The Empress Hotel — Restaurant in Melbourne

I’ve been here only once and the following was my impression: environment and atmosphere were both relaxed and reasonably welcoming.

Generally speaking, the cost was moderate to rather expensive depending on choice of food or drink. Here, there’s a reasonably broad selection of beer on offer (and an impressive looking beer wall menu) both on tap and by the bottle. They have a decent and broad food menu as well and also offer take-away type bar food such as beer battered chips and shoestring fries. I had the former and thought the quality was very decent, and the pint of on tap beer that I had was very nice.

I’m not certain as to whether vegetarian food is offered here. In fact, I don’t think there’s much vegetarian food on offer aside from beer battered chips and shoestring fries. However, they do at least have a pizza named Zucchini Pizza which i assume is vegetarian, so that’s good.

Clientele is, basically, quite mixed—some young-ish people such as typically-aged students, middle aged people, people in their 30s and older folk.

Aesthetically, I found this place to be okay, that is to say, neither poor nor great in this area. However, I did think the partly dimmed lighting was a lovely touch and it added to the calm and chilled out atmosphere.

Generally speaking, another good aspect of this place is the obvious lack of pretentiousness with regard to both staff and patrons—this is something I always particularly appreciate and it’s rather surprising given the pub’s location. I only hope that this observation is not peculiar to quiet evenings.

There’s a good amount of space, and, on the whole, the layout appears reasonably spacious with the main bar area separate from three connecting yet distinct spaces, and each of these spaces has very good seating availability and are of a good size, particularly the room to the left of the wall menu.

There’s also outdoor seating along the Scotchmer street side of the establishment, as far as I’m aware.

One of the areas is open to those who wish to smoke or vape and it lacks a roof so rain can be an issue, particularly when faced with wet seats, and one is not allowed to eat in this area; only smoking, vaping and drinking permitted.

There’s no wheelchair access, as far as I know and, though I’m not sure, I doubt the existence of wheelchair accessible parking.

I visited on a reasonably quiet evening but I’m sure this place usually gets very busy, particularly on Friday and Saturday evenings.

The bar staff are very friendly and quite welcoming and patient, and the clientele are, on the whole, well behaved and quite friendly, and people seemed relaxed to me.

As already stated, there’s plenty of seating in just about all areas and, aside from this, there’s a TV in the main bar area as well as a pool table, and there was music playing throughout the place which I always appreciate a great deal.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure whether they have live bands playing here.

I’m unsure as to their closing times but, based on experience, I assume that it would be open until somewhere between midnight and 3am at least on Friday and Saturday nights.

The main reason for my giving 3 stars (I actually wished to give 3.5 stars) was a lack of energy to the place (was rather lacklustre) which I’m pretty sure was merely due to it being a quiet night. My other reasons for my rating was the cost of the bar food and the policy of no eating in the smoking/vaping area. At least drinks were allowed, so, I’ll give them that.

I look forward to visiting again on one of the above-mentioned evenings (a Friday or Saturday night) after which I hope my rating will increase from 3 stars to 4 or 5 stars.

I very much hope that my review was helpful to any readers it may attract, and thanks for taking the...

Food is ok, not really up to local expectations or the price. Beer selection was good.

The pasta was a bit soupy, the eggplant Parma was hard and bitter, the fish burger was just ok, and the steak had a nice jus was cooked to the correct temperature but didn’t have a great sear on it. Fries were all fine but needed seasoning. I saw the pizza go by and it looked like it would be nice for the half price pizza night price. For the prices and fare on offer, as well as local competition, I expected better.

Bar staff and servers were very nice, efficient and accommodating, but the manager had a hall monitor vibe - shooshing kids in a loud bar, cut off one girl from another table who seemed sober and reasonably offended, and proceeded to supervise the beer garden with a frown from his stoop, which is the reason for the two star rating. Managing a bar is a difficult job but they didn’t get the balance right on this occasion and made us feel uncomfortable and killed the good atmosphere.

The beer garden has a nice jungle vibe...

Don’t go here if you’re looking for a family friendly vibe. The owner, Guy, who despite apparently being a family man himself, went out of his way to make me and a group of families enjoying an early Friday evening dinner, awkward, threatening to kick us out at one point. His issue was that our kids were running into a roped off area for a private function, who seemingly hadn’t even arrived yet (we were there from 5:30 - 7:30) and only started to trickle in as we were leaving. Incidentally this private function was also a group of families which made Guys behavior even stranger. We won’t be back for sure as it seems Guy was happy to tack our money (close to $1K by my estimate) but couldn’t handle a few kids running up and down in his beer garden.

Wow….update - read the owner’s response below - proves my point exactly. Disrespectful and no sense of customer service or community....