Josie Bones

I had a great time sitting at the Josie Bones bar chatting to the bar staff. They are passionate about good beer and were able to offer me some helpful drink advice (as well as a few samples of the beer on tap.)
I was excited to try the food selection as well, after all — it’s prepared by a master chef! Happily, the food was non-​pretentious and delicious. I particularly loved the kangaroo carpaccio.

I was just walking past and decided to stop and check this place out after seeing it on masterchef. I am glad I did.
Having allready eaten I decided to check out there beers.
I was Amazed by there extensive list of beers and the knowledge of there staff.
I settled an a pale ale from mt macedon and my girlfriend had an aventenas eisbock. A beer we had been trying to find in melbourne for the last year. It made her night to find it here.
The place has a great atmosphere with booth like tables down one side or a very large bar down the other. You can easily eat at the bar as the top of it is huge.
Will Definetly be coming back here!!!
They also serve vegetarian food to spite being a meat and beer place

I want to like a place like Josie Bones. It has a winning origins story (Masterchef contestant opening his own place), an awesome, casual chic vibe, great service staff, and a brilliant selection of beers.
And the place is likeable, the food definitely not bad. But it feels like the food just isn’t matching the standard of the other elements. Now, the menu here changes from time to time, so while the pig’s head is always on the menu, and the blood pudding remains, the method of execution changes with each incarnation.
We started off with the pork crackling. And what amazing, crisp, well-​salted crackling it was. In fact, I’d recommend ordering one (or two) portions the moment you sit down, so you can munch on some luscious pork fat while you slowly peruse.
I’d also recommend asking for beer pairings for each course. They offer wonderful suggestions and have an excellent range. The dark apple ale by Two Metre Tall is particularly noteworthy and I would order it again in a heartbeat.
The blood pudding topped with a fried egg was delicious, robust, and bold. There was no doubt it was a blood pudding, and it was unabashed of its nature. No namby pamby «sort of a blood pudding». The kangaroo carpaccio was gamey, too gamey for me, but my dining companions loved it. It’s a love it or hate it kinda dish I guess, but the bone marrow croquettes that it came with were a definite miss. It’s hard to pull of bread balls of deep fried fat, and that’s essentially what bone marrow is.
The stuffed pigs trotter was decent, but a touch salty, and the sweetbreads were a bit masked by everything else going on in the dish. Similarly the deep-​fried pig’s head was also a touch salty, and ending with these two dishes actually made me very thirsty. I hear that previous versions were better, not as greasy, not as salty, and in general there was a bit too much deep-​frying going on in the menu.
The notion of a head to tail pork joint is still sublime however, and the desserts were very tasty. The sticky date pudding was more cake like, but well matched by the toffee sauce it came with. The rice pudding was a biiiiit too sweet, but had an almost chai like taste to it.
I found the food a little disappointing this evening, but you can tell the team puts effort into their dishes, and service is excellent, and the beers on offer worth going for. I’d go back and try Josie Bones in a heartbeat.
Good service and a good drinks menu will often do that, salvaging less than perfect food offerings with poise and a little wink. Try Josie Bones, you’ll see what I mean.

Do you like meaty meats? Y/​N
Do you like tarty tarts? Y/​N
Do you like a vast variety of beer? Y/​N
If you answered YYY then Josie Bones is for you!
As a person that eats meat because she has to, I didn’t love it.
I was disappointed by the lemon tart (dessert usually being my saving grace at any eatery!) because it made my eyes very very squinty — but the raspberry sorbet was very nice :-)
Some people most certainly do enjoy a tarty tart!
I did have a lovely pear cider and my dinner guests mostly enjoy their meals too.
I ate the quinoa and the fries and they were quite good but I am obviously not Josie Bones’ target market ;)
The service was EXCELLENT and all food and drinks were served promptly. But the barstools hurt your buttocks after sitting on them for a long time.
Would go back for a drink and skip the food :-) and I broke my tooth on some pork crackling. is that supposed to happen?

Really great range of beer and ciders. Amazing crackling entre, expensive food but very worth it. We ended up staying much longer than expected just to try more dishes. The quail eggs were amazing.
I’ll go back.

The food was interesting and quite tasty, but the host/​reservation issues were atrocious. We had a reservation for 8:30 but the hostess insisted our reservation was actually at 9 and then assured us that they’d probably be ready sooner. 9 came and went, as did 9:30, and we were finally seated around 9:45. Even if we had made a reservation at 9 this would be unacceptable. Clearly they are overbooking the restaurant.
Anyway, despite that, the food was solid and the beer list was fantastic (although outrageously expensive — most beers were in the mid-​teens/​bottle!).
We had a zucchini salad, pork spareribs, pumpkin gratin, rabbit stew, pork belly, and some crackling as a snack to start. Surprisingly the crackling was the low point and not worth trying, but everything else was uniformly excellent. The pumpkin gratin was a surprising win and we’d particularly recommend the spareribs as well.
If they can sort out their timing issues with reservations this would be a strong recommendation.

Impressive beer list, food is not too bad. Would go again but next time I’ll try the slider.

A lot has been written about the many meats on offer at Josey Bones, a restaurant with pig trotters for door handles. As a vegetarian (note: not vegan) with a taste for beer and an interest in trying new flavours from different places, there’s still a good reason to head here for an evening: they boast over 250 different local and international beers! If you can bear the meat smells and the general revelry in killing animals (and can overlook supporting the kind of place that’s big on both), that’s a whole lot of beer to try.
It’s impossible to recommend a beer with a list as big as this, but I loved the Bateman’s Dark Lord, a British porter that comes in a ye olde bottle with a menacing label. The eight tap beers change with the season, too, which means it’s about time I booked myself in for another night of sitting at the long bar and picking through the menu!

The pigs trotters door knobs should be your first clue about what to expect from this Masterchef contestant run restaurant.
I love the very unique concept of this relatively newbie restaurant. Josie’s angle is that beer can be just as complex and exciting as wine and is a fine match for their wonderfully meaty menu. They take beer to a very geeky level and the ever-​changing local beers on tap and otherwise hard-​to-​find international beers will keep patrons returning to taste something new.
The whole beast and nothing but the beast is the food concept here. Using as many parts of the animal as possible to create clever and damn tasty sharing plates designed to keep you focussed on the beer.
The enormous pig porn picture above the bar was strangely captivating, I’m rather disturbed to admit.

A zymurgist’s wet dream. A playground for carnivores and beerocrats alike. If you want to eat every part of an animal and then get a beer matched to every part of that poor sentient being, then Josie Bones is pretty much your idea of paradise.
Joking aside, Josie Bones is definitely a place to experience and make your own mind up about. The food is experimental and ambitious. Their pork belly was great and their duck heart salad was a standout. Be warned though, eating all these different parts of animals can get very rich quite quickly. I’d recommend spacing your dishes out and making a night of it grazing with the beers.
As a lover of pale ales and really hoppy beers, Josie Bones really is a godsend. There you’ll discover great beers you’ve never heard of across Australia and the world alike.
If you wanted to re-​enact Marco Ferreri’s La Grande Bouffe right here in Melbourne, Josie Bones might be a good candidate for where to do it…

Maybe I’m just a reality TV junky, but I think it’s cool when MasterChef turns an alum into someone actually (successfully) following that dream. Josie’s is that; a creative little restaurant, with the most spectacular (and confusing) beer menu, run by not just one, but two MasterChef contestants.
Beer is something to deeply understand, just like wine. Not just what’s on tap, but what flavors the different styles have. Josie Bones is, in a way, Beer University for this very purpose. Their list was carefully selected and assembled, albeit in a very slow process as may of the prices and countries of origin show. Japanese porter that is $ 100+ for 500ml? They have that. Don’t worry, there are also more affordable, and still very enjoyable beers to choose from. As well as 8 styles on tap that rotate frequently.
Food has almost the same educational value at Josie Bones. I never knew so many parts of an animal were edible, or even good tasting. Slow-​braised beef cheeks with crispy shallots. Rare roast duck hearts skewers. Crackling of the day.
It all means that Josie Bones needs to be experienced with an open mind, and a forgiving wallet, but it will bestow upon you a great experience and you’ll leave knowing more about food, beer, or both.
Don’t forget, shake hooves with the door when you come inside!

With 250 local and international beers and 8 rotating taps, I’m sure even a non-​beer lover will find something they like at Josie Bones, but at a price. Beers range from $ 8 to $ 18 on tap.
A huge fan of sour tasting beers, my great find was the Petrus Aged Pale. A pale version of traditional Flemish red ales, gold in colour, and matured in wood for 24 to 30 months, this beer has a bit of oak, a bit of nuttiness, and my favourite part, the sour taste at the finish. Very few bars in Melbourne I’ve been to have this beer. FACT. Also, I can appreciate a place where you can find Oregon’s Rogue and California’s North Coast in Australia.
Beer is only half the equation. The other half is meat and lots of it. I don’t recommend this place for vegetarians, as there are limited options. My favourite was the rabbit terrine and pork belly. The terrine was perfectly done with thick chunks of rabbit and a bit of fat gelatine on the outside. The pork belly was moist with the perfect amount of crisp. The most interesting dish I ate was a duck heart salad. It’s difficult to describe the taste of the heart — kind of like liver.
My only negative point is the bartender, who was slightly up himself. Yes, we get you know a lot about beers, but enough with the superior attitude. However, our server was awesome.
Josie Bones is definitely aiming for a particular clientele. If speciality beers or meat does not impress you, I don’t recommend this place. For everyone else, definitely worth a try.
Side note: I love beer, but when I heard someone from MasterChef was opening up a restaurant near me, I had to check it out. Josie Bones is the brainchild of not one, but two former contestants, Chris Badenoch and Julia Jenkins. Whilst MasterChef was so 2009, Josie Bones has more longevity power.