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When? - 16th of June, 2010
Where? - European Bier Café, 120 Exhibition St. Melbourne
Price? - $13.00 Wednesdays (parma night), $18.00 Lunch menu, $22.00 Dinner menu
Barry? - No
Website? - http://www.europeanbiercafe.com.au
Reviewers - Adam Y, Cale, Grace, Lee, Pete, Tanya, Tony Q, Tony S[/info]
I’d often said to my friends that ‘The Euro is like the Prince of Wales, just in the city’ it played the same music, drew the same kind of crowd and even shared some of the same cover bands - so when we found out that the European Bier Café also put on a Wednesday parma night, we just had to go and check it out.
As the name suggests, the European Bier Café is all about the Bier, um, I mean Beer. The Bar is lined with taps, I counted no less than Forty different varieties of beer available either on tap or bottled, as well as a few drink specials, full spirit selection and even my personal favourite on tap - Bulmers cider.
So with a pint o’ cider in hand ($9 for a pint, very reasonable) we ordered our parmas - The Euro website advertises their wednesday parma night as $12 all night, but in actuality it was $13 - still a well priced parma, but be weary of that. There are a couple of options you can choose from: Traditional Parma, Hawaiian Parma (with pineapple) and Italian (with fresh tomato, rocket lettuce, prosciutto and parmesan)
We all ordered Traditional Parmas, kicked back and waited for them to arrive, there were a few big screen TV’s scattered around so we rarely found ourselves without entertainment, while waiting I noticed that Wednesday is not their only ‘special’ dining night - The Euro also offers a ‘$12 Pie Night’ on Mondays, and a ‘$14 Steak night’ on Tuesdays, an interesting option, but this isn’t Pie Daze, nor is it Steak Daze …. it’s Parma Daze.
One reviewer was particularly famished and ordered himself a bowl of wedges as an entree - which were promptly seagull’ed by the rest of the table - they were good wedges with the standard sour cream and sweet chili sauce, if they were any indicator as to the quality of the parma we were about to receive, we were in for a quality piece of chicken.
Apologies for the iPhone photo - I couldn’t find my usual camera nor the memory card for my backup camera - I swear there are gremlins living in my house sometimes
It was a good looking parma, nice and big no nude schnitzel - there was a portion with no cheese, but it still had napoli and ham, so it wasn’t full frontal schnitzel nudity.
The parmigiana was well cooked and of a good thickness, a little thin in some places but real quality chicken breast. One complaint about the schnitzel is that the crumbs were rather soggy all over, the chicken had no crispness at all - but this is a minor complaint as the rest of it was delicious, there was a generous coating of flavoursome napoli. The cheese was spot on, golden brown and not in short supply - under which was a much appreciated (and different) serving of shredded ham, which I would have thought would be too much ham - but it worked very well with the dish.
The chips were shoestring (a.k.a McDonalds) fries, they were many in number though, with a majority of them not sitting underneath the parma, if they had have been under those soggy crumbs it would have been a disaster - but they were cooked well, crispy and generously salted (perhaps a little too much - could have been backed off a little).
The garden salad consisted of Rocket, red cabbage, tomato, shredded carrot, capsicum & a balsamic dressing, it was a large serving and very tasty, complimenting the meal beautifully.
If you come down on a Wednesday, this is a great value parma - especially for an inner city restaurant. Their prices for dining on any night other than Wednesday are a little high however with the parma running up to $22 for their regular dinner menu, i’d feel a tad ripped off paying $22 for this parma knowing it is available $10 cheaper on a different night of the week. That being said if you DO catch parma night its tough to beat the value of this meal, It’s big, juicy, delicious and comes with admirable sides. The atmosphere of the Euro is great, and the beers are spectacular.
Parma - 7.9
Chips - 6.9
Salad - 6.8
Value - 8.3
Total - 7.61
The search continues …
