Mr Hive KItchen & Bar

This hidden bar (I love hidden places away from the madding crowd!) is found down one of the many corridors at Crown, above the Crown Metropole Hotel and not far from the rear Crown car park.
The feel here is very up-​market, but casual at the same time. They have a great wine list, with local and international wines, good beers on tap and a well thought out bar menu for snacks and light meals. They also have an interesting cocktail list.
On this occasion my partner and I sat at the bar and had drinks with a yummy pizza and a sensational serve of very tender calamari for our pre-​movie snack.
There were quite a few small groups and couples in attendance, but the noise levels were low and we could comfortably talk, which is always a plus at this type of venue.
The staff here are very professional and attentive, everything you would expect from a venue like this.
I recommend seeking this place out next time you are at the Crown complex.

Where to start
What an amazing meal and venue. I have found another venue that 110% caters for gluten free
Whilst not the cheapest, for the quality of food and service it definitely is priced right
I started with scallops and black pudding, the scallops were plump and juicy and the black pudding just set it off.
Next was pork belly. Beautifully cooked with negligible fat left of the meat
And how could I resist a raspberry soufflé for dessert
Do yourself a favour and check this venue out. It is popular so be sure to book!

Beautiful dessert degustation bar at the back of this place! The chef prepares the dessert right in front of you. Intimate with only 4 seats available. Beautiful and creative food. Recommended!

Had a decent dining experience at Mr Hive. Not great but not bad either.
My partner and I shared the scotch eggs, rib eye steak and the rack of ribs. The meats were cooked nicely but really nothing to write home about. The standout of the meal was definitely the scotch egg which I wasn’t expecting based on the description in the menu (luckily I had done a little research prior to coming here). The flavours were delicious and the texture was crunchy on the outside with the soft egg on the inside. Yum!
The service started out rocky as our server seemed to be in a bit of a pickle but she slowly warmed up to us. She did unsuccessfully try to upsell us on the wine (I think she assumed it was our first date — ha!) which I’m not sure how I feel about. Is that good service? Not sure but either way it didn’t impress or bother me. Partway through the meal there was some live music out in the hall lounge area. It definitely added a nice touch to the ambiance.
Overall I don’t think we’ll be returning anytime soon as there are many more Melbournian restaurants that I still need to explore and the price point on the average-​tasting food at Mr Hive is a bit steep.
FYI: We had an Entertainment Book discount voucher for the restaurant for 25% off our meal which was the deciding factor in trying this place.

Hidden in the back corner of the Crown complex Mr Hive is a relatively big restaurant. Staff were excellence and made great recommendations. Serving portions could be slightly bigger based on the price of meals as I didn’t leave feeling full. Overall still a great experience and tasty food.

Southbank has long been dominated by bleary-​eyed clubbers and light-​fingered gamblers, spotted with a handful of extrovertedly over-​priced glitzy restaurants catering for those who had the requisite bling-​bling and deep pockets to frequent Crown Casino’s Mahogany Room. That shadow still lingers, but a wave of more refined sophistication increasingly laps at the Yarra River’s southern banks. By contrast to far too many of its Melbourne-​born-​and-​bred fine dining counterparts who have repeatedly adopted an industrial grunge or minimalist bistro décor, Mr Hive has retained the structure of its predecessor Maze. Adopting a more noir edge, Mr Hive brings sexy back to fine dining. Its curved, hotel lobby-​like entrance is suited for strutting in with pomp. The dining area has a cosmopolitan plushness reminiscent of New York. It’s all poshness — upholstered noir leather chairs, stained black wood tables, dazzling long window panes. The additional drama of the most enormous cane lighting and metal wall sculptures deservedly belongs in New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
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Towards the back of Mr Hive, there’s a curved bar at which one perches for some sweet dessert Olympics. Desserts at the dessert bar are split into two categories, 4 modern irresistibles, 2 classical irresistibles. Over two visits, MoMo & Coco have sampled all irresistibles from the former and current menu. However, we will showcase just four that were the unforgettable highlights and which coincidentally, still have a presence on the current dessert menu. Although no longer present on the current dessert menu, keep a look out for the return of a cloud-​like raspberry soufflé and the simple beauty of a deconstructed eton mess. At present, there is another deconstructed sweet, if slightly strange, thing and another soufflé.
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Make sure you make space for the freebies! On our first visit, we didn’t and we moaned and groaned our way through, much to the concealed amusement of the dessert-​pastry chef of the night. Your dessert bar experience is not finished with the last mouthful of your ordered desserts. Out came little glass bottles filled with shots of warm chocolate milk, stoppered by a caramel truffle that could potentially give London’s Paul A Young a run for his money. and certainly some of Melbourne’s chocolatiers. Simply glorious stuff.
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They say you get two great loves in your life. Well, MoMo & Coco may have found one great love in Mr Hive. He is the embodiment of everything a great man/​restaurant should be. Adaptable for that special occasion as well as for casually elegant catch-​ups. A gentleman of great consistency, treating you with care and attention, not hipster nonchalance. Mr Hive moreover straddles between that universally appeasing line between classical and cutting-​edge. If Cumulus is the forefather of shared-​plate-​style Modern Australian/​European dining in Melbourne, Mr Hive joins the second-​generation with the likes of Henry & The Fox and The Sharing House (review coming)…but it offers just a bit more too. If you have been to London’s Pollen St Social, Mr Hive is quite like that, but without the hype and without the ambience-​killing chaotic crowds. Its dessert bar sings like a tightly curated exhibition of fine dessert-​craft — no weaknesses, all highlights, a true testament to the idea of a dessert bar (unlike that weak sugar puffery found in Sydney). Secluded behind a vault-​like entrance that opens out into a moody gallery space, Mr Hive is a hidden Melbourne secret. Long live desserts, and long live Mr Hive, these Dessert Correspondents declare.