The Players:

Rob
Since he started university; Rob has always been looking for interesting ways to spend his Friday, Saturday and often weeknights out and about in Melbourne. After soon getting bored of going to the same old places every week he started to venture a field and look for more interesting things to look at while drinking. He then found that Melbourne has more bars than you can shake a stick at and decided to get cracking at trying to visit as many as possible. This lead to people asking him suggestions on where to drink; to which he happily obliged. Many many bars later and Rob has teamed up with Macca to share their love of sharing and let people know of the hidden waterhole that lies down that dark and dirty alley.

Macca
For many years now Macca has always been up for a night out. His early days at university were spent getting the “drinking cheaply and sometimes to excess” thing out of his system, so he can now claim to be a well seasoned drinker and pretend to know what he is talking about. His love for maps combined with his and Rob’s desire to find somewhere new and different has helped them to develop this site in the hope that others too can fully enjoy a night out in Melbourne.

Trev
It all started with one too many cheap bottles of liquor for Trev. Somewhat inspired by the cheap boring drinks found at most places he decided to go and search for what was, what is the perfect drink. His journey has taken him through whiskey, vodka, rum and gin to name a few, and he has travelled far and wide throughout Melbourne tasting; classic, unique and sometimes bizarre drinks that are on offer.
Throughout this Trev became good friends with Rob and Macca who aided him on his search. With an abundance of knowledge on many of the hot bars, and the hidden ones Trev has become a valued member of the team.
A great drink is not hard to find, but the perfect drink is. Trev knows what the perfect drink is. Do you?

Contact Information:

admin(at)alleylife(dot)com(dot)au

The Mission:

This site aims to expose the secrets of the vibrant Melbourne night life to residents and visitors. We strive to provide reviews of the bars only after we have been to them and experienced the place for ourselves. We have also mapped the bars we review so as to take the hassle out of finding the venue and to assist in the successful planning of a night out. Finally, please feel free to leave a comment or email us and challenge our reviews or to tell us about somewhere new. We are always looking for new places to experience.

Above all; sharing is caring.

Bar Review Criteria:

- Two of us need to have visited the venue.
- Reviews are written by one of us and not posted until the others approves.

Restaurant/Bar Review Criteria:

- The venue needs to have a restaurant area which is considered as much as the bar area there is considered.
- At least one of us needs to have eaten there, however two of us need to have been there at some stage.

Revisit updates:

Like everyone we regularly are revisiting bars around the city, and from time to time we feel it necessary to make updates to our original review. These will be edits placed in italics underneath the original score. The original review and score will not be changed, this is just an update done at a later date.
Hopefully this won’t need to be done often.

Score Breakdown:

Atmosphere:
- If the theme is successful
- Feeling upon entry and feeling upon exit
- The desire to stay
- Music
Atmosphere becomes a bit of a sliding scale, for more expensive and award winning bars we tend to expect a lot more. The higher the value the more we liked the feeling of the bar.

Service:
- Speed of service
- Ability of staff to make drinks on (and off) the menu
- Professionalism
- Likeability of the staff
This covers basically all the contact information with the staff within the venue. The higher the score the better the drinks are made and the staff are very good.

Menu:
- Diversity of drinks
- Unique drinks offered and house specials
- Information offered in menu
This value represents how the menu comes across in terms of what is on offer as well as presentation. This does not necessarily refer to the drinks once made however it does refer to how appropriate the drinks and information are to the venue. The higher the score the more spot on the drinks are for the venue and the better the menu is.

Cost:
- Comparative cost of drinks to other bars and what is served
- Cover charge
This is determined upon the night out as a whole, so even if there is cheap drinks inside a cover charge will mean that this value will drop. The lower the value the more expensive it is seen to be and the less value for money it is seen to be inside.


If you are feeling generous, please feel free to donate to our site to help keep us running:

All content within these pages is © 2009 to AlleyLife.
AlleyLife promotes the safe consumption of Alcohol.
Information provided on these pages are subject to information being accurate at the time of original posting.