Cookie
Nobody agrees how much beer is up here. The venue says up to 80 at a time, Time Out says 200, and no independent count exists.
Why go
One floor of Curtin House, a hundred metres of it, split into a Thai kitchen, a beer hall and a cocktail bar tucked behind the main counter (Broadsheet). Three street-facing Juliette balconies look over Swanston Street, and the walls carry work by Beci Orpin, Misha Hollenbach and Monika Ippoliti (Cookie). Time Out's review calls the drinks list the most crowd-embracing in town
and puts the wine at 70 pages; Broadsheet says 100 wines with many by the glass. DJs play Thursday to Saturday on the beer hall side and it runs to 1am on Friday and Saturday.
Order this / avoid
- Order: green papaya salad, banana leaf barramundi and grilled Thai sausage off the share menu, and whatever local is on tap.
- Avoid: Friday after work if you want to hear anyone, and turning up for a restaurant table without a booking. The bar side takes walk-ins.
What locals & experts say
- Time Out Melbourne, in a review whose author could not be pinned:
Cookie is the little black dress of bars. It's a place we sometimes forget among all the glitzy new Places To Be Right Now, but every time we come back to this playful, manically busy joint, located a puffy stair climb halfway up Curtin House, we never know why we've been away.
The same piece counts200 local and international craft beers
and a70 pages
wine list.2 - Time Out Melbourne Food Awards: Legend Award, 2015. That is the most recent accolade found.2
- No Melbourne chef names it. Across 44 voters and 74 picks in Broadsheet's Where Chefs Eat series, plus all 89 articles on the series index, Cookie appears nowhere.4
- And no critic has assessed the food this decade. The entry rests on two masthead venue pages and the venue's own current copy, and says so rather than borrowing weight it has not got.
Good to know
- Where: level one of Curtin House, 252 Swanston Street. The stairs are the only way up and there are several floors of venues in the same building.
- Timing: open late, to 1am Friday and Saturday. DJs Thursday, Friday and Saturday on the beer hall side.
- Booking: recommended for the dining room. The bar takes walk-ins.
- The beer number: the venue's own site says "up to 80 beers at a time" and Time Out's review says 200. Both are recorded here as claims by their sources. Nobody has counted the taps independently.
- Byline note: the Time Out page's author metadata reads Gemima Cody, and the same name sits on Time Out's Alderman page, which is signed in the text by somebody else. The metadata is an editor field, so the review above is cited to the masthead rather than to a person.
- Food safety: Victoria publishes no venue hygiene ratings. Safe Food Victoria's section 53D register of convictions, as at 21 July 2026, carries fifteen entries and Cookie is not one of them.5
Verdict
could-visit — Twenty-odd years on the first floor of Curtin House, split three ways into a Thai kitchen, a beer hall and a cocktail bar behind the main counter. The beer is the draw and nobody agrees how much of it there is: the venue says up to 80 at a time, Time Out's undated review says 200 and a 70-page wine list, and no independent count exists. Broadsheet puts the food at green papaya salad, banana leaf barramundi, cured kingfish and grilled Thai sausage, and recommends booking for the dining room while the bar side stays walk-in. DJs run Thursday to Saturday and it goes to 1am on Friday and Saturday. Here is the problem with the Hearth label it carries: no working Melbourne chef names it in a 44-chef survey, and nobody with a byline has assessed the cooking this decade. The last award is Time Out's Legend Award from 2015. Worth an hour on a balcony with a beer, which is what could-visit means.