Westgarth watering hole Donny’s joins a new generation of venues broadening our horizons on what exactly a modern public house can look like.
When does a pub pass the pub test? How negotiable is it that there’s a parma, Carlton Draught, room for 400? Must it be behind a facade where pints have been pouring for a century? Do you have to inherit and reinterpret an old boozer, or can you create a new one from the ground up and slap the “pub” moniker on it? What if the walls can’t talk?
From Caretaker’s Cottage to The Carpenter’s Ruin, a new generation of venues is broadening our horizons on what exactly a modern public house can look like. Joining their ranks is new Westgarth watering hole Donny’s – “a small pub in an old terrace” – that’s taken over the bottom-of-High-Street site most recently home to Bar 61.
In a pocket that’s flush with little boltholes for boozing, owners Xavier Byrne and Kris Miles, who met more than a decade ago while working in bars and the winery at Hobart’s MONA, have built a new neighbourhood spot that happily coexists with its neighbours. As a cool change hits on a recent evening, the strip’s street-side seats – at Donny’s, the next-door Low Key, the nearby Ophelia – are full of punters drinking up the drop in the mercury.
Inside at Donny’s, a beautifully motley crew – from those behind the bar to those parked up at it – screams “come one, come all”. Tradies still in high-vis after-dark sink pints alongside a suited-up mum and daughter nailing stand-up gildas and fizz at the bar. Staff are disarmingly genuine. “You’d tell me if it sucked, right?” asks our bartender, who says margaritas aren’t his forte, despite shaking up a solidly spicy one.
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As you’d expect from a pub, cocktails aren’t the focus, but Donny’s punches above its weight across the board.
First off, it’s got the kind of bang for your buck that most of us need for somewhere to truly become our local in this day and age. Donny’s Social Hour runs from 4pm to 6pm, Wednesday to Friday, with $3 oysters, $10 pints (of a sessionable Donny’s-branded draught by Collingwood brewery The Mill), and the $25 combo of a dry martini and an oyster or a gilda. Outside those hours, though, $12 will still buy you a decent beer or wine.
That value bleeds into chef Chanon Boriharnvanakhet’s (Coda, Tonka) generously sized mains: pub stalwarts that are slightly dressed up and, at times, surprisingly, plate-lickingly delicious. The cotechino – an enormous round of Italian pork sausage – is perched half on a mountain of buttery mash, half in a pool of sticky-sweet jus, with a cluster of crispy fried sage leaves. It’s more winter warmer, sure, but don’t let the fact it’s summer stop you.
See also: the baked Boomer Bay oyster, a salty, spicy, smoky delight luxuriating in almost-bubbling Calabrian chilli butter. It may yet make a hot-mollusc lover out of me.
For a table-blanketing feast, the best seat in the house is the four-person timber booth in the front window, backed by exposed brick, in the glow of its own pendant light and in eye- and ear-shot of the vinyl decks, blasting, perhaps, Together in Electric Dreams.
Out back, past the cosily lit dining room, is a shady courtyard where you might be lucky enough to meet the bar’s namesake: Byrne’s seven-year-old retired greyhound Donny. Because “even when you have a bar named after you, you still aren’t allowed inside”.
The Donny’s site might lack pub heritage, but it more than makes up for it in heart. And maybe that’s the edge of Melbourne’s new mini, idiosyncratic, owner-operated “pubs”. Pubs will never not be popular, but as large hospo groups add more to their portfolios – refurbing them in a similar image – there’s something to be said for a personal touch.
Three new pubs doing their own thing
Daphne
Etta’s Hannah Green was at first reluctant to call her new venue a “public house”, but it makes so much sense. There’s counter service in the front bar, Guinness on tap, and a cotoletta as killer as the weekly specials nights.
52 Lygon Street, Brunswick East, daphne.melbourne
Le Pub
An even more freewheeling sibling for Con Christopoulos’ French Saloon and Kirk’s Wine Bar next door, Le Pub encourages you to grab a bottle from the shelf, pull up a stool and dive into something decadent, like a bone-marrow-crowned pie.
380 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, instagram.com/lepubmelbourne
The Carpenter’s Ruin
What was once Karen Martini’s Mr Wolf pizzeria is now a “mini pub” with nautical style for St Kilda, by the couple who founded neighbouring bar The Walrus. It’s a vibe on a balmy night, with a weekday happy hour and a Sunday roast.
15 Inkerman Street, St Kilda, thecarpentersruin.com.au
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