Food review: Is Mount Erica Hotel the best pub in Melbourne?

COULD this be the best pub in Melbourne? This Prahran eatery and bar looks to have nailed the something-for-everyone holy grail. Let’s go through the checklist.

COULD this be the best pub in Melbourne? Let’s go through the checklist.

Are you greeted by staff with a welcoming smile and G’day? Is there sport on screens? Is there space outside to sit under shade, and a front bar as comfortable for a solo pot as pints with mates?

Is the food good, the wine, too, and — most importantly — are those beers on tap interesting and cold? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

The Mount Erica Hotel might have stood proud on the corner of High St and Williams Rd, Prahran, since 1853, but its current custodians — the team behind Fitzroy’s Marquis of Lorne and Richmond’s Union House, who have teamed up with Fitzroy Town Hall’s Sean Donovan — have created its best incarnation.

Certainly the most handsome. A gleaming white exterior gives way to a timber-tanned front bar area with high tables and stools on one side, a rakish dining room clad in tartan and rattan on the other. The space is large, bright and airy, with a friendly hubbub.

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A caprese salad tops a juicy, perfectly crumbed chicken schnitzel. Picture: Rebecca Michael

FOOD

For all its good looks, it’s Donovan in the kitchen who elevates this pub. Having trained under some of Europe’s best chefs, he creates pub dining rooms that are quietly humble but where keenly priced quality is king.

Here, that looks like bar food including fluffy white bread sandwiching chicken in a cucumber, watercress dressing, served with a bitter leaf salad worth the price of admission alone ($12).

Or hands down the best sausage rolls you’ll be served in a pub that come with tahini yoghurt for dunking ($16). Or a terrific pork terrine studded with pistachios and served with a pile of crunchy crostini ($12).

But this is still very much a pub, with a roster of counter meals — minute steak with egg ($24), burger and chips ($19) — augmented by staples elevated with a Donovan twist: rotisserie chook with a Tuscan bread salad or an inspired take on a parma, where a vibrant caprese salad (tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella) tops a juicy, perfectly crumbed chicken schnitzel ($24). It’s clever, outrageously tasty cooking.

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Expect very tasty cooking from the kitchen at the Mount Erica Hotel. Picture: Supplied

Mount Erica Hotel in Prahran. Picture: Rebecca Michael

DRINK

A dozen taps pour a range of interesting local/New Zealand crafties — Kaiju Krush tropical ale is the perfect summer beer ($6 pot) — but there are also $10 pints of Carlton Draught keeping it real.

A cracking wine cellar that’s filled with predominantly local good stuff keeps both the connoisseur and quaffer happy.

SERVICE

Plentiful, good-natured staff keep the bar humming and the food coming swiftly.

X FACTOR

There’s a great mix of Prahran here; they’ve nailed the something-for-everyone holy grail.

BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

With mains under $30, this is “restaurant” quality at pub prices. Add $15 counter meal weekday lunches — and “Dono’s famous $18 steak night” on Tuesdays — and it becomes
an unbeatable proposition.

VERDICT

A very big tick. A pan-generational winner for Prahran, which is breathing a sigh of
relief that not only is the Mount Erica back, but it’s one of Melbourne’s very best pubs.

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