Drinking For Good: Shebeen

Tucked along Manchester Lane in Melbourne's CBD is Shebeen - where you can meet and have a drink, and help change the world while doing so.

Whilst I was waiting for Carly to join me, I ordered a beer from Namibia - of which the profits go towards mothers2mothers, which delivers programs to support African mothers with HIV to prevent the transmission of the virus to their baby - through mentoring and information and support.

Never before has ordering a second beer felt so good!

Once Carly joined me, and ordered a cocktail, we studied the snacking menu and ordered some dishes to share. Banh Mi is the feature of the menu, and we ordered the Moroccan Meatballs with Pine Nuts - delicious!

To add, we had the Pork Belly Banh Mi Sliders, which were also the perfect handful of taste delight.

The listing of Thai Chili Lime Sorbet was impossible to resist, and seriously some of the best ice cream I have ever had - the chili left a tingle on your lips....yum!

The bar has a cute interior with quaint decor, although the seating outside in the sheltered laneway is surely the pick of the spot.

The bar is well stocked, but the beer range from places like Laos, Sri Lanka, Mexico, India and Vietnam, as well as my African selection, in addition to a South African cider, is the talking point. The profit from each beverage contributes to a not-for-profit organisation from it's originating country, linked to programs such as vocational training, literacy programs, and agricultural technological support to farmers.

Pages in the menu also describe how Shebeen has selected the programs to feed their profits to, and their aim of finding sustainable organisations making a real, measurable difference, and who are working on scaling up their operations. Impressive research, behind this impressive social enterprise.

Certainly a new bar that has impressed me, I will no doubt be back time and again.