I have tried it in the past so I’m speaking from experience when I tell you that telling your wife that Valentine’s Day dinner is “parma night at the pub” does not go down as well as one would hope. So last night, rather than heading out for a parma we took a week off and headed out to a non-parma serving restaurant (I know right? why even bother?). Luckily I had a review banked from the Australia Day long weekend for just such an occasion… Enjoy!
Before we get into it, This week we indulged in latest trend of 2019 and launched a ParmaDaze Discord channel, A spot to drop in, hang out and chat about whatever tickles your fancy (mostly parmas, but we are open to other topics). I’m almost always hanging out in there if you’ve ever got a question ask so click here if you want to check it out!
Anyway, on to this week’s review…
I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard yet as I have been broadcasting it pretty relentlessly since the announcement, but this year we presented the Birmingham Hotel in Fitzroy (Or Collingwood, depending on who you ask, Smith Street is literally the border between the two suburbs) with their third consecutive Golden Chook award for best parma in Melbourne.
An impressive feat indeed! Before we discovered The Birmy Melbourne’s Imperial Hotel took out the Golden Chook for four consecutive years, so Birmy has to go unbeaten for another 12 months to hold the title for as long as the Impy did.
Anyway, after the announcement of the Birmy’s third award, Triple M picked up the story and it got a bit of attention…
You can read the full post here if you’d like. After it went live Facebook was ablaze with comments, our traffic surged (if you are a new reader here due to that article, Welcome!) and more eyes than ever were on ParmaDaze. Of course, with added attention comes added criticism, and the Facebook comments weren’t without detractors, claiming that the Birmy no longer deserved the title of number one.
This got me thinking. Our first review (and first scoring) of the Birmy parma was in 2016. I ‘ve stopped in periodically since to make sure things were still up to par but I hadn’t gotten to the Birmy for probably 12 months before we presented them with the 2018 Parma of the Year award.
Was it still good? Or had it done an Impy and dropped in quality?
Luckily as I was in the middle of this existential crisis the Birmingham made an announcement…
$10 Birmy parmas?! How could we not go?
So rather than a full blown redo I decided that we would head down to the Birmy during the Parma Party and just double check that the Birmy Parma was still up to scratch.
We arrived at the Birmy on the Monday, I was expecting throngs of hungry parma goers however the pub was relatively quiet when we arrived, grabbed a seat and placed our orders.
As we sat the pub started to fill, more and more people rolled in the door to get their hands on a feed. The Birmy’s usual parma night goes for $13 so to be able to get one for just $10 was a spectacular deal.
About 20 minutes after ordering our $10 Birmy parmas fell to the table…
Look, I know taste is a subjective thing and what I like may not necessarily be what someone else likes. But I’ll be goddamned if that isn’t the best damn parma going. As soon as I saw it my fears that it had dropped in quality allayed. We picked up our cutlery and tucked in to find that, if anything, the quality of the Birmy parma has improved since 2016, with the addition of a strong garlic flavour throughout the crumbs of the schnitzel
The chips were spot on too, well seasoned, well cooked. Crunchy and soft at the same time. Delightful.
Now this post isn’t going to be entirely sucking up to the Birmy parma. I think it’s just because my tastes have changed but I am just bored with garden salads now. The Birmy’s is fine, but after nearly 10 years of reviewing them I’m just over the garden salad in general. If the Birmy offered up the option of salad or coleslaw I think that would be my dreams coming true.
The fact that we were getting the best parma I had ever tried for only $10 was just ludicrous, $13 on their parma night is just as silly so if you haven’t had one before I urge you to get down to the Birmy and try it for yourself.
Now as I said at the start of the review - The Imperial held on to their top spot for four years before toppling to the Birmingham, and there’s no reason that a better parma can’t come along and take the top spot from the Birmy. So please, keep those suggestions coming in. Either on Facebook, Instagram, our contact page or even as a comment on this review - Let me know if you know of a parma better than the Birmy’s and we’ll check it out.
It has been a few years, there has been some damn stiff competition, there have even been copycats - But for now the Birmy parma remains unbeaten in our eyes. If you haven’t checked it out yet get down there immediately, you won’t be disappointed.