Melbourne’s Seven Hottest New CBD Bars by Belinda Jackson

As the adage goes, Sydney loves a glitzy knees-up, but Melbourne does great bars. And while Sydney’s now fast on track to emulate its southern cousin’s success at alcoholic alcoves, there’s no harm in visiting Melbourne to see the masters at work. The CBD is humming with new pubs of all shapes and sizes, so with a city hotel room and a good map, you’re ready for a taxi-free bar hop, up and down its laneways and alleyways and, occasionally, bang on a main street.

Best for: off-the-wall vintage addicts

The Parlour, 59-63 Bourke St

The back room ‘up the rear’ of Madame Brussels’ bar has been given a makeover and, bling! the vintage fairy had a field day. While uni students binged on jugs of Pimms and soda in Mme Brussels’ rather breezy 1920s Wimbledon-meets-Somerset-Maugham bar, The Parlour out the back was a warm, inviting den with overstuffed leather and Indian-curry-red sofas.

We instantly loved it for the mahogany drinks trolley, the complementary champagne saucer of crunchy cashews and the seriously attentive staff who pulled up a pew to run through the fun drinks menu and let us taste the separate ingredients of the rustic martinis or a fabulous New Zealand chardonnay. Waistcoats, tartan and a Gatsbyesque vibe from the boys – Jimmy, John et al – make this a great place for a few gels wanting to kick up their mary janes.

Call ahead to find out what quirkiness Miss Pearls has organised for Tuesday’s Ladies’ Nights: a knitting circle, perhaps? Boyz welcome if they keep themselves nice. Campy? Un smidgeon, but a world of fun. Reserve a sofa ahead of time or be prepared to be assessed by a rogue eye ahead of entrance, which, incidentally, requires a bit of searching at street level and a three-flight (or seriously scary lift) climb.

Best for: being seen

Cumulus Inc, 45 Flinders La

With a celeb chef, his celeb architect missus and food critics galore hanging round the kitchen, spanking new Cumulus Inc is quite the place to be seen. And with good reason. Snack here before, during or after drinks – the menu is rich for the palette but, surprisingly, not for the wallet, considering chef Andrew McConnell’s reign at the budget-busting Circa restaurant in St Kilda.

Service is a bit too cool for school, but the design makes up for it: you can make new friends at the long slab along the kitchen and along the bar, but if you’re into the person you’re with, grab a banquette or one of the bistro tables. The drinks shelf groans with quality quaffs – the vodkas feature, of course, Belvedere, USA’s Ketel One and grassy Zubrowska.

We liked the open kitchen, the Aesop toiletries (natch) and the fact it sees both ends of the story, opening for coffee at 7am during the week and closing at 11pm. So, technically, you could nip in for drinks till the last gong, head out on the town, and return for a lifesaving caffeine hit eight hours later… or does that put a spanner in the federal government’s responsible drinking drive?

Best for: secret squirrels

Von Haus 1b Crossley St

You’ll earn serious kudos for knowing about Von Haus. It’s everything we’ve come to love about Melbourne bars: it’s tiny (just 25 handmade stools), in a darkened laneway and deeply, deeply individual. In Melbourne terms, its location is impeccable, here on hip Crossley St.

This part of the building has been empty since WWII, so the story goes, except 20 skips of pigeon poo and a swag of WWII uniforms and shaving kits, whose mirrors now add tarnished glitter to the bar as the kitchen splashback. The limewashed walls are raw, as are the floorboards, but there’s a touch of nana chic in the old-school crockery that the lemon tart (served by the inch!) comes out in, complete with little china jugs for the pouring cream.

All touches of your abstemious gran are banished by the booze menu which includes yummy gems with plenty of by-the-glass serves, though a working man’s pint isn’t out of place in these rustic surrounds. So comfortable in its own skin, the staff didn’t blink when the bar’s iPod shuffled into Morrisey at 10pm on a Saturday night. Icon status is guaranteed.

Best for: architecture freaks

SIglo Level 2, 161 Spring St

This rooftop bar has a head-start (literally) above others as its location is above the landmark Melbourne Supper Club, though it closes earlier, at the regulation 1am, than its late-licenced sister downstairs. Siglo is Melbourne’s answer to Hyatt’s Zeta bar – not for its design, but for the view. Instead of looking out over the QVB, Siglo’s architectural view is of the Victorian façade of the State parliament across the road, which is floodlit for maximum effect, and the gorgeous old ad for the Princess Theatre, on a neighbouring wall.

The downside is that this is still Melbourne – when we visited on a chilly Thursday night, the wind whistled down Spring Street and into our bones, despite the fact that the terrace had more radiators than a tanning clinic. Smokers persevered, we didn’t. Like the Supper Club downstairs, the focus is on good wine from across the globe, served by the glass or bottle (magnum, anyone?), with a price tag to match, so the crowd is dressed up and grown up, but definitely friendly. Come summer, this place rocks.

Best for: glams and homesick Sydneysiders

Silk Road 425 Collins St

“No jeans, mayte,” said Ali from Afghanistan when our denim-clad Italian chaperone arrived before us girls. Fashion police in a Melbourne bar? Sacrebleu! Silk Road is an unashamed Sydney bar 900km south of its heartland. This is a multi-bar, multi-kitchen venue, though on a less imposing scale than Sydney’s Ivy complex. Set in a beautiful old bank, the ground floor and mezzanine are broken up into eight bars including a teppanyaki grill and a cognac bar.

The look is lush and decadent, with glittering 20s-style chandeliers so big that the fear of standing below them is not entirely irrational. Membership costs $500, if you were so inclined, which would help pay for the L’Occitane products in the glam loos.

So if denim is off the dress code (even designer denim, we assume), what’s on? For the blokes, nice collared shirts (this is the financial end of town, remember) and short ‘n’ silky baby doll dresses were getting a run from the many, many small groups of women. In fact, a few more nicely dressed men wouldn’t go astray in this 30+ drinkerie, and the blokes in there were grinning at their luck.

Best for: dapper club gear and flat caps

Sweatshop, 113 Lonsdale St

Everything was slightly sticky in Sweatshop on a Thursday night, which befits a bar with this name. The new basement bar is ‘the mischievous little brother searching through the undies drawer of its big sister, Seamstress,’ a well-regarded restaurant and funky lounge bar up above.

Unfortunately for us, a band of badly-behaved, glass-dropping suits killed the atmosphere, but to be honest, the cold concrete cave wasn’t really doing it for us – we could have been on the street and been as warm, though the staff managed to be both seriously funky and friendly at the same time, and their winter cocktail list reads like a boozer’s dream (check out Tic Tac Toe – ‘it’s a pop discotheque in your mouth and everyone’s coming! A mix of calvados, orange curacao, jasmine syrup and lemon juice’).

The staff keep a list of firsts for weirdest (and of course, original) things done by drinkers, and hey, drinking longnecks out of brown paper bottles is positively encouraged, so it can’t be all bad… worth a second crack.

Best for: the Euro set

Movida Next Door, 1a Hosier La

Is there such thing as too much tapas? Yes, when it turns up in Chinese restaurants and curry houses. Instead, take a refresher course back to the masters at Movida, only this time, go Next Door, to a smaller version of the wildly successful Spanish bar/restaurant just off Fed Square, now only a month old. You may have no idea what half the food and most of the wines are, but that’s the point to the batch of super-smooth, handsome devils that work the tiny 35-seater bar and communal tables.They know their stuff, even if they’re a bit showy at times.

There are no reservations, which means people hanging round the bar, eyeing your seat with avarice, and a visit to the loo means an escort (ok, not so tough for those with a penchant for said handsome devils), who’ll walk you up the graffiti’d lane through two sign-free doors and into the loos: there’s no room in Movida to swing a bidet, let alone a full bathroom.

Other newcomers include the new Silk Pagoda rooftop bar on top of the Red Hummingbird (246 Russell St) and 1806 (169 Exhibition St) which just won the world’s best cocktail list at the New Orleans Tales of the Cocktail festival, beating off all comers including Sydney’s Bayswater Brasserie.