This reborn Richmond pub captures the good old days but feels very 2026
It’s a new day for The Rising Sun Hotel, which joins the universe of Melbourne pubs that boast Sunday roasts and banging drinks plus a rooftop for late nights.
It’s a new day for The Rising Sun Hotel, which joins the universe of Melbourne pubs that boast Sunday roasts and banging drinks plus a rooftop for late nights.
January 1, 2026
Pub dining$
Following the pandemic, a pub-aissance took off in Melbourne, with dozens of old boozers reskinned and reinvigorated. But the next generation of publicans seem just as charmed by the past, and many have sought to capture the essence of the good old days.
The folks behind The Rising Sun in Richmond are some of the savviest when it comes to this balancing act. Their pub family has many children, including Fitzroy North’s Royal Oak, Brunswick’s Sporting Club and Fitzroy’s Marquis of Lorne. Not all have the same owners, but there’s an undeniable resemblance between them.
Timber panels are the surface of choice, Carlton Draught is on tap and sport plays (silently) on screens. Sunday roasts are sacred.
“The Riser”, in the furthest reaches of Richmond where the train meets the river, is their latest project and slots effortlessly into the genre of “2020s Melbourne pub”.
Richmond’s refreshed-but-still-retro Rising Sun Hotel.Simon Schluter
And this is how it plays out on a weeknight. Out front, five young men in King Gee stubbies have knock-offs on a table by the road. Moving inside, a tiled horseshoe bar sweeps across the front room. Men in collared shirts, groups of friends and 20-somethings on dates perch at high tables. A pool table sits on one side under a fringed lamp. There’s a “clack” as someone breaks.
It wasn’t always like this. The new owners had to clear out an op shop’s worth of Red Bull and Jim Beam merch before reopening the pub last June. But visit now and you’ll feel like an extra in The Riser: The 50 Shades of Mustard prequel, set in the years your parents were knocking back pints and everyone looked like they were straight out of a Rennie Ellis photo.
‘It feels like all of Richmond is here: people keep getting up to say hello to other tables.’
We may want our pub decor to throw back to 1973, but if we were eating what they were eating back then − rissoles and meatloaf and gristly steak with eggs − I think we’d be asking for the time machine to bring us back to the future.