The best cocktail bars in Fitzroy right now

Fitzroy's drinking strip runs Brunswick and Gertrude Streets, and this guide ranks the suburb's cocktail bars by their Curateria Score and what reviewers keep saying on their most recent visits, with chains and far suburbs left out. This is a bar list by design, so the order is the rooms Fitzroy goes to for a drink, with the kitchen noted where a bar earns its place on the plate too. These are the bars Fitzroy locals actually name. Here is how they sit this month.

Top of the list is Viet Rose, the bar reviewers rate at the top of the suburb, a room reviewers come to for the drinks and a plate. Evies Disco Diner follows, the disco diner reviewers come to for the cocktails and the pub food, the cocktails and shots beside the kitchen's pub plates.

Kent St Bar is the bar reviewers rate for the craft beer and the cocktails, the craft beer selection and reasonably priced cocktails in a social room. Rocco's Bologna Discoteca is an Italian bar reviewers come to for a meatball sub and a vodka rigatoni, the original meatball sub and a rigatoni al vodka beside a hot honey focaccia, a pork and fennel sausage casarecce and a cannoli soft serve, framed as the bar it is. The Rooks Return is the bar reviewers rate for the whisky sour and a pickleback, the whisky sour and a pickleback with house chilli brine beside a craft beer selection and cocktails.

Black Pearl is the bar reviewers come to for the classics done properly, the custom martini and a Negroni beside a Grasshopper, a Nebula and a Revolver. Palay is a Filipino room reviewers rate for the sizzling sisig and an ube martini, the sizzling sisig with sous vide egg and crispy pata beside a kinilaw sa gata, pandesal with truffle butter and an ube martini, named as the kitchen-and-bar it is. Bad Decisions Bar is the bar reviewers come to for the cocktails, the cocktails and a Long Island iced tea beside bottled beers.

The list closes across the suburb. Bonny is the bar reviewers rate for the kitchen alongside the drinks, the Sher Wagyu steak frites and oysters beside arancini, a miso butterfish, udon and barramundi. Bar Open is the bar reviewers come to for the Negroni and the hidden kitchen, the Negroni made with precision and a pasta burrito beside secret kitchen sandwiches and off-menu plates. Radio Bar & Cafe is the bar reviewers rate for the beers and the cocktails, the beers on tap and mixed cocktails beside cafe-style snacks. And Punters Club rounds it out, the bar reviewers come to for the wings and a drink, the fried chicken wings and pub snacks beside the cocktail list.

If a night out is the thread you want to pull, follow it across the city. There is a guide to the best cocktail bars in Melbourne for the citywide picture, and a cross-cuisine tour of the best restaurants in Fitzroy for where to eat before or after.

How we ranked it

Every bar here carries a Curateria Score built from its full review history, then weighted toward its most recent hundred reviews so the order reflects the room as it runs today, not as it ran two years ago. We hold the cohort to this one suburb and a tight inner-Melbourne radius, roughly 15km of the city, and we drop the multi-location chains and national franchises that trade on a logo more than a local following, so what is left reads as the genuine local order. Because a long-running room collects more reviews than a newcomer, we shrink the raw average toward the cohort mean for places with thin review counts, so a handful of glowing reviews cannot leapfrog a room a thousand diners have judged. For a cocktail bar page the cohort is the bars themselves, so the order reads as the rooms Fitzroy goes to for a drink, with the kitchen noted where a bar earns its place on the plate as well as the pour. The corpus is Victorian and scored; no AI writer ever reads it. The ranking is arithmetic; the words are ours.

Keep exploring

Explore more Cocktail Bar in Fitzroy across Melbourne on Discover ->

Every venue here is ranked by its Curateria Score, a recent-review-weighted quality signal that leans on what diners are saying now, not years ago. Keep browsing Melbourne, sorted by Curateria Score, on Discover.

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