Young & Jackson

The last time anybody published a judgment on the food or the beer here was January 2011. Everything written since has been about the painting.

Why go

For Chloe, and for twenty minutes. The licence dates to 1861, the building to 1853, and the nude has hung upstairs since 1909, which is why the pub built Chloe's Bar around her (Young & Jackson). The corner is the busiest in Melbourne and the pub knows it, branding itself where Melbourne meets. What the record does not contain is anyone assessing a plate. Gemima Cody gave it three out of five for Time Out in January 2011 and described a flight of Murray's Ales, a Grizzly porter and a house witbier brewed by Matilda Bay (Time Out). Matilda Bay has changed hands since. Nothing published in the fifteen years since confirms a single one of those beers is still poured. The pub is run by ALH Group, the pub arm of Endeavour Group, which operates hundreds of venues, so the cooking has to argue for itself rather than inherit the building's standing.

Order this / avoid

Order: a pint downstairs at the window. Fish and chips or a steak in the Bar and Lounge if you are eating, which is what the pub itself says it serves. Then the stairs, for Chloe.
Avoid: planning dinner here off a recommendation, because there is not one to plan it off. For that, The Standard in Fitzroy or The Palace in South Melbourne.

What locals & experts say

Gemima Cody, Time Out, January 2011, three stars out of five: "But Young and Jacksons refuses to compromise on its standards just because its location attracts likely lads. For starters, craft beer is king here." ref Read the date. Her flight of Murray's Ales and the Matilda Bay witbier are fifteen-year-old facts and are recorded here as history, not as an order.
Beat Magazine, August 2023, which is the most recent Melbourne coverage found, describes the food as "great pub classics, pints of your favourite beers, and mains like steak, fish and chips" and quotes the pub's own line about being a mix of "a boutique bar and a traditional pub". ref That is the venue's copy restated by a listings desk, and it is labelled as coverage rather than a verdict.
The chef corpus says nothing. Broadsheet's Where Chefs Eat series has produced 74 picks from 44 Melbourne chefs. None of them names this pub.
So the ruling is on absence. Seven outlets, one review, fifteen years. An 1861 licence and a famous picture are worth telling and are worth nothing on the plate.

Good to know

Where: 1 Swanston Street, on the corner of Flinders Street, directly opposite the station.
Rooms: Main Bar, Bar and Lounge, Chloe's Dining Room on the first floor, The Salon for private dining, and a rooftop bar. Chloe's Dining Room is the venue's modern Australian room.
Timing: open from 10am every day, late close.
Booking: walk-in for the bars; the dining room takes bookings.
Operator: ALH Group, per the venue's own site.
Safety: Victoria publishes no venue hygiene rating. Safe Food Victoria's s.53D register of convictions, fifteen entries at its 21 July 2026 update, does not list this venue. ref

Jeff's take (his words)

Nothing here is Jeff's. Melbourne carries no raw saved-places export in this repo, so there is no Note column of his behind a jeff_note and the field stays empty rather than composed. The master row sold this as something every visitor has to do once, which is a claim about the building. It is a good corner and a good painting, and the plate is unexamined.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

could-visit — Go for twenty minutes, look at Chloe, drink a pint at the window and get on with your day. The pub has been licensed since 1861 and the painting has hung here since 1909, and both of those are true and neither is a reason to eat. Here is what the search actually turned up: the last time anyone published a judgment on the food or the beer was Gemima Cody in Time Out in January 2011, three stars out of five, describing a Murray's Ales flight and a house witbier brewed by Matilda Bay. Fifteen years on, nothing confirms either. Beat covered the pub in 2023 and restated its own marketing. Time Out's oldest-pubs list recycles Cody's beer line. Not one of the 44 Melbourne chefs in our vote corpus eats here. The pub is run by ALH Group, which operates hundreds of them, and a group at that scale has to prove the cooking rather than inherit credit from the building. So this sits as a stop on a walk, honestly labelled. For a pub dinner in the same city, The Standard in Fitzroy has a parma three sources agree on and The Palace in South Melbourne was Time Out's Pub of the Year.