[info]
When? - 12th of May, 2011
Where? - The John Curtin Hotel. 29 Lygon St, Carlton
Price? - $12 Parma n’ Pot Thursdays, $12 all other times (no pot)
Barry? - No
Website? - http://www.johncurtinhotel.com/
Reviewers - Cale, Lee, Nikki, Pat, Stefo[/info]
Last month sometime I got an email from our friends over at thehappiesthour.com, alerting us to a decent sounding parma deal at the John Curtin hotel in Lygon st. $10 thursdays with a free pot (although since I recieved the email there has been a price jump to $12 parma n’ pot night, bloody recession). Seemed as good a pub as any to do our fiftieth review, so we loaded up the parma bus and headed to the Curtin.
Thats right, FIFTY reviews! Holy shit thats awesome.
We arrived at the Curtin and snagged a booth in the public bar for a couple of beers before heading into the dining area to eat, They employ a digital buzzer system at the Curtin wherin after you order your food you are given a high-tech coaster which flashes and vibrates when your meal is ready, indicating its time to go to the kitchen window and collect your tasty dish. We got comfy at our oddly shaped table and ordered our meals (with accompanying pots) The staff were very friendly and talkative, happy to have a chat. One thing worth noting is how freaking dark this pub is, I had to employ the flash for the parma photo below, which is a big no no in the food photography world as it pretty much makes all meals look shithouse. Anyway, after a short wait our buzzer buzzed and we headed to the counter and picked up our meals.
Bad news first - There was a fair bit of nude schnitzel and the cheese could’ve been melted a little more, and it was a little light on the napoli. Good news - it was a quality piece of chicken breast, well cooked with a great chicken/crumb ratio, and they weren’t too stingy on the ham.
The chips suffered the fate of being squashed entirely under the parma, now we can normally forgive half of the chips being squished but the whole lot is just criminal, apart from that they were well seasoned and pretty tasty.
If you like onion (like I do) then this is the salad for you, we had to stop at a 7-11 on the way out to pick up some gum as everyone had rancid onion breath, a fairly sparse garden salad of lettuce, onion, cucumber & tomato, it had a tasty mustard-seed dressing that brought it back from the brink, although some reviewers weren’t fans as the onion content was very high, gotta be a fan of onion to enjoy that.
Overall the John Curtin offers up an okay parma at good value, I think reviewer Stefo said it best last night when he said “I wouldn’t seek it out, but I wouldn’t complain if I had to have it again” (actually it might have been Cale … or Pat, I can’t remember I’d had a few beers)
on to the scores!
Parma - 6.3
Chips - 4
Salad - 4.4
Value - 8.2
Total - 5.84
The search continues…
Theres one more thing I’d like to add, Reviewer Pat has been playing a little game of late, in which whenever I happen to leave my little scoring notebook unattended, he steals it and secretly draws a penis somewhere amongst its pages (mature, I know). These artistic masterpieces are too important to the art world to hide from society, so without further ado, I give you…
Pat’s gallery of wangs
This cool fellow is enjoying a trip to the snow!
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Its Super-Shlong!
Apparently thats supposed to be me licking that rather large, veiny monstrosity, I can assure you that this drawing is entirely fictional.
Well I hope everyone enjoyed that, I will be sure to update you should more penises arise (*badum ching*)