The Royal treatment, Review.

Sunday morning breakfast is once again in the forefront of my mind, after a lovely Saturday evening dining with friends at Concubine on Gouger st.
Our locality in the inner northern suburbs gives us with regular choices, and the Royal Oak Hotel is consistently near the top of that list with good reason. Their kitchen has always maintained high standards, and the bar is solid. The menu changes not so regularly but what they do - they do well. I remember as an intrepid teenager having kangaroo fillet and being amazed how good it tasted, surprising because kangaroo was a new inclusion to most city menus, but few had mastered the technique of not ruining it completely! Combined with some superb wines available in the bottle shop it makes for a great pub restaurant let alone pub. The breakfast menu has all the regular suspects, large and small standard cholesterol kick, as well as a great eggs Benedict with fresh hollandaise. I was saddened to find out the mini can of baked beans has been removed from the large brekky, public liability, sub prime crisis or some hogwash was blamed... A newspaper, a nicely brewed coffee, a comfy booth at the window was required and delivered, perhaps a berocca would of also been useful. I have fond memories of knocking off pints at that bar as though they were spoonfuls, having finished working pans in a kitchen up the street it was a haven of noise and intensity that you could sink into. Hangovers change and time eats up the past and now I am up early on a Sunday morning looking through the world news section, passing comment on the up coming U.S. election and am reminded of a funny joke.......it was funny then - not now!

Giles

Pub-logic, review.

A pub has some very basic rules to follow to ensure the very core of its hospitality requirements are met...
-Beer on tap.
-The Schnitzel will be the benchmark of the whole menu.
-Atmosphere, any at all is good.
After that it is open for interpretation as to what makes a pub work.
When a pub can tick all three boxes and still have pokies and a TAB in the front bar, you know there is some decent hospitality taking place. As is the case with many country pubs, their hearts in the right place and they have to work hard to survive. On the other end of the scale is the pub with everything in its favour and absolutely nothing going for it. My most recent example of this is The Archer Hotel O'Connell St. North Adelaide. It has a great location, a new fit out and buckets of potential. Sadly it rates on par with the now atrocious Oxford Hotel, which eight years ago had itself on the right track. It is now over run with pokies in a once beautiful and well awarded dining room. The Archer Hotel does not even have some good form to regret on, they have been out of form from the beginning. Sadly it seems they were mislead by a consultant who had been to the eccentric Royal Oak and the confusing Bombay Bicycle club and could not make up their mind. So eventually made a poorer hybrid cousin of the two. So no atmosphere here, it only ticks one of my boxes - beer (just). The other boxes need attending immediately! So I turn my focus to the food at the risk of sounding like one G. Ramsey: It is all about your f$%#ing standards, you cannot let them slip. I was informed by the bar staff it was an exceptional evening for the Archer Hotel, the patrons likened to ants and staff like stunned mullets. If their standards on an exceptionally busy night were high then they have only to deal with their minor issues. But it decends into a fracas...
Waiting at the bar I hear "Chef says they are out of chicken for the warm chicken salad!" and I immediately imagine 19 year old third year apprentice Nathaniel sucking back one more pipe in the car park and then crumbing chicken schnitzels in a purple blur to make service deadline. Oblivious to the fact he is out of tenderloin for the salad - he needed some of the breast!!! Nathaniel giggles: Ha he he he hi hi hi hi, breast......
ORDER IN! The docket is torn from the printer and the two copies are seperated, our paranoid chef shifts out of reverse....
Two steak sangas "sweet", Two beef snitties 1 gravy 1 mush extra pepper, two squid salads "shit!!", two fish. He has failed to keep on top of his stock - he almost sold out of squid at lunch? I surmise it is a sunny day, a few white wines and the squid or chicken salad: the rinse set are like clock work in Adelaide! At this stage I should mention that I am hyper critical of most venues, but not openly toward the staff, my inner critique is of the scale. I had the steak sanga, and thankful for the choice.
I understand the staffs pressures and foibles. Weed in between a split shift is never a good idea, and pressure can make you do silly things. To not have some crucial elements of a very simplistic menu is sheer stupidity. There is a Foodland over the road!! Obviously they could not be arsed walking over the road, so in that case honesty is a good policy if it can buy you a way out.... "Sorry to inform you sir that there is but one serve of squid left for the evening can we offer you the special?" No, Nathaniel makes another poor decision: 'I think I will split the single serve (of hideous pre-cut, seasoned and freezer bag squid) and load up the salad to compensate'. This poor hack work does not fool anyone, and results in an embarrassed manager, disappointed patrons and spiteful blogger. Nathaniel never passed SYSTEM D 101.
The Schnitzel box yet to be ticked: The schnitzels were cooked in old oil, looked burnt and tasted like crap. Deep fryers rarely get a chance to cool down in busy kitchens, but changing and cleaning the oil is essential. Dark brown deep fried food is the hallmark of a lazy kitchen.
Honesty on a menu can gain a lot of respect if you deliver what you intended to. If the poor standard is going to continue then rewrite the menu - drop the price so your patrons know what they are in for. You might even exceed their lowered expectations one day!
Tick the boxes and then get to work restoring our faith in a pub.

Giles