The Top 17 Places to Drink Near Manze
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- 50 Best #19 · The World's 50 Best Bars
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best International Bar Team
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · International Bartender of the Year · Rob Libecans
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Tucked into a Melbourne shopping complex in a way that makes passersby do a double-take, Byrdi is a cocktail bar built around seasonality and local ingredients handled with the kind of precision that blurs the line between bar and kitchen lab. The team behind Singapore's Operation Dagger runs the show, and the drinks follow an almost culinary logic. It landed on the World's 50 Best Bars list, which tells you the curious head-twist is worth acting on.
- Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
- 50 Best #91 · The World's 50 Best Bars
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Cocktail Bar – APAC
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- Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · International Bartender of the Year · Rob Libecans
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best New International Cocktail Bar
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- Australian Good Food Guide 12/20 · One Chef Hat
- Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best International Bar Team – APAC
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Rank 5. Capitano
Italian
The Art Deco fixtures cast a warm amber glow over off-white walls and chestnut wood, and the whole room reads like a 1950s New York neighbourhood joint that somehow landed in Carlton. Capitano is an Italian bar where the drinks are the point, though the pasta and pizza pull their weight too. Difford's Guide gives it five stars, which for a corner spot dressed this modestly is a mild plot twist.
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Scarlet velvet curtains frame the main bar like a stage set, which is either a bold choice or a perfectly accurate one, given the theatrics of serious cocktail-making. This is a cocktail bar spread over three floors, with the ground level doing most of the heavy lifting. The name nods to the year the word cocktail was first defined in print, so the whole room is a love letter to the form. Vintage shakers, period details, but no stuffiness.
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Rank 8. Sweatshop
Cocktail Bar
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Rank 12. Black Pearl
Cocktail Bar
Dark wood, mismatched velvet, and leather sofas in a muted-light room that invites you to arrive early and leave late. Black Pearl is a cocktail bar on Brunswick Street that most drinks people treat as the main reason to come to Fitzroy at all. The list is short and inventive, boutique beers cover the non-cocktail moods, and bar food handles the rest. Difford's Guide rates it five stars, which tells you where the serious drinkers end up.
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Rank 13. Madame Brussels
Cocktail Bar
A cocktail bar on level three of a Bourke Street building, reached by a creaky elevator that fits seven at a push and opens onto a room dressed in full garden-party drag: wicker, pastel, and waitstaff in tennis whites. The drinks lean fruity and come in jugs, which is either charming or a warning depending on your afternoon. Melbourne's day-drinking set has been making the ascent for a long time.
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There's no menu at The Everleigh, just a bartender who asks what you're drinking and means it. This upstairs cocktail bar on Gertrude Street runs on hand-cracked ice, fresh juice, and the kind of unhurried service that makes you feel like someone's actually paying attention. The team came up through Milk & Honey in New York, and the influence shows, with the rigidity quietly left behind on another continent.
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Rank 16. Polly
Cocktail Bar
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