Little Creatures Brewery

I just got back from a bit of a getaway to Geelong to visit some very close family friends that I had not seen in years. I had expected to go out and explore Geelong and feature some posts on the region. However unfortunately my immune system had other plans and I ended up spending most of the time inside with a blanket and some cold and flu meds.

But I did manage to go to one amazing place and that was Little Creatures Brewery. In contrast to Café Di Stasio, which was the worst dining experience I have had in years, Little Creatures Brewery was everything I love in a dining experience.

From the moment we drove into the place I knew Little Creatures was completely different. It’s a working brewery housed in a heritage listed building with a huge dining/café area that was buzzing with people. The building itself has so much character and you can tell the team behind Little Creatures put in enormous amounts of effort to maintain the history, heritage and old world look of the place. I loved it- as you can probably tell from the amount of photos I took.

The signs directing you to parking, to the café and labelling certain parts of the brewery are rustic so they don’t feel out of place on the buildings. The inside is completely refurbished but the roof is still part of the old building and the rustic design is mirrored inside. The bar itself is actually a shipping container! I was wowed by this place even before I had tasted any of the food or drank any of the beer.

Perhaps my favourite part of the place was the old style bicycles parked at the front with apple crates attached to them. Apparently you can hire those if you want to explore the area. They were so cute!

Despite the fact that the place was packed the service was great- we were led to a table pretty quickly even though we were a party of 8.

Our friend swore by the bbq lamb ribs so we ordered a plate each, along with a huge bowl of fries. The menu selection is pretty small- about 8 or so wood-oven pizzas are offered along with another 8-10 mains and 4 entrees. But this is how they maintain the quality of the food and are also able to get your food to you so quickly.

Then the ribs came- Oh My God! You know you have a good plate of ribs when you can suck the bone dry because the meat literally slides off it. The seasoning on them was a cajun sort of spice and not so spicy which was ideal for my mum and sister. They were so delicious I could come back every day and just eat the ribs. I probably could have sat there and eaten all five plates despite the fact that I wasn’t feeling well. Apparently they tried to do them a quicker ‘cheat’ way at some point but got such bad feedback they went straight back to slow cooking them. These are literally the best ribs I have ever had, probably the best meat I have ever tasted. These things are best eaten with fingers- it’s part of the whole finger licking good experience.

The chips were also delicious- cooked to perfection and accompanied with yummy garlic aioli.

One of the kids also ate the wood-oven pizza with prosciutto, mozzarella and rocket and it looked amazing. They have a pizza station where you can see them making the pizzas and putting them into the genuine wood oven pizza. I don’t think you can go wrong with whatever you order in this place but if someone on your table is ordering the ribs you are probably best to do the same unless you want to end up with a massive case of food envy.

I also ordered some cider, brewed right there in the Little Creatures Brewery. Because Little Creatures is a working brewery you can find many varieties of their own branded beer on the menu, and you can even sign up for brewery tours that depart from the café area. I’m pretty fussy when it comes to ciders- I like them to be more of a dry cider as I hate any type of sweet alcohol. This one was really good- luckily I ordered the Pint!

Geelong is on the way to the Great Ocean Road so I definitely recommend anyone going that way to stop off at this place for an amazing meal and an amazing experience. It’s also only an hour from Melbourne and I would seriously drive all that way just to eat those ribs again!

They also have a smaller dining hall in Melbourne but you don’t get the same experience as actually being in the restored building- and they don’t have ribs on the menu!