Image from
Get Notorious
Seahorses. Sipping cocktails out of jam jars whilst admiring the Yarra at sunset. Everyone likes those things. So it follows that everyone will adore Ponyfish Island.
Co-owned by Melbourne slashies Jerome Borazio (of
St Jerome's Laneway Festival fame), the
Taboo Group's Andrew MacKinnon and DJ
Grant Smillie, Ponyfish Island is the bar slash cafe slash pirate ship that Melburnians (and probably Sydney ex-pats moreso) have been yearning for.
Ponyfish goes one better than being hidden down a graffiti-splattered alleyway in the CBD: instead it's tucked under the pedestrian bridge that crosses the sparkling brown Yarra at Southbank. Follow the chalk-scrawled arrow down a steep flight of stairs and the sun-bathed wooden deck that is Ponyfish reveals itself in all its glory.
Fitted out by Melbourne's own
Moth design - the guys who tarted up Alto at GPO and built the sets for the Melbourne Fashion Festival - Ponyfish is all graceful timber curves, long lounges and hessian-covered stools. The bar offers everything you'd expect - and some. (Cheese and spinach toastie anyone?) Or if you want to catch the early morning kayakers, Ponyfish will scramble you some eggs or even iron you a waffle to accompany your cup of hot Niccolo coffee.
Seahorses (is that what a ponyfish is?) and hipsters alike flock to these floaty new digs and you should too.
