Arbory Bar & Eatery Melbourne is the newest venture from the team at HQ Group and is located in the space formerly occupied by the Flinders Street station portion of the Sandridge rail line, which has been sitting idle since it was decommissioned in 1987. The City Lane was invited to the launch event and we were keen to check out the space and the food and drink on offer. It’s been 4 years in the making, and the view of the Yarra is unquestionably brilliant, but is everything else just as good?
At one end of the 150 metre long bar, which connects the Princes Bridge and Southbank footbridge, was a table that was serving a variety of charcuterie, in line with the philosophy of good quality accessible food.
Of special mention has to be the delicious ham which was being carved to order at the end of the table.
There are a variety of local and foreign craft beers on offer at Arbory. Nothing too fancy or outrageous, but a solid selection of crowd pleasing favourites from Brooklyn Brewery, Mountain Goat, Stone & Wood and Mornington Brewery to name just a few. A decent selection of wines, spirits and cocktails are also on offer, including a white and a red wine on tap from DOC wines.
It’s going to be hard to resist popping in for a drink when alighting from a train at Flinders Street station and seeing people having fun on the other side of the fence.
As mentioned earlier, the food on offer at Arbory is high quality and accessible. During the event guests were treated to a variety of samples from the main menu. the cheesy toasts with steak tartare and mayo in the foreground of the picture below were one of the highlights of the night – basically they tasted like a really good mini burger.
Other samples from the menu included artichokes with mozzarella, arancini, fish burgers and oysters. All very much in line with the desire to serve up food that’s accessible and of good quality.
On the full menu that chef Nicholas Bennett (ex Fatto) has put together, diners can expect, in addition to full sized versions of the sample dishes that were brought out at the launch, things such as double cheeseburgers, salted caramel sundaes and prawn and clam spaghetti.
The space, which was designed by architects Jackson Clements Burrow & Associates really works well in the context of the area. There are so many parts of Melbourne that are sitting unused that are prime for things such as this and we loved seeing the 150 meter long stretch of land being brought back to life.
We were really impressed by what HQ group have done with Arbory Bar & Eatery and would happily return again. With such a convenient location, and a nice focused selection of drinks and food, this might be sooner rather than later.
Arbory Bar & Eatery
Flinders Walk
Melbourne
Victoria 3000
Australia
Telephone: (03) 9621 2260
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://arbory.com.au/
Open
Sun – Sat: 7:30am to late
