Four New and Revitalised South-Side Pubs To Sink Pints At

There’s never a bad time to visit one of Melbourne’s best pubs. But as we move into the cooler months, a long lunch in a cosy heritage space starts to feel more and more attractive. The good news is, the city’s pub scene is fizzing at the moment. We got three great new players in the first quarter of this year, and four others have since come under new ownership, just reopened or plan to reopen shortly.

O’Connell’s Hotel, South Melbourne

The O’Connell Centenary Hotel, on the corner of Montague and Coventry streets, has been a South Melbourne staple since 1873. It’s often credited as one of Melbourne’s first gastropubs, with a series of talented chefs – including Greg Malouf and Adrian Richardson – passing through the kitchen since 1991. The iconic site reopened earlier this month, courtesy of the team at Prahran’s excellent Flying Duck Hotel.

The new menu features native ingredients and plenty of seafood, playing on the the pub’s location near Hobsons Bay and the Gold Coast upbringing of head chef Michael Conlon. Standouts include prawns with smoked macadamia butter and native bush tomato, Moreton Bay bugs with saltbush and kohlrabi, and market fish of the day with a classic sauce grenobloise. More substantial options include a slow-cooked saltbush lamb shoulder, and a steak menu featuring Wagyu from Cape Grim and Altair, and Galician-style cuts from Vintage Beef Co. These are all done in the red gum-fired Josper oven – a long-term fixture of the O’Connell’s kitchen. 

Another nod to former tenants is the Silk Road Martini – a tribute to Malouf’s pioneering Middle Eastern pub menu of the 1990s. A continent-spanning mix of vodka, pickled chilli brine, cucumber and rosewater, it’s listed alongside other house specialities such as the Montague Street Highball (lemon myrtle gin, ginger ale, lime and burnt rosemary) and the Red Gum Old Fashioned (bourbon, demerara sugar, burnt orange and red-gum smoke). 407 Coventry Street, South Melbourne.

The Angel of Malvern, Malvern

The 170-year-old pub on the corner of Glenferrie and Dandenong roads has previously traded as The Gardiner Hotel, The Railway Hotel and simply The Angel. The ground floor public bar just reopened with a modern bistro and a glass-walled atrium equipped with a woodfire heater and a cinematic 165-inch screen for the footy.

It’s part of Kokoda Property’s Malvern Collective, a $450 million development on the 4720-square-metre site, which the developer bought in 2017. The two towers include 205 apartments, plus a retail precinct with a grocer, barber, jeweller, cellar door, cafe and fitness studio. A wine bar named Flores, and cocktail and listening bar dubbed Lately, will open on levels one and two in June. 

Executive chef Justin North (formerly of Sydney’s Hotel Centennial and Mister Percy) designed the menus across all three floors, with former HQ Group (Arbory, Her) chef Josh Rudd leading The Angel of Malvern kitchen. Expect vodka rigatoni, slow-cooked lamb and paprika sausage rolls, chicken schnitzel with tarragon gravy, line-caught fish with triple-fried chips, and an Angus beef burger on a milk bun. There’s also a grill menu featuring O’Connor steaks and a Bannockburn half chook with autumn greens. Desserts of ginger sticky date with Starward whisky caramel sauce and baked Basque cheesecake with roast winter fruit and vanilla cream are hard to turn down.

The drinks list is concise, too. Among the tap beers is the house Angel Lager, made in collaboration with Reservoir brewers Hawkers. A short by-the-glass wine menu includes some lo-fi local drops as well as a few European options; the bottle list is more extensive, favouring Kiwi, French and Italian wines alongside the Aussie labels. 641 Dandenong Road, Malvern.

The Prince, St Kilda

Few buildings in Melbourne have a history as varied and important as The Prince of Wales – now simply known as The Prince. Today, the historic complex houses a ground- floor pub and wine shop, a spacious upstairs bandroom, a rooftop function deck and 39 hotel rooms. But it’s fair to say that after an overhaul in 2018 and a string of hands-off operators, it’s been plodding along without much direction. 

Grant Smillie is here to change that. The experienced restaurateur runs Marmont in Southbank and co-owns one-of-a-kind bar Ponyfish Island. Before that, he spent years running some of Hollywood’s most hyped restaurants, EP & LP, Strings of Life and Grandmaster Recorders. And before that, he was a resident DJ at Onelove, the pre-eminent club night of the early 2000s, which started in The Prince bandroom and spawned a music label and national festival in Stereosonic.

After taking possession of the site, Smillie has already begun transforming the upstairs function deck into a rooftop bar that will open to the public in time for summer. It’s the first of several big changes that will roll out through 2026, hopefully transforming The Prince back into the buzzy hub it once was. In particular, he’s keen to shrink the menu, rub off a bit of the pub’s polish and return it to being a simple locals’ boozer.

His biggest plan, though, is an interior renovation to connect the bandroom, pub and upstairs deck, currently all separate spaces accessed by individual entrances. Elsewhere, such as in the bandroom, he’s happy to change almost nothing in terms of aesthetics. The music program will also remain as diverse as it is now, though Smilie is keen to work with local promoters to bring back big-name international DJs, as it was during the Onelove days. 2 Acland Street, St Kilda.

The Cherry Tree Hotel, Cremorne

This historic site has lived many lives since it started pouring pints close to 170 years ago. After changing hands once again in December 2025, the beloved corner pub is undergoing a major renovation, with plans to reopen in June.

Chef Daniel Hilton (The Graham Hotel, The Leveson, The Wayside Inn) and business partner Keith Gallacher (former manager at the Railway Club Hotel and The Graham Hotel) are leading the revamp, which started as a facelift but quickly grew in scope, due to structural issues that couldn’t be ignored. Along the way, they’ve been consulting with locals to make sure the pub keeps its soul. 

The new, more spacious art deco-style design by Studio Y draws inspiration from the pub’s earlier years, maintaining the bones of the building. A second window now opens onto Balmain Street, bringing in more natural light, while the popular al fresco area on the footpath remains.

The Cherry Tree has always poured beers from local and independent brewers, and that will stay a core focus, with Victorian labels like Bodriggy, Co-Conspirators, Stomping Ground, Jetty Road and Venom on rotation. 

On food, expect parmas, burgers, roasts and – Hilton’s specialty, after his tenure at the then woodfire-focused Wayside Inn – steaks done in classic style, with mushroom or pepper sauce and mash. Hilton is also excited about a dry-aged pork cotoletta with charred wombok slaw and burnt butter caper sauce, and a Welsh rarebit croquette with malt vinegar mayo and pickled mustard seeds. 53 Balmain Street, Cremorne.