The drones relax at Honey Bar, South Melbourne

Honey Bar
345 Clarendon Street
South Melbourne
web: www.honeybar.com.au/

We popped into Honey Bar for a meal one Sunday night with our housemates and neighbours. Honey is in a relatively modern building which affords it the chance to differentiate itself from some of the other pubs on Clarendon Street, constrained by smaller Victorian rooms. So, inside feels big, with black walls and sleek decor (later in the evenings of a Friday/Sat it does get quite club-like).

Beef burger: A sauce pot on the side for the fries is always appreciated.

There are some really interesting sounding things on the Honey menu, particularly the small plates for sharing which get a little Middle Eastern, a little Asian. However, if you’re feeling like you just want a pub meal under $20 to cheer yourself up, Honey can handle that too. In that spirit – well, I don’t think the whole group really needed cheering up, but Mr B had just done an eight hour exam – two of us went for the parma, two the burger, and two the beer battered barramundi. Perfect.

I ordered the beef burger with bacon, cheese, caramelised onions, beetroot, relish, and lettuce and tomato (above). The dish came with a little pot of tomato sauce. My housemate loves tomato sauce on chips (on anything!), but I am more of an aioli type myself. Still, I like being given the option to dip. Tick.

The burger was great, by the way. The french fries were crisp and cooked well and are a traditional accompaniment for a burger, although I am quite partial to fat chips as well. (Honestly, just find me a potato and fry it!). The Burger Adventure blog reviewed this burger back when Honey were using a Turkish bun for the burger and weren’t happy about that – you’ll be happy to see that a wholemeal sesame seed bun is now in use.

The chicken parmagiana was similarly well received by the table. I’m a fan of the cheese being well blistered on a parma instead of being warmed up and barely melted, and this did not disappoint. The chips, hastily scraped out from under the chicken, were crispy and crunchy, and the salad was… standard.

I can see a bit of nude schnitz there!

The beer battered barramundi nearly defeated my housemate. To be fair, it was a large serving – all our meals were. I think we (the burger eaters) ended up helping her with her chips. The fish looked nice though, and the batter definitely was crispy. The tartare sauce also got a big tick from me (although deep down we probably should have just swapped pots so she could put tomato sauce on top of everything! Bleurgh.)

Crunchy batter standing to attention

Honey serves good pub classics at a reasonable price, but also has a lot of interesting variety to the menu. They also stay open until midnight most nights, and later on the weekend – open when other South Melbourne stalwarts aren’t (or they’re the type of stalwarts you don’t want to be anywhere near!). Staff are pleasant and the venue also does a number of mid-week nights such as 25% off for locals on Mondays (damn you, tennis commitments!) and $12 parmas/burgers/fish’n’chips/veg risotto on Tuesdays (damn you netball!). Recommend.

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