Collingwood, Melbourne: breweries, murals and train-carriage burgers on Smith Street

Five storeys above Easey Street, three retired train carriages serve chilli cheese dogs and city views, and Collingwood makes perfect sense in that one improbable lift of the head. This is a suburb that never quite lost its factory-floor posture: it just learned how to pour a natural wine, hang a mural, and keep the rollershutter charm intact. You come for the beer and stay because the streets still feel lived-in — loading docks, old warehouses, tram bells, the smell of malt and hot chips drifting out into the evening.

What Collingwood is known for

Two things put Collingwood on the map: beer and Smith Street. The suburb has become Melbourne’s most concentrated brewery precinct, with several working breweries pouring within a short walk of each other, and Smith Street — the strip that forms Collingwood’s western boundary with Fitzroy — was voted the coolest street in the world by Time Out in 2021, a title locals still mention with the kind of shrug that means they absolutely know it matters.

That’s the easy headline. The better story is how Collingwood wears its industrial bones openly. Sawtooth-roofed warehouses that once turned out boots and knitwear now hold breweries, cocktail bars, roasters and design studios, and the streets still keep a little grit in the seams. There are spray-painted roller doors, the odd empty lot, and the occasional building that looks as if it might still be waiting for its original purpose to come back and collect it. The place never polished itself into a theme. It just kept going.

The suburb’s creative centre of gravity sits at Collingwood Yards on Johnston Street, the old technical school turned 6,500-square-metre arts precinct. It’s free to wander, and the reason most people come is the Keith Haring mural, painted in 1984 and still the artist’s only surviving large-scale public work in Australia.

That mural is the sort of thing that reminds you Collingwood’s cool isn’t a marketing department’s invention. It has provenance, scars, and a bit of weather on it. Around it, the precinct hums with galleries, studios and cultural organisations, and on a good day you can catch the whole place in motion — people drifting between openings, someone carrying a takeaway coffee, someone else looking like they’ve lived in the building for years and still haven’t found the best route through it.

The other pillar is design retail. Aesop is headquartered on Smith Street, and the strip is lined with the kind of homegrown labels that make shoppers wander a little slower than they planned. Gorman, Dinosaur Designs and Scanlan Theodore all sit in that orbit, giving the street a polished edge without sanding off its warehouse character. Collingwood likes contrast: expensive skincare in one window, a tattoo studio or vintage rack in the next, and a tram rattling past as if to keep everyone honest.

Where to eat & drink

Collingwood’s kitchens run the full spread, from six-course degustation to a burger you eat standing up, and the best way to approach it is with no moral high ground whatsoever. Start serious if you like. IDES on Smith Street is Peter Gunn’s minimalist fine-diner, a 36-seat room turning out an ever-changing degustation from a kitchen where he once worked as Attica’s sous chef. It’s the sort of place that reminds you restraint can be its own kind of drama.

A few doors along, Smith Street Bistrot is Scott Pickett’s noisy, 1930s-styled French room, all oysters and steak au poivre and the general pleasure of being in a room that knows exactly what it wants to be. The room has that old-world swagger that can go either way in the wrong hands, but here it lands with enough confidence to feel like a proper night out rather than a costume.

For something looser, Jim’s Greek Tavern on Johnston Street has been running since 1980 with no menu at all — the waiters ask if you’re after meat, seafood or both, then dips, fritters, grilled prawns and lamb off the gyro simply keep landing. It’s BYO with free corkage, which in a city like Melbourne is the kind of practical generosity I trust immediately.

Then there’s the snack-sized, no-fuss end of the suburb. Chotto Motto does Hamamatsu-style gyoza served in a crisp fried spiral, and Red Sparrow turns out blistered wood-fired vegan pizza. Both understand an important Collingwood truth: the room doesn’t need to be precious if the food is good enough to make you stop talking.

And then there is Easey’s at 48 Easey Street, where the signature ‘Easey Cheesy’ burger comes with McClure’s pickles flown in from Detroit and you eat it inside a real train carriage five storeys up.

That’s the kind of thing that should be ridiculous and somehow isn’t, because Collingwood has always had a taste for the theatrical if it comes with grease and a point of view.

Coffee is taken seriously here too. Proud Mary on Oxford Street roasts on-site and has landed on global best-cafe lists; come for the mandarin-and-oolong hotcakes as much as the pour. The hotcakes are the sort of breakfast that make a person briefly forgive the internet for overusing the word iconic.

For drinks, Collingwood’s range is the point. Above Board is the book-ahead cocktail room: a hushed 16-seat bar built around a single slab of glossy walnut, tucked down a laneway behind BeerMash at 306 Smith Street, run by veteran bartender Hayden Lambert with no back bar of bottles in sight. It is quietly exacting, which is a nice way of saying you should not wander in expecting a pub with garnish.

Up at Collingwood Yards, Runner Up is a breezy rooftop wine-and-cocktail garden with fruit trees and DJ sets, while Hope St Radio downstairs pours natural wine and plates rotating house pastas beside a set of DJ decks. The pair sum up Collingwood nicely: one foot in the garden, one foot on the concrete.

Wine bars are a strength too. The Moon stocks hundreds of labels alongside sharp small plates, the sort of place where a long list is less a flex than a promise that someone in the room cares about the bottle more than the logo.

Beer, though, remains the suburb’s native language. Stomping Ground at 100 Gipps Street is the anchor: a cavernous converted warehouse channelling a German beer hall, with a retractable roof over the garden and paddles on every table.

Molly Rose on Wellington Street brews the creative, food-friendly end of things, and its sour-and-coffee ales have drawn a Good Food Guide nod. The Mill on Sackville Street pours a dozen small-batch brews out of a former mechanic’s workshop. Together they make Collingwood one of those rare neighbourhoods where a self-guided beer crawl isn’t a gimmick; it’s just the most natural way to move through the afternoon.

Going out

A Collingwood night can be as refined or as riotous as you like, and often the best evenings start with the first drink and end somewhere you didn’t plan to be. If you want cocktails, Above Board is the one to book. The room is tiny, the walnut slab gleams, and Hayden Lambert’s no-back-bar setup gives the place a near-monastic focus. It’s not trying to be a scene. It is a scene, which is a different and rarer thing.

If your mood is looser, Runner Up at Collingwood Yards gives you fruit trees, rooftop air and DJ sets, while Hope St Radio downstairs keeps the night anchored in natural wine and house pasta. There’s something pleasingly unpretentious about a bar that can hold a dance-adjacent mood without pretending it invented it.

Beer drinkers have it easy here. Stomping Ground is the obvious first stop, but the fun is in the sequence: a paddle at the warehouse hall, a wander to Molly Rose for something more experimental, then perhaps The Mill for a final round in a former mechanic’s workshop. Collingwood rewards that kind of drift. The streets are close enough together that the whole evening can feel like one continuous conversation.

For a quieter glass, The Moon offers a deep list and sharp small plates, the sort of place that works as a reset button between louder rooms. And when you want the opposite of refined — when you want volume, sweat and a sticky carpet that has seen history happen at ground level — The Tote on Johnston Street is Melbourne’s fiercely loved band room, with punk, metal and stoner rock rolling through a pub locals literally marched to save in 2010.

That detail matters. A suburb can have all the wine bars in the world, but if it can also produce a room like The Tote, it still has a pulse.

Things to do / what to see

Start at Collingwood Yards on Johnston Street. The former technical school is now a free-to-visit arts precinct of galleries, studios and cultural organisations, and it’s the best place to understand the suburb’s temperament before you start drinking it in. Time your visit around a gallery opening and you’ll catch the precinct at its liveliest, with the kind of easy circulation that makes a cultural space feel like part of the street rather than a sealed-off institution.

From there, the suburb is an open-air street-art gallery. Murals cluster around the Collingwood substation and the side lanes off Smith Street, with big-name Australian artists having worked the walls over the years — it’s easily done as a slow, phone-in-hand wander. The pleasure here isn’t ticking off a list; it’s noticing how the paint, the brick and the old industrial surfaces keep arguing with each other.

For gallery walls under a roof, Australian Galleries on Derby Street has shown Australian art since the 1950s. It gives Collingwood a more formal art footing to go with the murals and the precinct energy, and it’s worth the detour if you like your creativity with a bit of institutional memory.

The other great Collingwood pastime is simply drinking your way around it. The brewery cluster — Stomping Ground, Molly Rose, The Mill and others — sits within an easy walk, and nearly all do tasting paddles, which makes a self-guided afternoon crawl one of the best things to do here. Pair it with the burger-and-train spectacle at Easey’s and you’ve got a full day without leaving 3066.

Shopping & markets

Smith Street is the retail spine, and it leans independent and design-led. Aesop is headquartered here, and the strip carries a run of homegrown names worth crossing town for: Gorman for bold prints, Dinosaur Designs for resin jewellery and homewares, and Scanlan Theodore at the smarter end. The joy of shopping here is that it never feels sealed off from the rest of the suburb. One minute you’re in a polished store, the next you’re passing a vintage rack, a record shop or a plant store with a hand-painted sign and a slightly askew doorway.

Off the main drag, the warehouse blocks hide furniture and homewares showrooms, ceramicists and the odd studio-shopfront where the maker is working out the back. Skydiver doubles as a record store by day and a wine bar with a beer garden by night — a very Collingwood two-for-one, and exactly the kind of hybrid that makes the suburb feel like it’s still inventing itself.

If you’re after fresh produce, the neighbouring suburbs handle the big markets, but Smith Street’s grocers, delis and specialty food shops cover a self-catered stay comfortably. That matters more than it sounds. Collingwood is a place that lets you live a little locally, even on a short trip.

Where to stay in Collingwood

Collingwood suits travellers who want a lived-in, creative base rather than a big-hotel lobby. Accommodation runs to design apartments, warehouse conversions and boutique stays rather than international chains, so it’s a strong pick for a self-guided, on-foot trip. Base yourself near the Smith Street end for the best access to bars, shops and trams, and to be a short walk from Fitzroy next door. The quieter pockets toward Wellington and Hoddle streets, or down near the Yarra, trade a little buzz for calmer nights while keeping the breweries and Collingwood Yards within reach.

Prices sit in the mid-range for Melbourne — cheaper and more characterful than a CBD tower, with the trade-off that street noise around Smith and Johnston streets carries late on weekends. Light sleepers should choose their block with care and not pretend the neighbourhood is going to whisper just because you’ve had a long flight.

Getting around

Collingwood is compact and flat, and most of it is best done on foot — the breweries, bars and galleries all sit within a walkable core around Smith, Wellington and Gipps streets. The workhorse is tram route 86, which runs the length of Smith Street from the CBD out to Bundoora; Stop 19, at the corner of Johnston and Smith streets, drops you into the heart of the strip. Note that Collingwood sits outside Melbourne’s Free Tram Zone, so tap on with a Myki card.

For trains, Victoria Park station on the Mernda and Hurstbridge lines is about a five-minute walk from Smith Street. The CBD is roughly 10–15 minutes by tram or a 25-minute walk, and Melbourne Airport (Tullamarine) is about 30–40 minutes by car or rideshare depending on traffic.

Practical notes

Collingwood is best for craft beer, warehouse bars, street art and design shopping. It feels lively and generally safe, though you should take the usual big-city care along Smith and Johnston streets late at night. It’s a suburb that rewards curiosity more than planning, and that’s part of the appeal: turn up with a tram card, a decent appetite, and enough time to let the blocks surprise you.

The best version of Collingwood is not the one you’ve seen on a screen. It’s the one where the baguette crackles, the coffee arrives before the conversation has settled, and a train carriage on a rooftop somehow makes perfect sense.