Mr West Bar & Bottle Shop.

Mr West Bar & Bottle Shop

The retail fridges are split by beer style and each one is set to the drinking temperature for what is inside it.

Why go

Josh Hodges was repping Feral and Caleb Baker was repping Custard & Co cider when they decided Melbourne's west had nowhere doing beer, wine and spirits properly in one room, and they quit to build it (The Crafty Pint). The bar opened in the last quarter of 2017 and the bottle shop that December. Upstairs there are thirty taps pouring beer, wine and cider, plus negronis and espresso martinis, along a counter made from old railway sleepers refinished by hand. The back bar carries more than three hundred spirits, from Lagavulin through mezcal and cachaca to small Australian distillers. Downstairs the shop holds more than five hundred independent beers at any one time, with a whole wall of fridges divided by style, and minimal-intervention wine kept chilled rather than sat on a shelf.

Order this / avoid

• Order: whatever European sour or lambic is on the wall, since that is where the buying goes deepest. A negroni off the tap. A cheese board to go with it. Then take something home from downstairs.
• Avoid: turning up for dinner. The bar serves small eats and openly tells you to order in from the Footscray restaurants around it, which is the right call in this suburb.

What locals & experts say

• Caleb Baker, co-owner, to Australian Bartender in February 2018: 100 percent of our beer is cold-stored in our numerous fridges and large coolroom, keeping the beer as fresh as possible. The trade title's own verdict on that: You've got to respect a joint that respects their beers.2
• The Crafty Pint, on the retail discipline: the fridges are set to the ideal drinking temperature for the beverages within, and every beer, keg or package, is stored cold from the moment they arrive.1
• The venue's own Footscray guide names three dozen neighbouring businesses by address, including its nearest competitors, which is a bar that is confident about where it sits.5
• No critic and no chef. Broadsheet, Time Out and Beat carry no signed review, and across 74 picks by 44 working Melbourne chefs and writers, Mr West appears in none. The rung rests on trade coverage and on the specifics of how the place handles what it sells.4

Good to know

• Where: 106 Nicholson Street Mall, Footscray. The bottle shop is at street level and the bar is up the stairs.
• Timing: open into the evening. Current hours are not published on any page reachable here, so check before a late trip.
• Booking: walk-in.
• Food: small eats. Order a full dinner in from the neighbourhood.
• Takeaway: the shop ships nationally and packs beer and zero-sulphur wine with ice packs, and says it may ask to delay an order in a heatwave.
• Diet: no allergen or dietary statement is published, so nothing is flagged.
• Hygiene: Victoria publishes no venue ratings, only Safe Food Victoria's register of convictions under s.53D of the Food Act 1984, and this venue is not on it.6

Verdict

should-visit — The retail fridges downstairs are divided by beer style and each one is set to the right drinking temperature for what is inside it, and every beer in the building has been cold since the truck. Caleb Baker put it plainly in 2018: '100 percent of our beer is cold-stored in our numerous fridges and large coolroom.' Behind that sits more than five hundred independent beers, thirty taps upstairs and over three hundred spirits along a back bar, in a room whose counter is built from refinished railway sleepers. Hodges and Baker were drinks reps who quit to open the thing because nobody in Melbourne's west was doing beer, wine and spirits properly under one roof. The kitchen is small on purpose and the bar tells you to order dinner in from the Vietnamese and Ethiopian places around it, which is the correct answer in Footscray. No critic has ever reviewed it, which is why it holds here rather than higher.