[info]
When? - 19th of May, 2011
Where? - The Pub @ Crown, Crown Entertainment Complex, Southbank
Price? - $19.90
Barry? - No
Website? - http://www.thepubatcrown.com.au/
Reviewers - Cale, Grace, Lee, Nikki, Stefo, Tony[/info]
** NOTE - This pub has closed! Parma no longer available - Review will stay up for posterity. Enjoy!
To be honest I really can’t say how The Pub came onto our radar, its one of those pubs that I would see quite often and think ‘I wonder how their parma is’.
Well seeing as the point of this little website is to answer that question for others that may be pondering the exact same thing, we loaded up the parma bus and headed into The Pub ad Crown.
The pub is trying very hard to feel like a pub (if the name of the place wasn’t a dead giveaway), but upon entering you cant help but get the feeling that something isn’t quite right, that its all a thinly veiled facade, kind of like the fake ‘street’ they have at Movie World or Disneyland, sure the shops are there but you know that there is really nothing behind that 1940’s ‘Private Eye’ window except some bad wiring or maybe a storage room. The pub is trying to be a ‘country pub’ but you can see the shadow of their Crown Casino overlords looming in every corner.
We ordered our meals at the bar and awaited our foods arrival, the free parking tickets we got with our meal was a nice touch and certainly helped the value score. I wouldn’t say we were waiting a long time for our parmas to arrive, but we at one point we did check our receipts to see just how long it had been since our orders were placed, never a good sign. After a bit of a wait, the meals arrived…
I had a bit of hope when the parmas fell in front of us, the chicken looked big, the chips looked plentiful and the salad vegetables looked … passable, but on my first attempted cut into the schnitzel my heart sank. I say attempted cut as the chicken was so tough that I actually had to re-grip my knife and put some strength into cutting through the chicken. Not off to a good start, thats for sure. The chicken itself was credit-card thin, definitely hitting the ratio of more crumbs than chicken. There was plenty of cheese atop the parma but it was tasteless and rubbery, some reviewers resorted to picking it off towards the end of the meal rather than end up constipated for a month. It was skimpy on the napoli and the ham was present, but tasteless and barely covering a third of the chicken.
Here is this weeks cross-section to demonstrate how anorexic this chicken was
I have used the term ‘McDonalds chips’ to describe chips before, but none have fit the bill like The Pub’s chips, I don’t really need to describe them other than to say this, Go to Maccas and pick up a large fries, but don’t eat them straight away - let them sit in the bag for 5 - 10 minutes on the drive home, tip them out on a plate then eat, let me know what you think.
The Salad, wasn’t salad, it was vegetables, The Pubs parma comes with an offering of veggies in place of a salad, now this isn’t necessary a bad thing, I am open minded when it comes to my sides and I will treat all greens equally, however if they were going to serve veggies they should at least serve good veggies. They came out cold, undercooked and undersized, as if they came straight from a bag out of the freezer.
I always try hard to find something good say about a parma when we go on review, but this week I am really struggling to think of anything. The parma was bad, the chips were bad and the salad was bad. They do a discount parma night on Mondays and even offer a ‘deluxe parma’ then, but I really can’t see it being slightly cheaper effect the score too greatly, its too far gone. This is a parma at its cheapest and nastiest, and I think this would be one of the first times I have actually advised against partaking in at least some respect. If you find yourself thinking that a Pub @ Crown parma is for you, please take my advise and follow these handy steps
- Leave Crown
- Get in your car/a cab (depending on how much you’ve had to drink)
- Drive 4 minutes (1.7km) down the road to The Palmerston Hotel
- Have a decent parma that wont make you want to kill yourself
I have even drawn up a handy wallet-sized emergency information card, for your own protection (and the protection of your loved ones) please print and keep on your person at all times.
Click here to download full sized version
Parma - 3.75
Chips - 2.92
Salad - 1.33
Value - 5.33
Total - 3.42
The search continues…
