The Queens Head - Review.

As the crow flies with a stones throw you could describe the vicinity of The Queens Head Hotel from the picturesque Adelaide Oval. It has long been an ideal venue for a decent beer during a summer full of cricket and general frivolity. With forty minutes for a lunch break on a casual Monday I once again venture to the low profile of the very austere venue. I spy some changes with my return to the renovated venue perhaps four years ago, this time someone has made some poor choices. One thing I don't like is a fake facade, this is sadly the first thing that you see on entering the front bar. Fake timber flooring laid the incorrect way in relation to the building tells me someone did not consider the consequences of that decision. I move through to the saloon bar where there used to be a superb bar/bench setup length ways in the tight room, it created a wonderful richness to the room which is now replaced with smaller rectangular tables at bar height which effectively changes the saloon to an ideal speed dating venue! With few minutes to play with I choose a quick fresher dish to lunch on combined with a plastic receptacle of sparkling ale. I went for the floured squid with dill and tomato on rocket doused with a mayo of supermarket quality, I admit I expected more from the dish. The mayo was lifeless, squid was cooked in oil not hot enough to do the job properly and the decision to serve the whole mess in a bowl more suited to a hand full of Ferrero-Rocher it made me feel as though the management did not care about what I thought of this dish. They only care that the floors are easy to mop at the end of the day and that they never run out of glassware. Go back in time or wait another three years before someone cottons on and gets this place back to basics. It is a fake facade of a gastro pub in dire need of a reality check.


Giles