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St Kilda drinks by the bay, 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 St Kilda goes to for a drink, with the kitchen noted where a bar earns its place on the plate too. These are the bars St Kilda locals actually name. Here is how they sit this month.
Top of the list is St LuJa | Cocktail Bar, the bar reviewers rate at the top of the suburb for the craft cocktails and a few oysters, the house-infusion and whiskey-based cocktails and Guinness on tap beside Tasmanian oysters, scallops and chips. Hotel Esplanade follows, a bar reviewers come to for the pub plates with a drink, the T's Chook Roll and a Sunday roast beside a parma, corn and cheese croquettes and a Mya Tiger banquet, framed as the room it is.
29th Apartment is the bar reviewers rate for the sangria and the snacks, the sangria by the jar at excellent value and house cocktails beside bar snacks. KORR JEE is a kitchen-and-bar reviewers come to for the roast chook and an espresso martini, the half roast chicken and a chicken parma beside a salmon burger, fish and chips and an espresso martini, named as the room it is. Captain Baxter is a bar reviewers rate for the banquet and the steaks, the shared banquet menu and charcoal-grilled steaks beside fried chicken with mango-mayo and hand-cut chips, framed as the room it is.
Dogs Bar is the bar reviewers come to for the bar food and a drink, the curly fries with pesto aioli and the Cochon de Lait of cornbread with pork shoulder beside corn riblets with chipotle and guacamole, mac and cheese and a cajun gumbo. Iddy Biddy Bar is the bar reviewers rate for the cocktails and a parma, the creative cocktails and a rump steak parma special beside pub classics. Lucien Bar is the bar reviewers come to for the signature cocktails, the house signature cocktails and a curated wine selection.
The list closes across the suburb. Chronicles Bar is the bar reviewers rate for the martinis and the flights, the espresso martini and custom cocktails beside a craft beer selection and wine flights. Lady Peacock is the bar reviewers come to for the signature pours, the Lady Ambrosia signature cocktail and an Earl Grey gin cocktail beside craft cocktails with fresh ingredients and a high tea service. The Back Room St Kilda is the bar reviewers rate for the cheap pints and a slice, the cheap pints and good grub beside pizza brought in. And Red Eye Bar rounds it out, the bar reviewers come to for the cocktails and the bingo, the cocktails and cold beers beside cheap drink specials and a bingo night.
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 St Kilda for where to eat before or after.
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 St Kilda 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.
Explore more Cocktail Bar in St Kilda 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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