Victoria publishes every active liquor licence as a monthly spreadsheet with capacities and coordinates, so what survives here is proven by the state. What the spreadsheet also proved is that two of this road's old doors are dead. One seat has been filled to house standard; the other stays empty until a room earns it, because padding a road is worse than shortening it.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Young & Jackson
The corner building went up in 1853 as a residence with a butcher's shop below, and it opened as the Princes Bridge Hotel in July 1861 with John T Toohey holding the licence. Henry Figsby Young and Thomas Jackson arrived in 1875 and gave the room the only name the city uses. Upstairs hangs Chloé, painted by Jules Lefebvre in 1875, the nude the National Gallery took down after three weeks of Sunday scandal in 1883. Henry Young bought her at auction in 1908 and she has watched the bar ever since, whatever the pub's own site says about 1909. In 1888 the Foster brothers chose this pub among the first to pour their new lager, so a pot of lager under her gaze is not a habit, it is provenance. Flinders Street station waits over the road, and the doors open at ten every day.
the building 1853, the hotel July 1861, this name since 1875 · daily from 10am till late · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Caretaker's Cottage
Behind Wesley Church a bluestone cottage of 1914, built for the church caretaker and protected with the rest of the complex on the state register, now trades as what its owners call probably Victoria's smallest pub. Matt Stirling, Rob Libecans and Ryan Noreiks, three bartenders with the world lists on their timesheets, opened it in March 2022 with no bookings and about twenty five seats. The order is settled: a pint of Guinness with the freezer martini beside it, the pairing the World's 50 Best judges called the best boilermaker in the country while ranking the room 23rd in 2023, 21st in 2024 and 19th in 2025, top bar in Australasia. Guinness outsells everything else every time, by the owners' own account. Records turn on the house vinyl, punch sits on the card, and the monthly menu never touches the stout. Doors at four, Monday to Saturday, and never on a Sunday.
the cottage 1914, behind a church of 1858; the pub since March 2022 · Mon to Thu 4pm till midnight, Fri and Sat till 1am, SHUT SUN · verified Aug 2026
- 3 · The Anchor
Supper Inn
Up a worn staircase off Celestial Avenue, white tablecloths under hard light, and a Cantonese kitchen whose menu has barely moved since 1977, a date that rests on the food writers rather than any register. The licence permits trading to three in the morning and the room uses it, every night of the week. Roast duck and congee late is the order, the duck hacked over rice, the congee thick with century egg if you ask. Chefs from across the city climb these stairs after their own passes close, which is the only review that matters. Cantonese is the language of the room, and the Chinese press files it simply as the supper shop. The stair door sits at 15 Celestial Avenue and the licence counts 124 seats. The jury eats late, and it eats well.
cooking since 1977 by the food writers' account; the licence renewed for 2026 is the state's · daily 5.30pm till about 2.30am · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Last Call
The Mitre Tavern
Heritage Victoria will say only that the building probably predates 1850 and that nobody knows who put it up. What the state register does record is that it was licensed as the Mitre Tavern in 1867 under a publican named Henry Thompson, and that in the early twentieth century it was the favourite meeting place of the T Square Club, an informal society of architects and artists. The external fabric has been protected since 1980. The house lager is a real beer with a passport, Mitre Lager, brewed for the room in the Blue Mountains and listed on the tavern's own beer card among forty seven taps. Take it out to the four hundred square metres of courtyard with no roof on it, which the council calls the largest beer garden in the city.
a building probably before 1850, licensed as the Mitre in 1867 · Mon to Fri 11am till midnight, Sat from noon, Sun till 11pm · verified Aug 2026
🎁 The two we lost. Bar Americano, ten standing room spots on Presgrave Place, closed on 29 October 2022 after eleven years; the owner survived the pandemic but not a new landlord, and the whole lane is now dry on the state register. Its seat is now held by Caretaker's Cottage, verified to house standard. The Croft Institute closed in 2020, and its door at 21 to 25 Croft Alley belongs to somebody else now, a nightclub called Solace with a 250 capacity licence, which is a different kind of night entirely. Its seat stays open; candidates with live licences, not yet verified: Gimlet, Heartbreaker.