First Look: The Bodriggy Brewing Team Reopens Collingwood’s Historic Albion Hotel

The historic site on the corner of Smith Street and Perry Street in Collingwood has lived many lives and gone by many different names since it first opened in 1847. In the ’90s it was the Punter’s Palace; more recently it was Perry’s, an event space by Blackhearts & Sparrows. But for its first 120 years, it was known as the Albion Hotel.

Two weeks ago, new owners Pete Walsh and Anthony Daniel resurrected it as the Albion once again, with a redesign that aims to channel the venue’s 1970s heyday.

Walsh and Daniel, who also own Bodriggy Brewing Co, led a full renovation, expanding the kitchen and leaning into the venue’s mixed late-19th-century and mid-20th-century charm.

“We wanted people to walk into the Albion and think it was the same Albion from 1975,” Walsh tells Broadsheet. “Our mood board was mostly old photos of [Crocodile Dundee star] Paul Hogan at the bar during that era.”

The pub’s centrepiece is a large, U-shaped bar finished with green tiles and stained glass. The walls are lined with dark timber walls and there’s furniture to match, plus a combination of tartan carpet and wooden flooring.

Bodriggy tap beers are a prime focus, available exclusively by the schooner. There are also four tap wines on rotation, available by the glass or carafe, plus a selection of cocktails.

Walsh recommends the Marmalade Margarita, with blanco tequila, mandarin and sour orange, and the Purple Disco Machine, a Caribbean-inspired blend of rums with coconut, yam and guava.

The food menu centres around pub classics, but drawing on chef Johnny Dominguez’s Mexican heritage and Latin American cuisines. The oysters aguachile, dressed with cucumber, red onion and crispy jalapeno, riffs on a Mexican marinated prawn dish of the same name.

There are also cheese-stuffed jalapeno tacos served on blue-corn tortillas; a torta stuffed with 12-hour braised beef brisket and served with a side of consommé for dipping, birria-style; and for dessert, a glazed churro ice-cream sandwich made from two cruller-sized discs of deep-fried choux.

On weekdays, the pub attracts a mellow crowd looking to enjoy a casual dinner or post-work pint. But Walsh says weekends are a bit livelier, with DJs on rotation “for punters wanting to kick on with something more than background music”.

The Albion Hotel
314 Smith Street, Collingwood
(03) 9965 0996

Hours:
Mon to Sun 12pm–late

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