Prahran Hotel

This place totally exceeded expectations and will become my recommended «go to» in the area for those seeking traditional pub food for a Saturday/​Sunday lunch.
Until here, I’d only had complete let down experiences with pub food in Prahran: overpriced, overcrowded, and lack of quality.
We strolled in here, a group of four, at about 3:30pm on a Saturday as we were craving classic pub fare and beers, and there was plenty of room to sit and drink and grab a table.
The place itself is really cool and nicely laid out. It’s like a traditional pub in the front, with a bottle garden/​modern type seating situation attached to the back/​side of it. It might sound off-​putting as it did to me at first, but I suggest checking it out. There’s a mix of bar tables, banquet tables for big groups, 2 — 6 seater booths stacked on top of each other in old massive concrete pipes by the windows, or two 4 seaters floating above the whole place. Hard to explain haha. Check it out.
We ordered fish and chips, steak, and a burger. And all three were not only good, but exceptional. Some of the best pub food I’d ever had. Light and super tasty.
They also had peroni and fat yak on tap, and the servers, were super, super friendly.
I’ll def return, and until I find another local pub, this place is highly recommended for pub lunches/​beers etc.
(Not sure what it’s like at night, but seemed like it was gonna get quite busy despite being pretty empty in the arvo).

It just love the architecture and design in The Prahran Hotel. It’s certainly an eyeful.
You must come here if only for that.
The hotel is just that, a pub offering pub meals with a pub vibe. Sports on screen, beer on tap. Locals drinking and it seems to be a great spot for family meals.
We dined here earlyish on a Saturday night. I had a salad and my partner had the Parma.
Both were nice. No major wows, a shame because somehow I was expecting a bit more.
I must say the staff were great to us. You win me if you’re good to me.
Look. All in all, it was a good dining experience I don’t think we will be rushing back anytime soon.

The food was great, ambience was excellent. The staff were really lovely and attentive! The live music was amazing and really added the the hip and and indie vibe with really cool seating arrangement that allowed for privacy!

Food and service were great until we were asked to move on /​vacate the table for the next sitting. We said we’d like to stay on for dinner but apparently our table was booked, which then sat empty for the next 2.5hrs. Not sure what the issue was but rest assured that’s the LAST time I’ll be eating here, staff were entirely apathetic and it was the «manager decision».

Okay, there are a few good things about this pub, but there were quite a lot of things that really don’t want to make me come back again. The cool thing were all of the little alcoves where you and your friends could hide away from the rest of the crowd, and in a way it had the feeling of a pub that I would regularly visit back in Adelaide. However that aside, I really did not like the place. It took me ages to be served, all the while the bar staff were standing their chatting with each other (despite all of the other people standing at the bar waiting to be served as well). There is also this massive smokers cage right in the middle of the place, which sort of not only destroyed the space, but made it look really out of place. It seemed as if they wanted to appeal to the smokers, but put very little thought in how they were going to do that.

Saw the middling scores and ate here with a little trepidation. Needn’t have worried. Had the swordfish on a bed of rice with scallops. New on the menu apparently. It was a wonderful dish. Very generous serves of swordfish (two fillets) and rice was lovely and seemingly well doused with seafood stock. About four other people at the table has the same dish and loved it as I did. Well done. Really good dining. Service was very good too. Our young blonde waitress was very efficient and friendly and quite the wag. On the basis of this dish and the good service, I would happily return.

This is a cool suburban pub. Having recently been made over this place is looking slick. The renovation has seen a new inner courtyard area with tables enclosed by water pipes creating a cool place to have lunch or dinner. Drinks are at standard Prahran/​Melbourne prices but they do do a good happy hour offering half priced drinks.
Service at the bar wasn’t amazing on the night I was there however it was a busy Friday night with the place packed out. Early in the night they have live music which gets taken over by a DJ playing some choice tracks as the night gets late.
Snacky food is pretty standard for a pub but have heard the lunch and dinner menu might be nice. Will Definately go back when I’m next looking for a cool comfortable suburban bar to hang out in and have a few casual bevies

Having heard about the Prahran Hotel renovation I was keen to get a look when I was next in the ‘hood (South of the River journeys being strangely rare).
As others have noted, the décor is pretty nice. I was particularly a fan the tables in the concrete pipes. However, despite them being empty (and the pub closing in an hour), we got kicked out because they were «reserved». Tip — nobody ever arrived.
The food is quite good. All pretty standard pub faire, but done pretty damn well. I found it a bit expensive, but perhaps I wasn’t really doing a fair comparison.
So. Well. Swings and Roundabouts. I’d not make a special journey, but if you happen to be a Prahran-​tourist, worth putting your head in for a drink.

Great place inside, I’m just too old for the queue. We came here for a friend’s birthday and had to wait for 45 minutes to get in. I’m in my 30’s and this is just far too long and I wouldn’t have done it hadn’t it been a good friend. They’ve completely refurbished it apparently and it has lots of nice spaces inside. The DJ played a lot of 90s hits which was actually really fun. The bars were a bit crowded but if you get the jugs of long island or pimms, you can avoid the big queues. There were girls throwing up in the bathroom and you get bumped and pushed as it’s quite crowded. You can tell I’m a bit over the club scene, I think. This isn’t a club as it closes at 12:30 and doesn’t have much of a dance floor but it does have enough of the aspects to allow me to choose somewhere else. I haven’t had dinner here though so that might change my mind in the future and I will keep you updated.

Four stars alone for the renovations on this pub. I’ll admit wholeheartedly that my desire to visit the Prahran Hotel was not even remotely for a lunch of ‘pub-​grub’ but rather to take a sticky beak at Justin Norththrop’s architectural make-​over using concrete water pipes. His vision has turned the dining area into a visual feast with dining pods where you dine within the cut-​out of the waterpipes. There’s pods for two or for a more bountiful group the first floor pods are ample for a party of six.
Unfortunately, it seems that along with tarting up their appearance to be something pretty special, their menu has been left by the wayside or at least it seemed that way when we dined in for lunch. $ 50 for a chicken parmigiana, my eggplant parmigiana, a ginger beer and mineral water was, honestly, a bit rich. The items were still at a counter meal level, which is a-​okay, but just not for that price tag. But as I said, I didn’t come for the food and my expectations of the space far exceeded my disappointment at the food.

Having undergone a recent renovation, the Prahran is back open and ready for your business.
As swanky as they’ve attempted to make the new fitout, it does fall short of other places such as Royal Saxon, Prince Alfred (which I can only assume they were trying to emulate).
The menu is varied and unpretentious, zucchini fritters alongside classic pub favourites like burgers and parmas.
The bartender on the Sunday we were there was a bit of a snob. Either one of those people who thinks that they can get away with being a dick and trade off their good looks, or perhaps he was terribly hungover from his own night out.

Ever since reopening, this place has been teaming with happy customers, and that’s because this pub is fricken awesome. It has about 7 different sections, which may displease some people who prefer unity, but I was just too darn excited. None of this moving around from bar to bar, I could just move from room to room! I’m lazy.
Anyway, this pub offers something for everyone unless you like it quiet. There’s a dining room, a casual bar, a lounge area, a courtyard and well that’s it.
The food is classic pub style. It’s not part of the gastro pub wave. Instead this place promises huge parmas, marinaras, battered fish and chips. It’s a bloody pub! Whatever happened to them?
If you don’t mind your pubs busy I say go for it.