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The Best Pubs In North Melbourne For Your Next Cheeky Pint
The best pubs in North Melbourne are equally warm and welcoming; beloved locals that are always open for a pint, a parma and friendly chat.
North Melbourne has never played the obvious card. Just beyond the CBD and Queen Victoria Market, the former 19th-century municipality once known as Hotham carries serious pub heft: public bars, bluestone lanes, workers’ cottages and grand Victorian hotels built for thirsty locals, market traders, footy crowds and anyone drifting up from the city for a better pint. The history runs deep. The North Melbourne Hotel opened in 1854, the Town Hall Hotel began life as the Errol Hotel in 1872, and the Courthouse site was tied to early Hotham council life before the suburb took the name we know today.
Today, the best pubs in North Melbourne still carry that sense of grit and gathering, only with sharper kitchens, better wine lists and restored dining rooms that make a parma, pint or Sunday roast feel like a very good idea. From Errol Street stalwarts to West Melbourne locals, these are the pubs worth claiming a table at now.
Central Club Hotel
Central Club Hotel is what happens when an old North Melbourne pub gets a serious glow-up without losing its pub bones. Set near Queen Victoria Market, this restored Victoria Street beauty works the market-to-table angle hard, with share plates, hand-rolled pasta, parmas, steaks and fish and chips that make a second pint feel inevitable. The drinks list is almost entirely Australian, the wine selection has real personality, and downstairs, Depot Bar adds a moody little whisky detour for anyone not quite ready to go home. North Melbourne pubs rarely scrub up this well.
240 – 248 Victoria Street, North Melbourne
Courthouse Hotel
Courthouse Hotel has mainstay status on Errol Street, and for very good reason. First built as the Peacock Hotel in 1857 before taking the Courthouse name in 1861, this North Melbourne beauty has lived a dozen lives and still knows exactly how to hold a room. The front bar brings old-pub charm, vintage vinyl and hand-pumped ales; the kitchen goes hard on eggplant parmigiana, pork croquettes, beef and tomato pie, Sunday roast and a very convincing sticky date pudding. Add boutique rooms upstairs, and the Courthouse becomes more than a favourite local, one with history, heart, and a literal dream refurb.
86-90 Errol Street, North Melbourne
The Victoria Hotel
The Victoria Hotel has been holding down the corner of Peel and Victoria since 1863, which is a very long time to know exactly what people want from a pub. No grand reinvention required: just taps pouring, footy on the screens, a pool table upstairs and a menu that understands the brief. Jaffles by day, burgers, wings and fish and chips by night, with enough old North Melbourne in the walls to make a quick pint turn into another.
Ground Floor/312-316 Victoria Street, North Melbourne
The Town Hall Hotel
The Town Hall Hotel is the Townie to those who know it, and North Melbourne is better for every scuffed inch. This Errol Street survivor has been pouring pints, feeding locals and backing live music for decades, with rock memorabilia on the walls and a beer garden out back fitted with heated booths for long nights that refuse to call last drinks early. The menu is gloriously pubby: jalapeño poppers, onion rings, parmas, steaks, roasts, burgers and beer-battered flake with chips and tartare. Add weekday happy hour, weekend bands and a public bar that still feels like it belongs to the suburb, and you’ve got one of North Melbourne’s great originals.
33 Errol Street, North Melbourne
The Last Jar
The Last Jar is the Irish pub North Melbourne gets to brag about. Set on the Elizabeth and Queensberry corner, it does the good stuff with conviction: Guinness and Kilkenny on tap, an extensive whiskey list, Beef and Guinness Pie, Sunday roast and a kitchen that still makes the bread, churns the butter and cures what it can in-house. Wednesdays and Sundays are for traditional Irish sessions, the type that turn dinner into a full pub night before you’ve even opened the whiskey list.
616 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne
Bobbie Peels
Bobbie Peels has lived a few lives, and the current one might be its best. The 113-year-old Queensberry Street pub keeps one eye on its old North Melbourne bones and the other on what people actually want now: rotating taps, proper wine, hand-rolled pasta, market-led specials and a beer garden made for stretching one drink into three. Inside, booth seating, high tables and little hideaway nooks give it range, from a quick knock-off to a full dinner that accidentally becomes the night.
351 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne
Limerick Castle Hotel
Limerick Castle Hotel has held its Errol Street corner since the 1860s, and the room still wears the years well: red carpet, old timber, sport on the screens, and that unmistakable North Melbourne feel. The new-school twist is the kitchen, now in Easey’s territory, which means the pub has swapped standard counter meals for burgers, fried chicken, and potato-cake nostalgia, which makes perfect sense beside a pint. Old pub, loud appetite, no reinvention required.
161 Errol Street, North Melbourne
Prudence
Prudence is technically a bar, but it has enough North Melbourne soul to earn its place among the pubs. A former record store near Queen Victoria Market, it still runs on vinyl, low light, odd little corners and staff with excellent taste in what lands on the turntable. There are tap beers, cocktails, single malts, a long wine list, booths for conspiratorial drinking and a beer garden out back when the night needs more room. Order food in from nearby restaurants, settle under the chandeliers and let Prudence do what it does best: make one drink feel like the start of something.
368 Victoria Street, North Melbourne
The Leveson
The Leveson is the North Melbourne pub for when you want the footy, the parma and the Friday-night energy, but with a little more gloss on the glassware. Its Victorian exterior gives way to a modern bar, dining room, function spaces, and a retractable-roof courtyard built for group bookings that somehow end up bigger than planned. The menu keeps the classics close — chicken parma, schnitzel, fish and chips, Wagyu burger, steak sandwich — then stretches into mussels arrabbiata with guanciale, prawn linguini with Calabrian chilli and grill cuts from Flinders & Co.
Add happy hour, acoustic sets, Saturday DJs and weekly specials for parma, steak, burgers and Sunday roast, and The Leveson earns its place as one of North Melbourne’s most reliable all-rounders.
46 Leveson Street, North Melbourne
Three Crowns Hotel
Three Crowns Hotel has been keeping West Melbourne fed and watered since 1867, and there is no need to overcomplicate the appeal. This is sport on the screen, pool table in play, dogs welcome, beer garden waiting, and classic pub food doing exactly what it should. Come for parmas, steak night, stacked burgers, Sunday roast or Friday’s meat tray raffle with live music from 5pm. Stay because 4pm happy hour has no business being so convivial.
365 Victoria Street, West Melbourne
Looking for more places to have a tipple? Check out these great value happy hours across Melbourne, our favourite new bars, and the coolest cocktail bars in town. And now that the mercury’s dropping, you can get a glass of hot mulled wine at these bars and pubs too.
