The Mint Bar & Restaurant is a good place to come for a small team lunch with your colleagues. It's…read morealso good for after-work drinks. It straddles the fence between bar and restaurant, with a bit more of an emphasis on the "bar" part.
It's located next to the old Royal Mint building (hence the name), and has an outdoor area overlooking the heritage building. The old Royal Mint building is now the Hellenic Museum, so before I came to The Mint Bar & Restaurant, I wondered if maybe it was a Greek restaurant. It's not -- it's more of a mix between "modern Australian" and pub food. The menu feels slightly more schmick than your usual pub grub fare, but the place isn't upscale enough to be a "gastropub" either -- honestly, it's hard place to describe. I'd probably call it more of a beer garden with a slightly upscale menu.
Whatever, I like it. It's a great spot to come to when the temperature is nice, because the majority of the place is open-air. (They have a roof over their courtyard, but the sides are all open.) Their indoor space is squishy and honestly not that pleasant, so unless the weather is REALLY foul, you'll want to eat or drink out in their courtyard.
You order at the bar, like a pub, and get a number to take to your table outside. They change their menu quite a lot, but they always have clearly-marked vegan options on the menu and I've had several enjoyable meals here.
The last time I was here, we shared a few different dishes, which was a good way to sample everything. We had the 3-grain salad (with pearl barley, quinoa, and freekah), the vegetable salad (with beetroots, asparagus, snow peas, and green beans), and the baba ganoush with chickpeas and fried tortillas. (All vegan.) My boyfriend also had the Atlantic salmon with black rice.
I loved the vegetable salad, and liked (but wasn't amazed by) the 3-grain salad and baba ganoush. This baba ganoush was SUPER smoky in flavour, almost a little too much, and I'm not sure how Mexican tortillas ended up with Middle Eastern baba ganoush, but whatever. The 3-grain salad was nice but a little on the bland side.
For dessert, I had the mango, coconut and raspberry sorbet with champagne syrup and mint, which was AMAZING (albeit a little heavy on the mint). I would happily go back just to have this dessert again. Portion size was a little small, but like I said, this place's menu seems like it's trying to be a bit more gourmand-fancy-pants, so I kind of understand smaller portions.
One menu item that I'd LOVE to see brought back is the cassava chips. It's really hard to find yuca frita in Melbourne in general, and this place had it for a couple of years, but unfortunately it looks to be gone from the menu now. (A tragedy.)
The clientele here is a little strange. You get your usual after-work crew from the neighboring office buildings and courthouse, but you also get some low-life types on occasion. I went with a female friend once and a group of guys leered at us the whole time and threw some unwelcome and very overt suggestions our way. The later the night, the more these types linger, so I'd say go with the corporate crowd at lunchtime or right after work instead.
Service has always been good when I've been here -- efficient and friendly. Prices are a little higher than they should be, because the quality of food can be a little hit-and-miss, but it's nothing outrageous.
