Terminus Hotel

It's one of Melbourne's most venerable traditions. A Wednesday night rite at Abbotsford's 150-year-old Terminus Hotel that's almost as ancient as the lounge suites that try to swallow you, or the extensive collection of crappy art on the walls.

For nigh on 10 years (12 if you believe the website) the immortal words "eyes down" have echoed from the tiny corner stage in this grungy Abbotsford pub. This is "Bingo at the Termo" - a camp and saucy diversion that makes for just about the best free dinner entertainment in town.

Bingo is a holiday-camp pursuit that demands audience participation. So each number called has an audience response that here is a little more risque than "22 - two little ducks. Quack, quack!". The Termo's bingo callers such as Neeta, Butch and Termo bingo guru Trevor Wright riff on everything from the infirmities of old age and the trials of Collingwood Football Club to tram routes.

Yes, the targets may be cheap, the humour broad, but try to remember we're in a pub and join in as loudly as the next beer-fuelled bingo maniac trying to keep track of a dozen different bingo cards. It's well worth it because the rewards for being the first to mark off all the numbers on your card are rich indeed: a jug of beer; a 500-piece jigsaw of Adelaide; or perhaps a flashing cocktail glass. If you are very lucky, you might even snare the top prize - a technicolour Jesus icon that twinkles in the dark.

Arrive early to snare the couches and table in front of the front bar's roaring fire, next to the stage. Then you can eat before you lust after that disco JC lamp you are destined to win. Do it soon because, with the site changing hands in November, the days of bingo at the Terminus may be numbered.

To fuel up there's a bar menu with a focus largely on free-range proteins. There's usually a kitchen curry of some description, grilled fish and chips, or maybe a kransky from Andrew's Choice with a dollop of cassoulet. The 200-gram wagyu burger is among the most popular choices here, while the game lover can try the venison bourgignon (sic).

It's serviceable tucker that will soak up the beer you'll consume every time a number ending in zero is called. Eight commercial ales, including Stella, Heineken and Becks, are available on tap.

The news that the Terminus is moving to real plates for most bar dishes is almost as welcome as a promise to make the chips crispier.

The pizzas, however, will still come on disposables; not that this has impaired free-range egg and bacon "All Day Breakfast", or the popular caprese pizza with goat's cheese and pesto. The meat-lovers is the most expensive pizza and comes loaded with sweet tangy barbecue sauce and such carnivorous diversions as venison salami, wagyu-style beef and ham.

Smokers will be relieved to know that the Terminus also has a revamped beer garden with extra heaters, couches and computer games. Although to sit out there on a Wednesday after 9pm means missing what might be one of the last nights of Bingo at the Termo.