Royal Park Hotel

TRY to unpick the layers of retro at North Melbourne's Royal Park Hotel and you will find yourself plunging into a rabbit hole of endless recycling.

On the surface, the Royal Park presents as a fairly straightforward example of the ''new school does ironic old-school pub'' story, where a group of youngsters gets the lease on a rundown corner boozer and, with more flash than cash, raids every op shop in the vicinity and decks out the place with nanna lamps, macrame plant holders, needlepoint ''art'' and lumpy second-hand couches. (Said youngsters are those behind North Melbourne's Grigons and Orr cafe.)

But this is a pub that has already been made over (as a tapas bar most recently) and so the latest look is actually reverting to a style popular with pubs in the 1990s that channelled share-house lounge-room chic. Add a menu firmly planted in 1970s carpetbag steak territory, a soundtrack that dabbles in 1960s bubblegum pop, and staff that strut a certain comic-camp 1980s style, and you can be forgiven for having your eyes roll back in your head, even before the alcohol has taken hold.

The best thing about the Royal Park, however, is that it rises above any anthropological dissections of its parts with the sum of its unfailing good nature. Kick back here in front of the open fire among the crowd of twentysomething and thirtysomething locals and their offspring parked snoozing in strollers and you will soon be thinking that this is the kind of place you could tell your friends and your parents about.

Booze-wise, there is nothing flashy going on - a few prosaic beers on tap (Geelong's Bearings, $4 a pot) and some workmanlike wines by the glass (Snow Road cabernet merlot, $6) - but there is an endearing commitment on the bottled wine list to Australian family-owned wineries of De Bortoli, Yalumba, McWilliam's and Tahbilk.

There is more main-course eating (steak diane, served with corn cobs and a foiled-wrapped baked potato sloshed with sour cream, $28) than snacking here, but the pool-table-equipped side bar is a good place for those more interested in just getting a buzz on among the reproduction art. There is also a good beer garden and street-side tables for the puffers.

Riffing on multiple eras and grabbing whatever from wherever it likes, the Royal Park Hotel radiates eras and styles with ease. Better still, it does it with a sense of both humour and hospitality.

Royal Park Hotel

Where 399 Queensbury Street, North Melbourne

Phone 9329 4519

Open Daily, 4pm-1am

Cards MC V Eftpos

Wheelchair access No

Cheers Steak diane? Beer by the pony? What's not to love?

Jeers Op-shop seating - easy on the eye, hard on the bum