When? - 3rd of November, 2010
Where? - 914 Mt. Alexander Rd. Essendon.
Price? - $18.90
Barry? - Yes
Website? - http://www.osullivansirishpub.com.au/
Reviewers - Bec, Kathleen, Lee, Luke, Matt, Nikki, Pat, Sara
We must seem like gluttons for punishment (or just gluttons in general, having a parma every week), but we have attempted another Irish pub - regular readers will know that Irish pubs have a track record of being not so excellent when it comes to their chicken parmigiana offerings, but when we heard that O’Sullivans Sibeen (or ‘O’sullies’ to the locals) were offering a triple-stack parma for only $20 it definitely piqued our interest.
We took our table in the downstairs bar - There is a restaurant upstairs that offers table service, but for the sake of this review we took the downstairs option, seated in a cosy little nook off the main area with plenty of Irish charm. Unfortunately the triple parma stack we had heard of was only an occasional special and not available on the night we were there - we went for the standardparma ($18.90, $13 on thursdays) instead.
After ordering we put some change into Barry and Buck Hunter to pass the time, before too long our parmas arrived.
The schnitzel was big enough - I was worried about over-crumbing to hide a thin piece of chicken at first but it held up pretty well, there was some minor nude-schnitzel issues on a few of the parmas served, but some faired better than others. Cheese, napoli and ham were all very tasty, The crumbs were processed but still carried the flavor quite well. All in all it faired as one of the better parma offerings we have had at an Irish pub, Although the bar isn’t set very high!
The chips were fantastic - beer battered plank chips salted just right, crispy and delicious, unfortunately the serving was minimal, I would’ve killed for some more, so much so I considered ordering a second bowl.
The salad was a standard garden salad, totally passable but with one fatal flaw, for some reason they had put lemon juice on it, which just destroyed its flavour - I’m not sure if the lemon juice was meant for the salad, the schnitzel or the chips but everything on the plate had a lemon juice taste to it that overpowered the rest of the dish. It wasn’t as noticeable on the parma or the chips, but the salad definitely suffered from it.
An after parma game of Barry is a must, we picked up enough on Barry for a couple of pints of Bulmers before parting ways until our next meeting.
As far as Irish pubs go O’sullies does well, but as I said before the bar for Irish pubs isn’t set very high (none of our Irish pub reviews have rated higher than a 5.9). It’s a tasty parma that would score well if we went there on a Thursday ($13 parma night).
I was just a little soured by all the lemon juice *badum ching*