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Caretaker's Cottage

Melbourne

• Accolades
• The Best Bar in Australasia 2026, sponsored by Mr Black

A sipper’s sanctuary in Melbourne’s business district

Caretaker's Cottage may be small, but what it manages to do is nothing short of mighty. The popular Melbourne CBD bar is a favourite of off-duty hospitality staff, and known for three things: a bracingly cold freezer martini made on its own custom gin from a local Victorian distillery; a pint of Guinness it can reliably claim is among the best-poured pints in the city, if not the country; and warm, welcoming hospitality. 

Caretaker's Cottage opened beneath the Melbourne CBD's skyscrapers in 2022, next door to a church – the bar's named is derived from the function this little cottage once had as home to those looking after the grounds of the faithful. Since near the beginning, the menu has changed each month – aside from that martini, the Guinness and a house punch – complete with a total redesign of the aesthetic. The ownership trio have worked at some of the world's best bars, though you wouldn't know it – they describe the Cottage as their little pub, and it's a publican's sense of hospitality they offer. The hospitality is so renowned, in fact, that the bar took home the Michter's Art of Hospitality Award in 2024. It's a busy bar with queues most nights from when they open at 4pm every day (apart from Sundays), but it's in the queue at Caretaker's Cottage where you'll first encounter their hospitality – and will see you inside at one of many nooks quickly; better still if you're sat at the small bar inside to watch the bartenders mixing drinks, bantering with guests and spinning records, music flowing through their custom-built Pitt & Giblin speakers.

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