, pinot gris and shiraz from Benalla) the duo turn them into very drinkable naturally fermented, unfined, unfiltered wines that speak of place and variety.
While the reds come in traditional bottles, the whites and rose are canned – perfect for picnics and drinks on the go.
While their barrel-aged beers get the beards talking, their hands-off wines are a truly a site to behold.
SOMMA
Hard seltzer – carbonated water with a boozy kick – has taken the US by storm thanks to its low-cal, low-carb sugar-free status that’s the very adult antidote to an alcopop.
New alcoholic mineral water Somma, made from water drawn from an extinct volcano in regional Victoria, comes in both cucumber and mint, and watermelon and lime flavours.
Spritzy and refreshing and with about half the calories of white wine, it’s soda but not as we know it.
Available at Liquorland, Vintage Cellars and First Choice.
LOVE CAN
It’s already the mixer of choice of every discerning bartender, but now Melbourne-based soft drink maker StrangeLove wants to set the bar for how good a premixed drink can be.
Teaming with Poor Toms distillery, the range includes a G&T, a spritz, and vodka and yuzu soda, banish bad memories of RTDs and get ready to love cans again.
NED WHISKY
They started with an idea to create and Australian whisky, got the ball rolling with a range of RTD cans a few years back and now the dream has come to fruition with the release of the first-batch of individually numbered bottles of Ned Whisky.
With the aim of taking on Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s to give Aussie drinkers a whisky to call their own, Melbourne-based company Top Shelf International has spent $25 million on a state-of-the-art production facility in Campbellfield to do so.
With a retail price of $55 a bottle, Ned is pitched at the accessible rather than artisan end of the market and is available at bottle shops around the country.
NON-ALCOHOLIC DRINKS
ETCH
It’s been a while since the “drink you have when you’re not having a drink” was the only thing to drink when not having a drink, but, thanks to a new wave of products, alcohol-free sipping has never tasted so good.
Launched late last year, Mornington Peninsula-based ETCH has created a range of sophisticated non-alcoholic sparkling drinks that founder Jason Quin hopes will be as at home “around a barbie as a beer or on dining table as a bottle of wine”.
Using native fruits and herbs, the adult sparkling drink comes in three flavours: ZST (finger lime and lemon myrtle), PLM (Davidson plum, riberry and strawberry gum) and HNY (Mornington Peninsula honey and rosewater).
Refreshing, complex and satisfying with nothing artificial added, ETCH looks set to shake and stir it up for those who like their drinks neither shaken nor stirred.
CHANGE COFFEE ROASTERY
It’s changing the world, one cup of joe at a time. World Vision Australia’s first social enterprise, Change Coffee, aims to transform those living in poverty by raising funds for its programs that economically empower women across the globe.
Fairtrade coffee beans are small-batch roasted in Blackburn to three blends – an all-round purpose blend, an Ethiopian yirgacheffe, and a decaf.
Try this coffee with a conscience at Little Things cafe in Blackburn before grabbing some beans for a brew at home.
The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival runs from March 19-20.
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