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St Kilda keeps a deep bench of kitchen-pubs, and this guide ranks the suburb's gastropubs by their Curateria Score and what reviewers keep saying on their most recent visits, with chains and far suburbs left out. This is a pub list by design, the rooms St Kilda goes to for a Sunday roast, a steak night or a parma with a pint, and these are the ones locals actually name. Here is how they sit this month.
Top of the list is Hotel Barkly, the pub reviewers rate for the Sunday roast and the wings, the Sunday roast in Yorkshire pudding and a Cajun steak beside the Wednesday dollar chicken wings, bangers and mash and a sticky date pudding. The Cross - St Kilda follows, the pub reviewers come to for the roast and the spice bag, the Sunday roast of lamb or beef and a Thursday steak night beside a chicken spice bag and a Scottish breakfast with haggis.
The Lion & Wombat is the pub reviewers rate for the roast and the pie, the Sunday roast of beef, chicken or lamb shank with Yorkshire pudding and a pork belly pie beside a scotch egg and a sticky toffee pudding. The Fifth Province Irish Bar & Restaurant is the Irish bar reviewers come to for the fish and chips and a pie, the fish and chips and a Sunday roast beside bangers and mash, a steak sandwich, a braised lamb shoulder pie and a chicken and leek pie on mash. Freddie Wimpoles is the pub reviewers rate for the burgers and the schnitzel, the pub burgers and a chicken schnitzel beside trivia-night snacks.
Jimmy O'Neills Whiskey & Alehouse is the alehouse reviewers come to for the spice bag and a pie, the spice bag and a beef and Guinness pie with mash and peas beside a chicken fillet roll, a Full Irish breakfast and a stuffed chicken. The Prince Hotel is the pub reviewers rate for the parma and the Sunday roast, the chicken parmigiana and a Sunday roast beside woodfired cabbage skewers with stracciatella, cavatelli with basil pesto and espresso martinis. The Dick Whittington Tavern is the tavern reviewers come to for the roasts and the parma, the Sunday roasts and a chicken parmigiana beside a chicken schnitzel, salt and pepper calamari and pizza.
The list closes across the suburb. Post Office Club Hotel is the pub reviewers rate for the steak frites and the fish and chips, the steak frites with beurre de Paris and fish and chips with mushy peas and curry gravy beside a Sunday roast, barramundi, a gnocchi mushroom ragu and a steak tartare. Trinity St Kilda is the pub reviewers come to for the cheeseburger and the grazing boards, the cheeseburger and grazing boards ordered by the metre beside finger food platters and tacos from the food truck. Jekyll & Hyde is the pub reviewers rate for the roast and the scotch eggs, the Sunday roast with Yorkshire puddings and a beef brisket Yorkshire pudding beside scotch eggs and a sticky date caramel cake. And The Carpenter's Ruin rounds it out, the pub reviewers come to for the roast and the steak night, the Sunday roast of beef and chicken and a steak night beside a double cheeseburger, bone marrow, mussels, oysters and a spaghetti alle vongole.
If a pub night is the thread you want to pull, follow it across the city. There is a guide to the best gastropubs in Melbourne for the citywide picture, and a cross-cuisine tour of the best restaurants in St Kilda for the rest of the suburb.
Every pub 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 gastropub page the cohort is the kitchen-pubs themselves, the rooms St Kilda goes to for a parma, a steak night or a Sunday roast with a pint, so the order reads as the genuine local pub ranking rather than a broad restaurant list. The corpus is Victorian and scored; no AI writer ever reads it. The ranking is arithmetic; the words are ours.
Explore more Gastropub 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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