One of Malvern’s oldest pub sites has opened a new chapter, with The Angel of Malvern reopening in stages from April 2026 as a three-level hospitality venue at the heart of Kokoda Property’s Malvern Collective precinct.
The first piece to return is the Public Bar, which reopened on Friday, 24th April, restoring the corner of Glenferrie and Dandenong Roads as a proper local meeting point for after-work drinks and neighbourhood catch-ups.
The building’s long history gives the relaunch some weight. First licensed in 1856 as The Gardiner Hotel, the site has sat close to Malvern Station for generations, shifting with the suburb around it as the area has become more densely built and more design-conscious.
Now, after a restoration led by Kokoda and a hospitality reset from Refinery Group, the pub is being reintroduced as something bigger than a single bar, a stacked venue with distinct moods across each floor.
Malvern’s Public Bar First
The ground-floor Public Bar is the opening act, and it is pitched as the most approachable part of the project. The room leans into the classic pub brief, with beer, sport and straightforward food at its core, but the fit-out and positioning are noticeably more polished than your average local.
The venue is open Sunday to Thursday from 10am to 1am, and Friday and Saturday from 10am to 3am, giving it a broad day-to-night reach. Behind the bar, the drinks list keeps things familiar while adding a local point of difference.
Alongside staples such as Carlton Draught and Stone & Wood, the venue has introduced Angel Lager, created with Hawkers as a house beer for the space. It has that sit-down-between-trains, stay-for-one-more feel—a pub that easily draws the lunch, post-work, and game-day crowds without trying to be just one thing.
More to come upstairs
The next phase arrives in June, when level one opens as Flores and Bar Flores, a Mediterranean-Italian-leaning wine bar and eatery, while the top level becomes Lately, an intimate late-night cocktail and audio bar.
That gives The Angel a different rhythm from the usual pub relaunch, with each floor designed to serve a different occasion rather than asking one room to do everything.
That approach also fits the broader Malvern Collective development, which Kokoda says was completed in 2025 and includes 205 apartments plus a ground-level mix of retail, dining and lifestyle businesses linked back to Glenferrie Road and Malvern Station.
In that context, The Angel goes beyond reopening a heritage building—it anchors a precinct designed for daily life.
Food & Design at Angel of Malvern
Chef Justin North is overseeing the food direction across the venue, bringing more than three decades of hospitality experience to the project.
On the Public Bar menu, that translates to pub favourites with a bit more discipline and polish, from fried buttermilk chicken and parma to a grill section that includes rump cap, scotch fillet and half chicken. The aim is to make the usual pub menu feel more deliberate and worth returning to.
The design, led by Studio McCue, keeps the heritage shell visible while layering in contemporary materials and more dramatic connections between levels. Original brickwork, restored windows and textured finishes sit alongside steel framing, terrazzo and a double-height atrium, giving the venue a sense of history without freezing it in time.
Broader Ambitions Beyond Malvern
The Angel of Malvern is also the first hospitality venue from Refinery Group, which Kokoda-backed founder Mark Stevens says is the start of a wider pipeline of more than 10 hospitality concepts across Melbourne and Brisbane.
That makes the Malvern reopening feel like a proof of concept as much as a neighbourhood pub comeback. Kokoda’s recent acquisition and planned reboot of The Saint in St Kilda suggests the group is betting hard on precinct-based hospitality with a strong design edge.
For now, though, a long-shuttered local landmark is finally serving its community again. And in a suburb that balances heritage streetscapes, station traffic and high-end new development, that return will likely land somewhere between nostalgia and reinvention.
