The Bank

The Bank is the sprawling Newtown complex that tries to be several things at once and generally succeeds — a quiet sports bar up front, Uncle Hops tucked to the side for craft beers and meaty snacks, a retractable-roof beer garden out the back, and Waywards upstairs with a 250-person live music room running to a 5am licence. The Garden Bar menu leans Mediterranean and hard into the charcoal grill, which is how you end up ordering corn ribs, wood-roasted prawns and bone marrow.

Dogs are welcome in the Garden Bar until 10pm, which is more generous than most Newtown pubs allow. The Bank is also a long-running fixture of the suburb's queer scene — Birdcage has run as the weekly lesbian and queer party every Wednesday since 2012 — which keeps the room's crowd and energy decidedly away from corporate-pub-chain.