Urban Alley Brewery — Restaurant in Melbourne

UPDATE, 3/11 SUN: thanks for your response, though I can assure you, I did have a look around us (as I was baffled by this behaviour too) at/around the bar, at that time, and there were no customers around us - perhaps there were people at the tables (it is a working bar and restaurant, you'd expect there to be work), but I don't think even this is a reasonable enough excuse for a "no more tasting" even if there was 1 or 2 people waiting behind... surely, if there were people waiting for 30 seconds, you'd think they'd appreciate when it comes to THEIR turn, that time, service and hospitality afforded to them too, afterall, we all wait in a queue for our turn. Plus, it IS a bar, and considering it's pretty quiet around that time (on a Wed late afternoon, no less), I could only imagine it gets much busier normally - I think being a successful bar would mean you should have a busy clientele, but not to the detriment of quality in the service... OK, I'd expect this of an ORDINARY (non craftbeer) bar (but even then they'd still help you choose, right?), having a few people around shouldn't in any way affect your ability to choose your beer: to this point, the server/barman could've asked (upon giving the 3rd taste), "can I help you to choose etc etc because we try to limit samples"... or "I can only offer you one more tiny taste according to our policy", but not a single word was exchanged re helping our selection. So yes,I'm sorry I'm ranting, but 1) there weren't anyone behind us when we started ordering, 2) getting busy is not a reason to be unhelpful for beer selection at a craft beer bar. To this point, I actually asked rather matter-or-factly, "Is 3 tastes between 2 people too much? So what's a reasonable amount of taste we can get before we decide?" He didn't say, "I'm sorry let me help this other gentleman while you decide...", or "can I help you to choose?"... it was simply "no more tasting". No help, just abrupt. Anyway, enough ranting, I came to Melbourne and stayed at the Marriott 2 minutes walk from this bar, and unfortunately the interaction is a bit lacking, albeit, the brewery itself does brew good beer.

ORIGINAL POST, 30/10 WED: From our interaction, our server/staff was rude and definitely NOT keen on beer. HOW MANY HUNDREDS OF CRAFT BEER ESTABLISHMENTS IVE BEEN TO, and NOTHING like this. Look, I really can't be bothered wasting time detailing the craft beer service, but here I go, my pettiness lol. This JUST happened 15 mins ago: we got in, walked straight to the bar, looked at the menu and decided a few samples to taste, according to what you'd think you'd like... as you'd expect at a craft beer establishment. We're at the bar for barely over 30 seconds, upon asking for a 3rd taste (between 2 people), the server said "no more tasting". He could easily have given a small splash of beer to taste instead of a full tasting glass. WE NEEDED TO FIGURE OUT WHAT WE WANTED TO GET, RIGHT? Besides, NO ONE ELSE WAS AT THE BAR. Most craft beer enthusiasts will agree that when you arrive at a craft beer bar, they are usually eager to ask what you're looking for and how best to help your tastebuds. He didn't ask, just served. No problem, but don't get in the way of us choosing the right beer, yeah? Maybe he's tired... but this attitude is, at a craft beer bar, I'd consider actually inhospitable. Enough said. The beers though, are good. I'd put 1 ⭐️, but I figure this is an anomaly of the 1 staff, so 3 ⭐️...

Urban Alley Brewery features a large dining area inside the restaurant and also a spacious seating area outside. The menu is a typical bar menu with pizza and burger options, but also other options available. The beer menu is very extensive with approximately 20 different draft beers and several bottled options as well. The interior is pleasant but pretty noisy when the restaurant is well filled as the restaurant is very open and with no partitions to dampen the noise. There are windows to the brewery so you can see the stillages used in the beer making process. All in all the interior is spartan but fine for the purpose of grabbing some beers and bar food. There are many seats available at Urban Alley Brewery and during our visit the restaurant was only filled to about 20%.

You can either order from the bar, or by using a QR code which also allows you to pay at the table. You can’t open a tab in the bar if you’re seated outside but have to pay upon ordering. The drinks and food are delivered very quickly - we experienced no wait at all. Even the food arrived very quickly.

The bar staff is very friendly and helpful. They give good advice as to which beers might suit your preferences. You can order a five beer sampler, with each beer being 200ml in size. If you care for pint and half-pint sizes you can of course order that as well. We tried all three options, conveniently ordered via the QR code, and we also ordered at the bar. The beers we tried were mostly excellent, and of good quality.

We tried the Beast burger, and it was excellent. The burgers are accompanied by chips (fries). We ordered an additional side of sweet potato fries and they were great too.

We would recommend the Urban Alley Brewery for any beer connoisseur or anyone wanting bar food with great beer,

Ambience: 2/5 Staff: 4/5 Beer selection: 5/5 Food: 3/5 Price/quality: 4/5 (low price,...

Handy to have a good brewpub in the Docklands area, as the precinct can lack a fair bit of character otherwise.

We only drank the Dark Ale, which was a very nice drop, so we can only judge the beer quality on that, and would return to drink it again.

But (isn't there always a 'but?), after having dinner elsewhere, we came to this place for a couple of drinks and dessert.

We ordered via the drinks and food via the QR code, and the beers came out quickly. But after 30 minutes of waiting, our two icecream sandwiches were nowhere to be seen.

My partner asked staff about them, some confusion ensued, but it was sorted soon enough.

The thing is, this dessert was a joke: three miniature icecream sandwiches per plate, which would have been okay had they tasted any good.

The biscuits were like dry Aldi pet treats and the icecream tasted like Home Brand ice confection. Add to this some hundreds and thousands, and we thought we accidentally ordered something from the kids' menu. And the "chocolate" mentioned on the menu was a mere smudge of it buried under the icecream. Just real low quality, low effort no-love fare.

I see that other low-rated reviews on here are mainly centred around the food, too. Again, it's a brewpub, so I wouldn't expect (between the service and quality) food to be central to the business proposition, but if you're not going to offer anything else than a bright noisy sports bar vibe and decent beer as well as food, at least make sure the food offering at least matches half the quality of the central product. Or, let it go and collaborate with a food truck's chef to take care of the food angle.

Tourists staying in Docklands, if you experience something similar here, please don't take this as an indicator of the whole Melbourne brewpub scene: other places care about drinks and food equally, and do it great, so venture beyond...